Unilever’s chief marketer on lockdown, media reviews and running a sprawling in-house agency staffed by outsiders

Shortly after Conny Braams began her global job, the world started falling apart. Now she’s trying to put it back together Braams started as chief marketing and digital officer of Unilever in January 2020, and within 10 weeks countries were going on lockdown, Unilever was shutting offices in favor of work from home, and nonessential travel, which pretty much included any trip she might have planned, was canceled. So being chief marketer of one of the most global marketers on Earth—with major market shares from Brazil to Indonesia and a developing market business proportionately bigger than most packaged-goods peers—became a work-from-home job in the Netherlands. Braams oversees a group handling Unilever’s biggest global media review in six years and a sprawling “in-house” agency of 21 U Studios and two regional hubs, but where “in-house” means literally people working in their houses. Employees of U Studios are generally employees of Oliver, a unit of You and Mr. Jones, making Unilever’s in-house operation more of a hybrid than most. As the world inches toward its post-COVID work style, she’ll be helping manage what “going back to the office” will look like for Unilever. In an interview with Ad Age, Braams talks about the challenges of leading Unilever marketing during the pandemic, the rationale behind having a big “in-house” agency when everyone is still at home and what a “return to normal” might look like as the pandemic eases. You started a global job right at the front end of the pandemic. How has it been just trying to onboard and do a new job in the midst of all this? It’s a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, you hear all the growing and continued hardship of people around you in personal life. And then from a professional perspective the pace of change has accelerated. Lots of existing trends have really blossomed, but there are a couple of new ones. I was really in the honeymoon period, the third month in my new role. It filled me with energy and focus, a clear sense of direction. Looking back, I would say the first phase was very much crisis management, first of all, making sure people were safe, that we could be shooting our commercials in a safe environment, that we have the right tonality, the right messaging to become part of, actually, the heat of the moment. And then slowly but steadily when we found out actually this is going to be a bitter period of living with COVID, ‘the new normal.’ It came back to basically a new focus on trends that we saw before—consumers going online and staying there, conscious and cautious consumption. Also really important was the business strategy—focusing on those categories that were really in ultimate demand, like hygiene, like in-home cooking, but even ice cream deliveries. So I would certainly say it has been [trying to be] agile at scale. Decisions needed to be made quickly, and focus was really needed setting priorities very quickly, but also empowering the front line, because it’s very hard from London or Singapore to oversee all the different shades that are happening in the totality of the world. I would say even though of course everybody is going through his own personal difficulties, I would say it has filled me with even more energy than when I started. There’s a lot of speculation about an impending global media review. Is there anything to that? I can confirm, yes, that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing a media agency review across many of our markets. Years ago, we used to do global reviews. But we don’t do a one global review anymore. This has many markets in it. But over the past couple of years, we’ve done a couple of separate geographies as well. And actually, this is part of a periodic review that we do, because we just want to make sure that we are working with the best-in-class media agency partnerships. So we have invited a couple of current agency group partners, but also a couple of selected agency groups in selected markets, not all of them global. So that’s why I hesitate to call it global. Can you say which markets are in or out? I could say it’s more than half of the markets. Is North America one of them? Yes. There was recently a review concluded of just the retail and e-commerce piece of media in the U.S. that went to Publicis, correct? To Arc, yes indeed. We felt that [Publicis] was best positioned at this moment in time to deliver the shopper-centric, data-driven insights that we needed to reach the next level of performance marketing, which is becoming more and more important, obviously. Now, you would say, what implications does it have for our incumbent [WPP in the retail assignment, Mindshare in North American media]. Of course, we will continue to work in a strong relationship with WPP, Mindshare remains our media partner, and Arc helps us drive the lower-funnel performance marketing. Was part of the reason for this that e-commerce has become so much bigger a piece of what you do than it was a year ago? Yes, absolutely, and e-commerce in its broadest sense. Pure play has really stepped up obviously, but also getting new generations