There are times when you’d be forgiven for thinking that the role of the consumer goods giant Unilever is to entertain its punters, as much as flog them stuff.
It brands have been associated with some of the most memorable ads of our age, whether they be for PG Tips in the 1970s (“Avez-vous un cuppa?”), several controversial Pot Noodle commercials or its recent satire on Brexit for Marmite, which read: “Hard Breakfast? Soft Breakfast? No Breakfast? Marmite: dividing the nation since 1902.”
These are pretty decent lines to have in your back catalogue, especially when you consider they are emanating from a huge corporation, but there have been times over the past few months when the joke has seemed to be increasingly on the company.
Take last week, when the comedian Dave Gorman lampooned the firm’s logo, which consists of a letter U constructed with icons supposed to symbolise the group’s products and values. “Stumbled upon Unilever’s explanation of the elements in their logo,” Gorman tweeted. “It’s v weird. It feels like they had a brainstorm, threw some ideas on the board and then couldn’t be arsed to write them up properly because they didn’t expect anyone to ever read them”.
What follows is a series of tweets dissecting some of Unilever’s more bizarre entries, such as “ice cream: a treat, pleasure and enjoyment pleasure”, or “hand: a symbol of sensitivity, care and need” – plus one about a “tied-off condom” that Gorman seems to have made up for a laugh.
Not that some well-known comic needed to craft gags to make the company look silly. Presently, it has been doing that quite nicely all by itself.
Chief among those gaffes was the timing of the retirement of former boss Paul Polman, after what was widely considered to be a brilliant decade leading the firm (not least by himself). He managed to make a complete Horlicks of his victory lap by walking away at a moment of great personal humiliation, following his attempt to relocate Unilever’s head office to Rotterdam. Hilariously for those in the City who hated this idea and who found Polman ever so slightly self-regarding, the grand chief was forced into an embarrassing U-turn. Not so much Unilever, the City wags crowed, more Uni-remainer.
Which brings us to this week, when Polman’s replacement, Alan Jope, reports on Unilever’s first-quarter trading. This is not Jope’s first appearance in front of investors, but it comes at a time when the City has rather mixed view of the business. Unilever is still seen a top-drawer company, but there are some concerns about how it is trading, and before this week’s announcement, stockbroking firm The Share Centre has commented: “Consumer goods giant Unilever has been focusing on trying to increase its earnings growth in recent times but the market was rather underwhelmed by the forecast for growth this year given at the time of full-year results in January.
“New chief executive Alan Jope said it would likely be towards the bottom of the 3-5% range given previously, so investors will be interested to see if that remains the same. Any comments on expectations for profit margins will also be a focus, as will the performance in emerging markets which have the best prospects for growth.”
In other words, some think the British-Dutch combine is one of the great European blue-chips; others worry it’s not quite living up to the hype. Another example of Unilever’s marketing dividing its public.
