Assessment of Unilevers Interactive Marketing Activities - Case Study Example

Interactive Marketing Executive Summary This report is related to interactive marketing which is the latest trend and necessity of companies all over the world. It is important to relate with customers and form an emotional bond to trigger brand loyalty in the customers. Interaction is important to give a face to the usually faceless companies and the importance of developing corporate personality is all the more necessary. Unilever operating in the FMCG’s industry has been into interactive marketing since a long time and realized the importance of connecting with the consumers and customers. This assignment is an analysis of the issues involved in interactive marketing. The company chosen is considered to be practicing interactive marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) even before these terminologies came into being. Top Interactive Marketing Issues and Trends facing the Industry The industry of FMCG’s is essential and important to the consumers and producers both. Companies like Unilever who have a number of influential brands often disappear in the shadows of their own brands so enhancing the corporate personality is essential. Interactive marketing helps companies enhance their image in the eyes of the customers. The trends and issues faced by this industry are as follows: Corporate Personality: Since ages companies have gone faceless and never paid attention to the corporate personality. But now is the age of advanced communication and consumers are aware so companies have to relate with their customers emotionally. To relate and give a human face to the corporation it is important to maintain a corporate personality. Online Marketing: The internet has conquered the world and everything has been brought on the web. Interactive marketing is feasible over the web and business to consumer relationships can be developed via the web. E-commerce and E-business applications are essential for business-to-consumer relationship and also business-to-business relationships for companies. A number of software have been developed for interactive marketing. The CRM software is essential for companies to maintain business-to-consumer relationships and E-business applications like the Intranet and Extranet links via the web or the internet. Human Filtered Search: Companies in this industry are into customer relationship management and interactive marketing but such attempts can only be possible if the organization has substantial information of their customers. This information can be found over the internet. Contentcasting: This is the latest buzz in marketing and it helps to interact with the customers indirectly. This is when companies broadcast or put up content online and then spread it via word of mouth. Customers get to hear about it via the grapevine and they check out these blogs, podcasts or castings themselves. Contentcasting is enabled by Really Simple Syndication (RSS). The customers subscribe themselves to these feeds and automatically gain access to the information via the feed. Really Simple Syndication (RSS): This is the latest trend in interactive marketing and it eliminates the need to find and visit web pages to search. The customers subscribe to the RSS feed and any blogs, images, videos are sent to this feed so the customer does not need to search since they have access to it all and can choose to check out any of them. Online Identity Shifting: Individuals have two lives in today’s world; one is practically in the physical world and the other is online. All individuals have personalities and views to share online. Consumers discuss their favorite and worst products online and at times they serve as brand ambassadors for their favorite brands by advertising the product via word of mouth. Mobile communication: The world is growing to be digital more than ever and mobile phones are now the most popular device and companies are moving towards purchasing through mobile phones. Airline tickets can be bough via cell phones now and many other things. Unilever itself has also made an attempt to sell via mobile phones. Online Media Marketplace Changes: The trend of cost-per-click, cost-per-lead and cost-per-action has become common. These help in identifying potential and actual customers. Customers often see the ad and visit the site but buy later via the web. CMAT: This is customer management assessment tool that is a software which helps to manage the customers effectively. CMAT is essential and important for interactive marketing. It is being used by all companies from various industries. This illustrates the details of CMAT. Assessment of Unilever’s current interactive marketing activities The interactive marketing activities for Unilever can be divided into two heads; interactive marketing for consumers (who consume the final product) and interactive marketing for customers (who help to sell the final product to the consumers). Interactive marketing for consumers The company has been involved in online advertising through msn.com and the strategic alliance between the two companies has yielded effective results. They have been advertising online via the msn’s website in Germany, France and the UK. This has given them a good base for online advertising and interactive marketing in Europe. Unilever has placed banners, advertisements and interactive displays on the website. Unilever is also the sponsor for Womencentral channel on msn.com. Unilever and Microsoft have had a good strategic relationship since 1998 that helped promote Unilever brands and products via the internet. Unilever is serious about their involvement in interactive marketing and consider it important since they have a separate