Lara Sinclair From: The Australian June 21, 2010 12:00AM
CANNES Advertiser of the Year, Unilever, has emerged from a slow start in the relatively new world of online and digital marketing.
The consumer goods giant suddenly find itself with the biggest branded page in Australia on social networking site FacebookIt’s all thanks to the ice-cream Bubble O’ Bill.
About 340,000 users have joined Bubble O’ Bill’s page on Facebook, ranking it first among local branded pages and eighth overall, according to David McNeil, Unilever vice-president of marketing for Australasia.
That’s not bad for a small brand that has traditionally had a low advertising budget and for a commercial page originally created by a fan.
The Australian and New Zealand operations of the Anglo-Dutch company were leading the firm globally in key areas such as promotions developed in tandem with media owners and using digital media, Mr McNeil said.
This week, Unilever’s global chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, will be given the Advertiser of the Year Award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in recognition of the company’s innovative marketing strategies. Unilever has won 200 Lions since 1961, including taking out the Media Grand Prix in 2007 for “Magnum 7 Deadly Sins: Give In To It”, which was developed in Australia.
In digital, the local operations have slowly built up spending to about 13 per cent of the total media budget, with a strategy of using social media to support smaller products while boosting television support for big budget brands.
Locally, other marketing high points of the past year have included a Media Federation Award for its Magnum ice-cream Gold Class upgrade promotion, and an Interactive Advertising Bureau Award for best new product launch for the Primal Instinct variant of deodorant brand Lynx.
“I believe the work we’ve been doing in the digital space most broadly is some of the best work in the Unilever world and the fast-moving consumer goods space in Australia,” Mr McNeil said.
“On a number of our smaller brands that had either low media budgets or low market research we put these on Facebook thinking we can probably learn a lot about what our consumers think about them.
“Thirteen of our brands have Facebook pages now,” he said. “We’re learning a tremendous amount by listening to the conversations our consumers have been having.”
In other highlights, the launch of Omo Small and Mighty won product of the year in the laundry category last year.
Meantime, the company’s Rexona-sponsored TV program, Australia’s Greatest Athlete, two series of which were screened on Saturday afternoons on the Seven Network, and which the MFA named Australia’s best integrated media campaign of last year, has caused sales of the deodorant to spike by more than 30 per cent.
“Not coincidentally, that, for us has been one of our stronger performances in terms of market share gain,” Mr McNeil said. “The program peaked at an audience of 850,000.”
“What I think we’ve grown particularly capable of is media-led activations, such as getting involved with programs such as Desperate Housewives or The Biggest Loser,” Mr McNeil said.
During the economic downturn, Unilever increased its advertising spending, particularly in TV.
“We’re holding to that proportion this year,” he said. “TV, digital and magazines — they’re our top three at the moment.”
Globally, Unilever is continuing to innovate, being among the first global advertisers to book advertising on the Time application for the Apple iPad.
It is also one of a handful of global advertisers that will book ads on Apple’s iAd network, which will for the first time allow advertisers to place ads in large numbers of third-party applications developed for the iPhone.
“Category by category we’re looking to understand what proportion of media consumption our target audience has in digital,” Mr McNeil said. “My aim is to get to the point where budgets match that.
“Much of our main creative work we’re taking out of London or Singapore or North America. The strongest of all our agency relationships that we have here are with our digital agencies such as Deepend and Soap.”
