Unilever appoints global agency to help it move from the ‘conversion funnel’ measurement staple
Spurred by its efforts to push marketing beyond brand development, Unilever has hired an agency to help take its strategies beyond the traditional conversion funnel that’s used to measure success.
Brand measurement and optimisation shop TransgressiveX has bagged the lucrative gig, which will see it work to put in place clearer thinking for the FMCG company’s brands, more appropriate measures, better data capture, sharper analysis and ultimately more strategic-based advice that can be monetised. Larger growth margins, particularly for global companies like Unilever, are hard to come by and so alternative partners that can offer commercially bankable services are top of mind for those businesses, with Unilever particularly talking up its desire to seek out new partners.
It’s why the business has taken much care with hiring the latest addition to its roster; in an unusual move, the company spent two and a half years and ran 26 pilots searching for a new kind of brand optimisation before hiring TransgressiveX to work across all its brands.
A release announcing the hire, mentions the agency being deployed wherever a “brand has a change in its status quo – with new propositions, strategies, packaging, products and communications”. In a nutshell, Unilever thinks the agency could give it a competitive advantage in its bid to sustainably generate new revenues from services instead of ads.
Based in London, TransgressiveX is led by consumer psychologist and former global commercial and strategy director of Research International Nadim Sadek.
The hire comes just days after Unilever named Aline Santos as senior vice-president of global marketing, following the departure of Marc Mathieu who left in June to join Samsung.