Old and Improved: Relationships That Last for a Century (Advertising Age)

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- JWT has been on Unilever's roster since 1902, back when William Hesketh Lever was making soap and James Walter Thompson was making ads. But that's not Unilever's oldest relationship -- its work with Lowe & Partners and predecessors dates to 1899.

Flash forward: Unilever, the world's second-largest ad spender, in 2010 was named Advertiser of the Year at Cannes. Keith Weed, Unilever's chief marketing and communications officer, credits these long-term relationships as "part of our success."

In a world where relationship status may be as fleeting as a Facebook fling, lasting partnerships can and do produce winning work.

Unilever is not alone in cultivating remarkably long relationships. Among the world's four largest advertisers, three firms -- Procter & Gamble Co., Unilever and General Motors Co. -- have relationships with major agencies dating to 1922 or earlier.

Here's a look at some of the industry's longest-lived marriages -- relationships that have lasted through mergers, recessions, bankruptcies, management upheaval and the emergence of new media from radio to TV to digital.

UNILEVER/LOWE & PARTNERS, 1899; UNILEVER/JWT, 1902

Unilever's oldest relationship began with Lever Brothers' 1899 formation of an in-house agency, which evolved into standalone agency Lintas (Lever International Advertising Service). It later became part of Lowe.

Unilever and its agencies take nothing for granted. "The day that we think we have a relationship with Unilever because we always have [had one] is the day we will be in trouble," Tony Wright, Lowe's chairman, is quick to note.

Jagdip Bakshi, JWT's global business director on Unilever, said the marketer has "perhaps the most evolved appraisal system in [the] industry," with a six-month appraisal update and "watershed annual appraisal."

"The appraisal is not just one way," Mr. Bakshi said. "The agency does a reverse appraisal of the client, which is taken very seriously. This sets up a system of checks and balances where both sides have very high stakes in investing in the work and the relationship."

A common thread Ad Age heard in discussions with century-long client-agency partners is that trust and understanding lead to better work.

"What we're trying to do is create advertising that has creativity and innovation on one side," said Unilever's Mr. Weed, "and effectiveness and efficiencies on the other. ... You get the best creativity where there's a level of trust." Mr. Weed added: "You get much-better-quality advice from somebody who knows you well than somebody who doesn't know you well."

Mr. Wright said Lowe's Unilever team includes a diverse mix of account veterans and newer members, ensuring a balance of client knowledge and fresh perspective. What if things aren't working out? Then it may be time to change the people on the agency side or client side, Mr. Weed said, since that is less disruptive than changing an agency.

Unilever does have the ability to shift accounts among its roster of agency companies and networks.

Mr. Weed sees a downside to opening up formal agency reviews. "Pitches are very risky things," he said, because a new agency will put its best foot forward in a review, but might not be able to deliver. "Who's to say the next pasture is greener?"

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO./BBDO WORLDWIDE, 1920

When BBDO landed General Electric Co. as a client in 1920, radio was new media: The previous year GE had helped form Radio Corp. of America, which went on to launch National Broadcasting Co. Today, BBDO promotes GE with iPhone ads.

GE is a company that never stops reinventing itself -- unloading the toaster division, entering and exiting plastics, buying back RCA and NBC in 1986 and then selling control of NBC in 2011.

Through all the change, BBDO has been a constant: GE has not reviewed the account since hiring the agency.

Paradoxically, this relationship -- and other relationships discussed in this story -- have lasted so long in part because the marketers and agencies have changed so much. Companies and relationships must evolve if they are to survive. John Osborn, president-CEO of BBDO, New York, said GE's focus on innovation means there is never a finish line and no chance for complacency.

"It's the combination of knowing our business, understanding our culture but also not being us -- having an outsider's perspective -- that is incredibly valuable," said Judy Hu, GE's global executive director of advertising and branding.

Don Schneider, executive creative director at BBDO, New York, said the relationship is based on mutual respect built over time.

Ms. Hu said GE has stayed with BBDO because of the strength of its work. She added: "If I didn't think that the agency was the best, I would have no qualms about changing in a second."

FORD MOTOR CO./TEAM DETROIT, 1910-1912; 1943 TO PRESENT

Henry Ford employed J. Walter Thompson to sell Model Ts more than a century ago, but that relationship did not last. The automaker rehired JWT in 1943 with good intent ("We trust that the arrangement we made will prove to be mutually satisfactory") but also a caveat ("Ford Motor Co. may at any time terminate the arrangement").

For the past 68 years, Ford has stuck with JWT -- and now a broader WPP agency called Team Detroit -- in good times and bad. Times are good again: Ad Age named Ford its 2010 Marketer of the Year, cars are selling, and 2010 profits were the highest in more than a decade. Team Detroit made Ad Age's 2011 A-List of successful agencies.