department called “Interactive Brand and Customer Centre” (IBCC). Unilever has made it clear that interactive marketing and communication strategies are a vital part of their marketing plan for brands in Europe. Their extension of the agreement with Microsoft to advertise in Europe will be essential to the success of the communication strategies in the continent. Msn helps Unilever target the exact and right market that the company aims to focus on and also that Msn has been working with IBCC to devise successful interactive communication campaigns and strategies to attract and acquire the right target market. Unilever has an interactive brand centre in New York and another in Singapore and the two work in collaboration with IBCC in Europe to develop effective interactive marketing and communication campaigns for all the brands at Unilever. Unilever was quick to adapt interactive marketing and online advertising which turned out to be profitable for the company. Through their advertisements they have always supported the right cause and the social issues or even health issues. Unilever has always made sure that their consumer goods are beneficial for people and they feel that through advertisement they can connect with consumers and provide them what their need or solve their issues. For e.g. they held an interactive campaign for Dove that was named “Real Beauty” and this is what women need and the campaign removed the stereotypes about beauty which helped many women gain self confidence and also that it was a ray of hope for women who think that they are not beautiful. Dove has been targeted to women and Unilever formulated an interactive marketing campaign to get close to their consumers and relate with them to help them achieve that they desire. Unilever has always made sure that their products are available and affordable by all. This in indirect interaction with the consumer that shows the company is responsible and cares for its consumers. For e.g. in India Unilever manufactures Pepsodent 30g tube for only Rs6. This tube can be used by a family of five members who can brush with it once everyday for ten days. Consumer safety is essential to the company and their Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) handles these issues. In 2006 Unilever called back 12 times the products that had already been floated in the market since they were not assured by SEAC and could pose a possible health risk. Unilever does not test its products on animals which is interaction with the consumers indirectly since people who support the cause would support Unilever as well. It shows the company cares for the consumers and their sentiments so makes sure that they do nothing that might offend the consumers. The company spends €3 million every year to develop alternatives for testing on anything else but animals. Unilever formed a new independent company in an alliance with iVillage Inc. This company will be specifically for women and will provide interactive services online to women regarding personal care products and tips. This company will be independent of Unilever and iVillage. Interactive marketing for customers Unilever’s customers are usually the retailers, wholesalers, distributors, small outlets and kiosks. Unilever has taken substantial steps to make sure that their company is the first choice for their customers and consumers. Unilever has been involved in developing customer management teams on the national, regional and international level that will work to enhance relationships with customers. Through these teams and activities they add value to their products and also their relationship with their customers. This approach has resulted in a boost in sales already. Unilever aims to work in the best interests of their customers and their company as well. They try to manufacture and sell products that will be profitable for their customers and for the company as well. For e.g. in France they sold their new detergent skip through a retailer “Carrefour.” Unilever manufactured skip in a bottle that is comparatively smaller so it saves 57% cost on packaging, 60% on transporting product pallets and also 60% for the outer packaging that is borne by the retailer. This reduced the price and cost of manufacturing and selling the product for Unilever and the retailer. This way the retailer preferred Unilever over other FMCG’s. In developing or emerging economies Unilever helps its customers to reach their consumers effectively since they work in partnership with these customers. They help their customers to become more efficient and competitive in the market. Unilever’s customer management teams do all this work in the market. For e.g. In China Unilever has been working with Wal-Mart and have given them increased amount of sales. They started a recycling program in stores and consumers had to throw the packaging of used Unilever products in branded Unilever and Wal-Mart dustbins. This increased sales for Lux and OMO immensely. Unilever works with its customers to benefit them and the company simultaneously. Unilever still has to improve its customer development teams and also other teams that work with different departments like finance, supply chain & logistics and human resources. Unilever has a thorough acquisition strategy. The company aims to acquire especially those companies to which its manufacturing processes are usually outsourced. Unilever follows all laws and rules so it never tries to acquire recklessly. But the company does aim to acquire in order to control all its manufacturing processes. Unilever made an attempt to acquire Codepar S.A and SPCD S.A in Tunisia but all within legal boundaries. Unilever has made many acquisitions and sold of some as well but they have done it all