Unilever commits further to ‘vitality’ brand positioning

Unilever will continue to place “vitality” at the heart of all its brand positionings, according to its president for home and personal care.

In a speech at the company’s Vitality for Growth conference in Barcelona this week, Ralph Kugler underlined the packaged goods giant’s commitment to vitality positioning across all of its product categories.

Kugler also announced a global partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme and a global labelling system to be rolled out across all its food and beverage brands designed to allowing consumers to compare nutritional information more easily.

In a speech that focused on growth of the “vitality” market, Kugler told the conference that the “healthy options” segment of the global food and beverages market was worth â¬253bn (&£172bn) in 2005 and was expected to grow by 7% annually until 2012.

He said: “There is a vitality space in each of the categories in home and foods in which we operate and we are determined to be a leading player in all of them. That is why vitality is so important to us and at the heart of our business strategy today.”

Kugler said that Unilever spent the majority of its &£1bn annual research and development budget on vitality-driven innovation and stressed that all home and personal care brands had an emotional well-being message.

He added that the challenge would be to emulate the success of vitality positioning of its key brands such as Knorr Vie, the fruit and vegetable shot drink containing 50% of recommended daily amounts of fruit vegetables, and Dove, with its Campaign for Real Beauty, developed by Ogilvy & Mather.