WPP created Team Detroit in 2006 as a joint venture of five Ford agencies -- JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, Y&R, Wunderman, Mindshare -- WPP had amassed over the years. WPP last year set up a similar Ford agency in Europe (Blue Hive) and is preparing to open Ford hubs in Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

Team Detroit President-CEO George Rogers said the concept of a Ford-focused agency was partly about efficiency, but Team Detroit's structure, and common P&L, also means the agency is "100% agnostic" about specific marketing-communications services and media -- TV, social media -- so it can recommend whatever makes sense. "Our business model is perfectly suited for this different, real transformation" going on in communications, he said.

Team Detroit still works for a family company. Henry Ford hired JWT in 1910 and, late in life, in 1943. His great-great granddaughter, Elena Ford, is responsible for implementing Ford's marketing vision globally including the launch of the 2012 Ford Focus. Ford is "not an anonymous name on a logo," Mr. Rogers said.

Team Detroit could hardly be closer to its client: The agency office is across the street from world headquarters, and the landlord is Ford. Said Mr. Rogers: "We have a very long-term lease."

SUNKIST/DRAFTFCB, 1907

How well does DraftFCB know Sunkist? Don Belding, the B in DraftFCB, was account manager on Sunkist at FCB predecessor shop Lord & Thomas. The agency in 1908 coined the brand name "Sunkist" for its client, the California Fruit Growers Exchange. DraftFCB today acts as a sort of global outsourced marketing department, pitching in on everything from trade shows to sales calls on major retailers.

"It's almost as if they are an extension of our marketing," said Leland Wong, director of marketing at Sunkist Growers. DraftFCB is its agency of record in North America, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

The citrus-growers cooperative, with about 100 employees at its suburban Los Angeles headquarters, is a lean but very global marketer. It draws on the agency network's resources including research, promotional services and translating marketing programs across cultures and languages. Integrated marketing -- the idea behind Interpublic's 2006 merger of ad agency FCB and marketing-services shop Draft -- fits neatly with Sunkist's needs.

Hilary Hamer, DraftFCB senior VP-group management director, said the agency keeps the relationship fresh by adapting to Sunkist's changing needs. For example, the agency is helping launch a retailer-specific marketing program in Japan, with plans to roll out the program to other markets in Asia.

DraftFCB can't take Sunkist for granted. Mr. Wong noted any relationship, whether it be social or business, is tested every day. Sunkist put the account up for review in 1999. The agency kept the business.

How to keep a marriage going? Consider a memo from Fairfax Cone (the C in DraftFCB) in 1967 on the 60th anniversary of the Sunkist relationship:

"Wise advertisers and wise advertising agencies watch for any sign of dissatisfaction, or misunderstanding, on either side, and seek to remedy the trouble by whatever means are necessary. Usually, the difficulty is no more than a matter of incompatibility between certain members of the association, and the shift of one or two of these heals the rift and preserves the marriage that would otherwise flounder and break up."

EXXONMOBIL/MCCANN ERICKSON, 1912

This relationship is 99 years old, but whether it gets to the century mark is up to ExxonMobil.

The world's largest oil company last fall began a review of global advertising, media and marketing-services accounts, now split among three holding companies: Interpublic (McCann Erickson), Omnicom (DDB, which won Mobil in 1964) and Havas (Euro RSCG, which handles corporate ads). The company didn't respond to a request for comment on the McCann relationship.

It all started when Harrison King McCann joined Standard Oil as head of the advertising department. He hadn't been there long when the Supreme Court in 1911 ordered the breakup of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil empire. Mr. McCann left to open an agency to work for all the newly separated companies. Over time, all oil clients except Jersey Standard (later Exxon) moved to other agencies. H.K. McCann Co. merged with Erickson Co. in 1930.

After Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999, McCann faced off against Mobil's agency, DDB. McCann won the lubricants business (such as Mobil 1); DDB landed the fuels account.

Lee Johnson, McCann's worldwide account director on ExxonMobil, said the agency benefits from its vast institutional knowledge about the client. "McCann Erickson has a very deep empathy with and understanding of the culture of the ExxonMobil company," he said. "To a certain extent, our cultures grew up together."

Mr. Johnson said ExxonMobil values long-term relationships, but he emphasizes McCann should be judged by the quality of work it's doing now. "No one is employing you or keeping you based on history," he said.

In a 1958 Ad Age interview, Harry McCann looked back at the 1912 start of his agency. "We had only newspapers and magazines then. We had no radio or television. Clients did some of their own advertising, and we did some. Today clients are demanding more and more services -- and justifiably."

