Polman’s Push

Unilever’s road to growth winds through mom-and-pop shops like those in Jakarta, reports Matthew Boyle in Bloomberg Businessweek (1/7/13). “You can’t fight Unilever,” says Hari Sumarno, whose small shop prominently displays “small packages of Sunsilk shampoo, Fair & Lovely skin cream, Bango soy sauce, and Rexona deodorant … All are Unilever brands.” Unilever provides Hari with the goods at a discount in exchange for displaying them at the front of his store. Competitive products are tucked away on “dusty, unlit shelves” in the back. Such merchandising is paying off in a big way for Unilever, its sales “growing at more than double the rate of P&G’s … courtesy of emerging markets.”

Unilever supports its growth strategy by focusing on “fewer, bigger projects with global appeal … like TRESemme shampoo and Magnum ice cream,” and getting them “into stores in Sao Paulo, Mumbai and Jakarta faster than ever before. Once there, it uses local knowledge … to lure shoppers to its brands.” It’s all part of CEO Paul Polman‘s “emphasis on winning market share” and reaching his goal of “doubling Unilever’s 2009 size … while cutting its carbon footprint in half and improving the hygiene habits of more than a billion people — all by 2020.” As Paul sees it: “Our business is not rocket science … There’s nothing intellectual about this. It’s about being a little bit better every day.”

TRESemme, acquired from Alberto Culver in 2010 is a case in point: “Polman quickly rolled the brand out in Brazil, but not before getting 40 big retailers behind its marketing plan, courting fashion bloggers, and distributing 10 million free samples,” among other activities. In less than a year, the brand “went from zero market share to besting P&G’s Pantene in hypermarkets and drugstores … Polman hopes to repeat that launch success in India and Indonesia.” Keeping a local focus is key. As Unilever’s Indonesian chairman explains: “Being Indonesian, we don’t need to spend thousands on research to understand Indonesian consumers. We live here. We know. We tell London what to do, not the other way around.”