Profile: Unilever CMO Simon Clift

In a modest office within Unilever’s giant neoclassical headquarters at Blackfriars Bridge, the company’s first full-time chief marketing officer, Simon Clift (pictured), is in an ebullient mood.

“I had CMO on my card before,” says Clift, who took up the role in 2005. “But because I was also running personal care, it got relegated to a Friday afternoon.” “And,” he quips, “I’m never in on a Friday.”

Luckily, Clift relinquished his role as vice-president of personal care last year and now controls full-time the marketing of a business worth €40bn (£35.6bn) and active in 150 countries.

His corner office location allows him direct access to ranks of staff sitting in an open plan workspace that overlooks a vast atrium with steel and glass footbridges. The ultramodern interior of Unilever House contrasts starkly with its historic exterior; it’s a fitting physical manifestation for a traditional company that has been undergoing its own parallel transformation over recent years.

Unilever has spent several years implementing a radical root and branch restructure, called “One Unilever”, effectively uniting dozens of individual companies under one standardised operation.

Kicked off in earnest in 2005 by recently departed chief executive Patrick Cescau, the company ditched underperforming brands, sold off the frozen foods business and streamlined operations with the loss of 49,000 jobs. “The cancer in Unilever was the complexity and complexity means cost,” says Clift.

Clift, whose diverse portfolio of products includes Dove, Lynx, Sunsilk, Flora, Knorr, PG Tips and Persil, is playing a central role in the company’s transformation. He reports to recently joined chief executive Paul Polman, the former Nestlé and Procter & Gamble executive.

After overseeing some of the most high-profile marketing of the past few years for the Dove and Lynx personal care brands, Clift is now aiming to work his magic across the foods portfolio.

Looking back to the future

“Our business was built by pioneering young men going out on ships from Liverpool or Rotterdam and building a business and sending back a cheque once a year,” he reveals, conscious of the move from the past to the future.

“Unilever was effectively a holding company – a conglomerate. That led to a very complex brand portfolio, with thousands of formulations, positionings, and ways of developing advertising.”

Clift must now find a way of converging marketing across the entire Unilever business. Over the past three years the company has been building a suite of marketing tools drawn from the best practice from its disparate business units. This, Clift notes with an ironic smile, is “something of a challenge”.

Essentially, the marketing apparatus for each brand is split into two divisions – brand development and brand building. The first element involves the brand development team devising a global strategy for each brand, including innovation. A package of recommendations, called a “think big pack”, is then created, usually in conjunction with two key countries.

This is then sent to the brand building teams within each country and they “make it happen” within local markets. Despite this centralised process, Clift denies it creates a bland message.

He proffers Persil’s successful global “Dirt is Good” advertising, which appeals to mothers in each country where it appears, as an example. “Our experience is that you get better insights in this way because really motivating insights tend to be based on universal truths.” 

Clift concedes that global concepts need to be interpreted and adapted for different regions but says that there has to be a “trade-off between leveraging the scale of Unilever and ensuring the strategy is attuned to local consumers. Because what will certainly happen if it’s left to every country is we will have 150 different versions.”

He goes further, suggesting that centralising marketing culture for Unilever means that the best ideas can thrive, regardless of where they are developed. “He who briefs, decides,” he states.

While Clift might use this mantra, there is no question who is boss. He may devolve power to his global vice-presidents for certain brands, such as Persil’s Aline Santos, but those in the broader management structure are expected to fall in line.

He explains that while Vindi Banga, president of foods, home and personal care, is “line responsible” for the content of advertising, it is those immersed in the brand at a global level, like Santos, who really call the marketing shots.

He notes that Banga’s comments can only really be “helpful asides” but adds that Banga himself “believes absolutely” in this policy.

“Our job is putting people like Santos in charge of our global brands, and that’s what makes the difference. In the end, its not actually the process, it’s the calibre of people,” he explains.

Which begs the question, does all this global standardisation not make for a dull life for the local marketers – the brand builders on the ground?