to come online. Also things like what we call the new channels for us—ice cream. These new e-commerce players are also very critical for us, so, whenever you order a pizza you also get Ben & Jerry’s delivered, or have the ability to do so. You have a very large in-house agency operation, which sounds like it’s growing. I wanted to get your sense, since you’ve come in to oversee it, is this an arrangement that’s working well for you? Yes. I think for a couple of years now we’ve been working with this blend of holding-company partners, a couple of selected creative independents, and then our in-house agency. And this blend with specific horses for courses is actually working very well for us. It’s working also to have a couple of fewer trusted partners, because that makes it easier to drive the consistency, degree of quality, and cost-effectiveness. What’s the role of U Studios and how is it working for you? It’s really there for our digital advertising and content, so everything from digital videos, banners, social posts, e-commerce content, website content, etc. Higher-volume things we do with them. And what is helping really a lot with having these people around is that it is highly collaborative between them—the agency people and marketers. That makes it all very effective, efficient, quick, we have the ability to scale if needed. It makes it flexible. But you also bring in, of course, a lot of knowledge. So it brings in the knowledge of the marketers and of our brands. And it combines it with the knowledge and the expertise of the so-called agency people. U Studio has been growing because our digital ecosystem and e-commerce continue to grow. It’s actually working really well for us. So there’s no need from my perspective to change that. There are a couple of advantages to it. Basically, you tap into the knowledge of Oliver in U Studio. Secondly, it is quite flexible. It’s an agile way of working, which really helps us. You get the best of both worlds by having them in-house or sitting very close to our own people. The moment you see that people are using more and more of it, it’s a sign of success that people like working with them. Over time, we have now created more than a million digital assets. And if people would not be happy with it, then probably we wouldn’t have done that. It is likely to be a growing share of what we do just by nature of the work they do, quick-turnaround digital content being a growing part of the overall mix now. It’s the creativity that you also see. With digital becoming more important, the need for creativity is stepping up as well. We know that the biggest return on investment you drive is by having better creative. Why does it make sense to have it staffed by an outside company—Oliver? Is part of it that they give people more of an opportunity to move to other clients or move up within Oliver, more than if people were strictly working for Unilever? You’re right. I think from a talent, attraction and retention point of view, I could imagine people feeling more at home in an agency like U Studio or Oliver. Having said that, I must say that the churn of people is not that big, because for us, of course, it is very important to have people who really know our brands as well. In the digital space, there’s always so much happening, there’s so much room for development and learning, when you stay on the same client and the same brands, there’s lots to learn. You have 23 locations—21 U Studios and two centers of excellence. But right now, you really have hundreds of locations, because people are working from home. How does that make an in-house agency different now? If you think about the future of work, we will see that these roles, whenever it’s safe, again, for our people, these roles will continue to work in a hybrid way. We have obviously seen that we will use the office for different ways of working. So I’m thinking at this moment in time, we will come back two to three days a week to the office. But it won’t be 9-to-5 sitting-behind-your-desk kind of work. We will probably come back more for co-creation sessions, creative sections, strategic sessions, etc. Obviously, because U Studio works a lot in partnership with the brands, with the e-commerce players, I could envision that coming back to the office is quite important, but probably also not for all days. Planning for a post-COVID world must be particularly hard for Unilever given how different things are on a country-by-country basis? What we’re currently thinking is that the hybrid way of working will be the Unilever way of working. But obviously, it’s not only if you can keep your offices safe, but it’s also getting to the office. What about public transport of getting there? Do we expose people to risks that we think are reasonable? And what do you do with groups of people who are just afraid to be going out? But the pace of getting to activate that road map is very much determined by geography. Even within a country, India, it may differ by province. And you know, likewise, in the United States, there are huge differences from state to state.

Unilever’s chief marketer on lockdown, media reviews and running a sprawling in-house agency staffed by outsiders

Featured Stories