French Connection and Dove start selling on Facebook (Marketing Week)

French Connection and Dove are the latest brands to let customers buy via Facebook as the social network continues to drive take-up of social commerce.

Fashion brand French Connection is to launch a Facebook store at the end of the month that will allow followers of the clothing retailer’s page to buy items directly from its news feed.

FMCG giant Unilever has also unveiled an ecommerce offering, powered by Amazon, on the US Facebook page for its beauty brand Dove, with a global rollout to follow later this year.

They join fashion brands ASOS and Young British Designers – both of which launched fully transactional Facebook stores last month – as being among the first companies to sell directly to Facebook’s 30m UK users.

French Connection’s store, which will stock a selection of its most popular items, follows last year’s launch of YouTique, its pioneering YouTube store.

It worked with US social commerce firm Milyoni and UK social media agency Punktillio to create the Facebook store, with the former’s platform offering the ability to shop within the news feed.

French Connection’s digital director Jennifer Roebuck said this set it apart from ASOS’s store on the network because people are less likely to actively hunt out brand pages, despite being fans of them.

“I’m a fan of about 300 things on Facebook but I don’t go to their pages proactively, I wait for them to come to me,” she said . “People need to be reminded about a brand.”

But she warned that brands selling via such methods must be careful not to spam fans. “They need to keep posts to a minimum,” she said. “Facebook will become similar to email in that you need to keep it interesting and engaging. You don’t want people to start unsubscribing.”

Sharmita Saha, head of business development and social commerce at Punktillio, said US brands selling within the news feed “positively affects the order rate by four times, compared with going to an external ecommerce site”.

Dove’s Facebook store mirrors that of Max Factor, owned by rival FMCG giant Procter & Gamble, which lets people search for products and add them to a shopping basket in the social network before being directed to Amazon to check-out.

Marshall Manson, EMEA MD of digital at Unilever’s PR agency Edelman, which manages social media activity for Dove, said brands such as Dove, which don’t have the back-end ecommerce platform that ASOS or French Connection do, will increasingly work with third parties, such as Amazon, to help them enter the social commerce space.

“It makes sense to allow users to move directly from a social word-of-mouth recommendation, or from information a brand has shared, to purchase,” said Manson. “From a measurement perspective, it makes it easier for us to connect social activity with business values.”

Some brands are already tracking the sales driven by social media. Tesco Clothing has generated over £2m in sales in the past year as a result of its UK Facebook page.

Tesco worked with social media agency We Are Social to open up its clothing brand to a new audience online, one that wouldn’t usually shop for clothes in a supermarket.

It has tracked its activity on Facebook using vouchers, finding that a campaign called Friday Frenzy resulted in more sales in two hours than it would usually get in a week.

Despite this success, Tesco Clothing online marketing manager Rochelle Symons said launching a social network store was too much of an investment for the brand.

“It’s something we’re considering, and we’ve looked at what ASOS is doing,” she said. “But our budget isn’t enough to build it from scratch.”

Robin Grant, MD of We Are Social, said, “The jury is out for most brands because there isn’t enough data at the moment. It’s an extremely big investment for most brands to make without it being proven.

“With Tesco Clothing we built an engaged community,” he added. “If you can have a conversation with customers, sales will follow. It’s an indirect way of gaining sales, not direct response. It’s about building up the brand, which results in sales in the same way that TV does.”

Research suggests only a small percentage of brands and retailers are starting to experiment with social commerce. Ecommerce company One Iota surveyed all the brands in the IMRG/Hitwise Top 100 and found that, despite 65% having a fan page, only 4% had integrated a shopping function within them. Until ASOS, none allowed users to purchase within the Facebook environment.

Last July, Ebay, one of the world’s biggest ecommerce brands, told New Media Age that the UK market isn’t yet mature enough for social commerce.

Phillip Rinn, director of advertising partnerships at Ebay UK, said British consumers aren’t ready for social commerce, with the auction site instead testing ways in which social media more broadly could fit into a transactional website.

This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk

Lux named world's best-selling soap bar

Unilever’s iconic Lux soap brand has been named the most popular soap bar in the world, according to a major survey.

Historic roll callThe latest figures from market research company ACNielsen place Lux as the globe’s top-selling soap bar, with fellow Unilever brands Dove in second place and Lifebuoy coming fifth in the poll.

Since its launch in 1924, Lux has been endorsed by some of the world’s most beautiful women, with stars including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Brigitte Bardot appearing in some of its early advertising. In more recent years, celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Catherine Zeta Jones and Jennifer Lopez have also fronted Lux campaigns.

