Unilever to drill down on marketing ROI as it announces sale of ‘declining’ Flora and Stork brands
Unilever will be putting pressure on its marketing divisions to improve return on investment (ROI) in the coming months as part of plans to improve its margins, while a sale of its spreads business is also on the cards.
Flora looks likely to be sold as part of Unilever restructure
As a part of a business review, Unilever will restructure in a bid to increase the gains of its cost-savings programme – a move designed to placate shareholders following a tense, but ultimately failed, takeover bid from Kraft Heinz. The bid resulted in calls to disintegrate the business.
Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, said: “Most of the savings that we will be announcing to progress on our margins will be increased efficiencies in procurement and better returns on investment in marketing.”
Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, has already spoken frankly on the subject of ROI. He called for an industry-wide “clean up across the board” on the Google-centric issues surrounding brand safety last month, adding that marketers should expect nothing less than 100% viewability.
The company is also set to sacrifice its spreads business, which includes heritage brands such as Flora, Bertolli and Stork, at the altar of business growth. Polman explained that while Unilever has been able to “grow consistently above the market in recent years, outperforming our industry, unfortunately the spreads business itself is a declining segment [and has been] for the past 20 years”.
The margarine brands could collectively sell for £4.8bn ($6bn), analysts have predicted.
Polman added that there will be “some” job losses, primarily from senior management.