within the legal boundaries making sure not to hurt anyone. This gives a good impression on their customers since Unilever might think of acquiring one of them as well but they know that it would turn out to be good for all. Unilever has somewhat been involved in a Catalyst theory approach to interactive marketing that uses the traditional animated banners, online advertisement (Unilever and Microsoft) , advertisement via e-mail, Viral marketing campaigns, rich media advertisement using flash and sponsorships. Recommendations for practice within 6 months Unilever has prioritized the issue of upgrading their customer management teams. Since such activities take time so we can break the process in to steps. In the first six months the company should be able to at least upgrade the skills of their teams. The company can train the team members through workshops and courses. These will help to improve the general skills of the team members in handling various issues. The software development will take time to adapt to and 6 months won’t be enough for their implementation. During the 6 months the team can develop on its problem handling skills, team skills, skills to effectively work in a team and also skills to innovate and enhance relationships with the customers. Recommendations for practice within 1 year Unilever shall be able to upgrade its customers within 6 months and then within a year they should be able to plan the entire process of how to improve the teams and management of customers to take it to the next level. Frame customer management planning can help the company to carve out a proper plan in order to avoid any failures or losses due to wrong planning. This method provides a frame of questions to base the plan on in order to analyze and evaluate the situation. First, the company will need to consider its current capabilities to manage customers. Unilever is doing well but it simply needs to upgrade its teams. The best practice or methodology that the company thinks will work for them should be considered, analyzed and evaluated. The company needs to have a clear focus of the situation and position of the company in the future because then only the right strategy can be devised and implemented successfully. The scale of change that the company must achieve must also be considered since then only the change required can be analyzed critically. The feasibility of this change must be taken into account and evaluated to avoid any problems for the company. The capabilities that are required to achieve the desired outcome must be considered and attended to since they must be acquired. The start and the order of all things have to be decided beforehand to achieve the desired results. If the desired outcome requires some sort of dependency on others then it should analyzed and evaluated in order to avoid any unnecessary hindrances. The internal resources that will be required must be analyzed in order to avoid problems. The cost of the entire process shall be taken into account. The benefits that can be expected must be foreseen by the company in order to benchmark performance. This planning will have to devise the right strategy and plan to achieve the desired results. Recommendations for practice within 3 years Unilever should be able to implement CMAT which is customer management assessment tool in order to upgrade their customer management teams. CMAT provides tools and methods to set standards to objectively and effectively manage customers. It is a model that helps organizations evaluate their performance in managing relationships with customers. It is a set of methodologies and tools that also comes with supporting software and a knowledge library. This library has examples of 700 assessments that had actually been carried out in five continents. These serve as standards and benchmarks for organizations to achieve their desired performance in effectively managing their customers. CMAT helps enhance customer relationship management since it has set criteria of analyzing and evaluating the customer management of the company. An evaluation is essential for companies because then only they will be able to learn where they lack and exactly where improvement is required. Bibliography Trends and issues in interactive marketing Available from < http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/12/top_7_marketing.html> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Trends and issues in interactive marketing Available from < http://chiefmarketer.com/Channels/online/interactive_marketing_trends_08252006/> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Unilever’s interactive marketing activities (with Microsoft) Available from < http://www.unilever.com/ourcompany/newsandmedia/pressreleases/2000/microsoft.asp> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Unilever and iVillage Available from < http://www.unilever.com/ourcompany/newsandmedia/pressreleases/2000/ivillage.asp> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Consumers of Unilever Available from < http://www.unilever.com/ourvalues/environment-society/sus-dev-report/consumers/?linkid=navigation> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Customers of Unilever Available from < http://www.unilever.com/ourvalues/environment-society/sus-dev-report/customers/?linkid=navigation> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Catalyst Theory approach Available from < http://www.catalysttheory.com/expertise/imarketing.htm> [Accessed February 28, 2008] CMAT Available from [Accessed February 28, 2008] CMAT model Available from [Accessed February 28, 2008] FRAME customer management planning Available from < http://www.qci.co.uk/public_face/Content/FRAME%20from%20QCi.pdf> [Accessed February 28, 2008] Read More