Reinventing an iconLong-established as an affordable, luxurious soap brand, Lux has retained its unrivalled popularity by continuing to evolve, embracing consumer trends for new sensual fragrances, colours and textures.

“We have to keep reinventing Lux – just like any beauty icon ­– to ensure we stay at number one,” explains Lux Global Vice President Sze Tian-Poh.

“We are bringing glamour into the world of the Lux consumer by provoking the senses – sight, smell and touch – like never before,” adds Lux Global Brand Director Pilar Calderon. “We want to strengthen the bond with current users while getting lapsed users to reappraise the brand.”

Five steps towards authentic sustainability communications (Guardian Sustainable Business)

In a world of mind-boggling complexity, convoluted interdependencies and interconnectedness it is often hard to know where to begin on developing communications for your business around sustainability. Below I've outlined the key steps of a journey that you can follow to develop campaigns with both credibility and authenticity.

Understand your 'Why?' It is amazing how easily businesses lose sight of their raison d'etre, their purpose. All too often they become utterly distracted by their 'what' – the product or service they provide. Perhaps one of the first fundamental questions we must ask ourselves at the start of any communications process is 'what is our why?'. This may sound like management-speak gobbleydegook, but it's actually your 'why' that people and ultimately customers are interested in, so it's vital that you understand it yourself in order to share it effectively and more widely. There's a great TED talk on The Golden Circles of why, how and what by Simon Sinek.

Know how far you want to go Do you want your business to be bleeding-edge, leading edge, a cautious follower or a lazy-ass foot-dragging recalcitrant in progressing towards sustainability? It's important to be realistic about the scale of your ambition - are you really going 'beyond petroleum'? Much as we'd all like to not everyone can do a Plan A like M&S and take an authentic step forward to lead debate and become an integrated, trusted and compelling sustainability brand. But that's OK. Knowing thyself and how far you can go over time will ensure you don't end up on wild flights of hopelessly improbable sustainability fantasy. Without doubt these will get you into all sorts of trouble.

Create yourself a vision What is your business going to look like as you plough that long hard muddy furrow to a more sustainable future? What do you hope to practically achieve? At Futerra we've long advocated the power of sizzling visions of a positive sustainable future, for as the slightly hoary old hotdog-flogging saying goes 'When selling the sausage, if you're not selling the 'sizzle', the sound, aroma and sense of anticipation, you're (literally) selling a dead pig'. A great way of galvanising your business around a vision is the crafting of a 'Big Hairy Audacious Goal' (BHAG) that excites, challenges and also scares people (just a little) in the scale and scope of its aspiration. The most famous BHAG of all time was President John F Kennedy's commitment to 'Put a man on the moon by the end of the decade', at which point most of NASA probably spat the dummy and thought 'how in the hell are we going to do that?!'. But they did it. And with less computing power than a modern washing machine. That's the power of a great BHAG. A good recent example of a powerful BHAG is the launch of Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan their stated intention to 'halve the environmental footprint of our products by 2020' is certainly hirsute and daring. Of course they've yet to clarify all the details of how it will be practically achieved – but the point is the grand ambition will now drive both efficiency and innovation right across the business.

Do something Communications are only as credible as the substantive, tangible initiatives that underpin them. Without these activities delivering real change you are putting yourself on an inexorable path to greenwashing. A CSR report is not an action in itself, though the objective, independent audit of business performance and impact they provide is crucial. Nor is a rebrand or a flowery new green logo enough, mentioning no names. Your change programme should embrace both good housekeeping and your core business, or it's simply window dressing whilst stocking the same old same old on the shelves inside the shop.

Communicate honestly So you know your 'why', you've decided how far you want to go, and you've drafted a compelling vision or something slightly bigger, hairier and altogether more audacious, and begun the implementation of your internal sustainability initiatives that will ultimately transform your business. So now you're ready to communicate openly, honestly and with authenticity. And you don't have to broadcast it.Communication via social media is an amazing opportunity to share your aims, experiences and achievements as the values on which it's built: transparency, ethics, innovation and collaboration, align well with those of sustainability itself. Engage your audiences in genuine dialogue and they will tell your authentic story for you. Of course if you want the ultimate advice on how to manage your brand image online then you could do worse than take the advice of Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales: 'Make stuff that doesn't suck'.

Ed Gillespie is Co-Founder of Futerra Sustainability Communications and tweets via @frucool

Unilever learns a viral lesson from P&G (Brand Republic)

When the chief marketing officer at Unilever (aka the world’s second biggest advertiser) speaks, we are obliged to listen. Indeed, Keith Weed doesn’t disappoint in our inaugural CMO Strategy interview as he makes a startling admission.