“Far from it,” Clift retorts. “In fact, the opposite is true. For those brands where we’ve got the central positioning sorted out, where we’ve done the painful process of harmonisation and are moving on to the stage of implementation in local markets, there is a wonderful flourishing of creativity.”

To demonstrate this point, Clift chuckles while showing off a set of amusing mobile phone applications, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty with the UK marketers – or brand builders – for male grooming brand Lynx (marketed as Axe in other regions). 

Clift, clearly delighted by the work, says: “I would never have been able to come up with something like that working on my own in a local market; I’d have been too busy worrying about fragrances, packaging and theme advertising. Far from preventing local creativity, it creates the space for them to do that.”

Future work

While no one would deny that Clift’s flagship brands such as Lynx and Dove have produced some compelling and creative local marketing, the process is certainly less well-developed over other brands. Clift’s ultimate goal as CMO is to extend the process across all Unilever products.

For someone who has been at Unilever 27 years and is in the process of carrying out such corporate manoeuvring, Clift is surprised to hear he is described by some of his peers as a “maverick”. He protests that he is a classic establishment marketer, despite a willingness to make decisions that go against the corporate grain.

One such decision was Clift’s now famous move to appoint the then unproven BBH in 1995 to handle the Lynx/Axe business, deviating from the Unilever agency roster. Another example is provided by Santos, who claims that Clift made it possible for her to resegment the hair care product range in Brazil, bypassing normal procedures. She says the success of this became a defining moment in her career.

“I think it’s fair to say that great leadership is about making space for people who are better than yourself,” Clift reflects. 

“I’ve met housewives in Brazil, holding their families together on £120 a week, who spend a third of their household budget on hair products by Unilever. In a focus group, I asked one woman why she spent so much on them and she replied simply: ’Because my hair is the most beautiful thing I own.’ It’s very humbling as a marketer.”

“The high points of my career have been where I’ve made space for talented people to push the boat out a bit. If that constitutes a maverick, then we need lots more mavericks.”

This commitment to his colleagues means that for Santos and others, Clift has been inspirational. Off the record, one observer expresses surprise that he’s spent so long with just one company. They muse: “I’ve always expected him to go off and do something like run the BBC.”

But Clift seems committed to Unilever, and if he misses the day-to-day buzz of hands-on brand management, it doesn’t show. He appears to relish the task in front of him and clearly sees Unilever as providing the kind of opportunities in which he is interested.

One Unilever opportunity that is especially close to Clift’s heart is the time he spent in South America. This has had both a personal and professional effect on him. He adopted a street child in Brazil – who is now a young adult – and Clift still has a home in Paraty, a colonial town on Brazil’s Costa Verde between Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo.

Living and working in developing markets “profoundly affects the sort of company we are, and it is certainly true for me personally,” says Clift. He says it has instilled in him the “enormous burden of responsibility” to “produce great products and not rip people off” in less developed parts of the world.

He explains: “I’ve met housewives in Brazil, holding their families together on £120 a week, who spend a third of their household budget on hair products by Unilever. In a focus group, I asked one woman why she spent so much on them and she replied simply: ‘Because my hair is the most beautiful thing I own.’ It’s very humbling as a marketer.”

It is this ability to have a positive impact in people’s lives, while building a business that Clift claims keeps him interested in his work.

He grins, revealing: “I used to be slightly embarrassed about going to smart dinner parties and meeting people that were into derivatives and futures, only to say I was in washing powder and lavatory cleaner.”

But with the world now gripped by recession, Clift now appreciates the everyday essentials his company produces: “I didn’t really know what a derivative was or why anyone would want one. It transpires nobody actually did want one and people do need soap and washing powder.”

So while he might be keen to overhaul Unilever’s corporate strategy, the value of working in the traditional consumer goods sector has not lost its appeal. “We can acknowledge it has the ability to improve people’s lives,” he says, dropping the jokes for palpable sincerity. “That’s a fantastic privilege – most people do dull jobs.”