I’m not talking about Weed’s revelation that measuring social media’s ROI is ‘a big issue’ for Unilever, or that technology’s impact on marketing is so acute he felt the need to take a delegation of Unilever marketers on a Silicon Valley fact-finding mission last year. (Diageo marketers did exactly the same thing in 2010; hotel rooms in Palo Alto must be at a premium.)

But when Weed says he is ‘inspired’ by Old Spice’s The best your man could smell like’ campaign, from the house of arch rival Procter & Gamble, we know we have reached a new level in the battle for compelling content.

Yet what exactly does ‘content’ mean? The ASA is grappling with this issue as it seeks to police marketing claims on websites. Meanwhile Yahoo believes its content - footie highlights, user-friendly financial updates etc - is now its USP.

For the lazy marketer, content could mean plonking TV ads on YouTube, hoping for the free-media viral effect. Wasn’t Old Spice the most viral of ads in 2010?

It was, but what made Old Spice so viral is not just that it is human, but distinctive, memorable, and above all, funny and therefore the kind of content you want to share.

As Weed acknowledges, if content is treated as a cheap alternative to conventional advertising, it will remain passive and dull. On the other hand, if it captures our imaginations, it has the power of PR, but with the consumer as reporter and editor.

And with that kind of PR comes fame - and therefore, fortune.

Unilever's Top Global Media Executive Klauberg to Exit (Advertising Age)

Unilever's top global media executive, Laura Klauberg, will leave the company March 31 to return to the U.S. and pursue other interests, the company said today.

Ms. Klauberg, 55, who became senior VP-global media in 2007, led a global media review for the world's largest advertiser that early last year split duties in major markets between WPP's Mindshare, which handles the U.S., and Omnicom Media Group.

She'll take a short break before pursuing other opportunities, the company said in a statement. A successor hasn't yet been named.

Unilever has seen considerable change in the ranks of its top marketers in recent years since Procter & Gamble Co. and Nestle veteran Paul Polman became CEO in 2008, though most key positions have been filled from the ranks of Unilever rather than outside. Last year, Keith Weed succeeded Simon Clift as chief marketing officer, and Silvia Lagnado, who led the globalization of the Dove brand and later became exec VP-savory products, became chief marketing officer of Bacardi.

Ms. Klauberg couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

In a statement, Unilever credited her with growing investment in media innovation, such as developing branded content with media companies, new mobile applications, online video content, digital out-of-home and leverage of social media and other new digital platforms.

Ms. Klauberg rose through Unilever's U.S. personal-care business, joining through the Chesebrough-Ponds acquisition in the 1990s and ultimately becoming senior VP-marketing for the company's former prestige personal-care business, including Calvin Klein. She became VP-media for North America in 2005 and added Latin American media to her oversight last year.

Unilever reported $.7.2 billion in advertising and promotion spending in 2009 and $6.5 billion through the first three quarters of 2010 as the company sharply stepped up spending globally along with most competitors.

Marketers told to prepare for “game changing” digital shifts (Marketing Week)

Customer engagement through digital channels and platforms such as tablet computers is crucial for advertisers, top marketers have said at a conference on the future of the industry.

The Guardian’s Changing Advertising Summit in London in October heard that the mobile web will be particularly influential, given recent predictions that it would outstrip desktop internet use by 2014.

Unilever CMO Keith Weed indicated a need to treat digital and mobile channels with the same level of commitment as traditional media, pointing out that there are now more mobile phones than toilets in India.

“Companies like ours are all over television. Are we all over the digital space?” he said, adding that increasing digitalisation and globalisation of consumer markets has contributed to a revolution in media advertising.

Watch Weed at Change Advertising Summit 2010.

Ben Hughes, global commercial director and deputy CEO of the Financial Times, told delegates that 10% of new digital subscriptions to the newspaper’s content have come through its iPad app.

The app has had over 400,000 downloads since its launch in May this year, he adds.

“Those that do not yet believe the iPad is a game-changer need to think again,” he says.

The growth of campaigns across multiple marketing channels, he continues, means that integration needs to be “more than a catchphrase”.

Print also plays its part in this, with the FT’s strategy involving new print products as well as extending the reach of existing ones.

“Media owners need to be platform-agnostic and provide content to all channels where their customers consume it,” he says.

Facebook vice president (EMEA) Joanna Shields told the summit that social media will also replace some areas of traditional advertising,

She pointed out that more people are connecting with brands this way than via companies own websites, telling marketers: “With the money you save by not running a campaign on television, you need to hire a few people to take the pulse on Facebook.”