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There was plenty of anti-woke glee following Unilever’s new CEO Hein Schumacher’s announcement last week of an action plan to improve growth, productivity and returns. The Daily Telegraph rejoiced that ‘the new chief executive finally dropped the soggy wokeness that has characterised the conglomerate for the last decade.'
But that’s not quite what happened, is it. Schumacher said that the company would focus social purpose efforts on those brands for which it was relevant (where it would help drive ‘unmissable brand superiority’ rather than something that the company should ‘force fit on every brand’), and its sustainability commitments on four priority areas: climate, plastic, nature and livelihoods. Four pretty large areas to be fair. In other words, purpose and sustainability have to be clearly linked to the commercial strategy of what is, after all, a business.
But a lot of the commentary has swirled around the culture wars that so tempt politicians. Positioning yourself as woke or anti-woke can work as a political tactic depending on who you’re trying to energise to campaign and vote for you. The same is simply not true for businesses, especially a conglomerate like Unilever whose brands are used by 3.4 billion people each day. The Unilever focus, as the new CEO clarified, is to build powerful brands and manage the context in which those brands exist.
The second half of that is why companies like Unilever are asked to report on ESG. Not because investors have some woke agenda, but because these external factors need managing. Unilever needs a strategy on issues like climate change and social justice because of the impact they have on the performance of their brands.
If regulations are forcing businesses to reduce their emissions, you need to have a plan. If Walmart and Tesco are placing sustainability requirements on suppliers, you need to have a plan. If punchy start-ups use sustainability issues to challenge established brands and pressure them into following suit (witness Tony’s Chocolonely’s championing of slave-free chocolate to grow to a €130 million plus brand without spending a penny on advertising) you need to have a plan. Businesses are having to invest in these externalities, so they need a return. Which means asking the marketing department to work out where and how to do that.
Corporate wokery is not a strategy. But nor is anti-wokery. Managing social and environmental issues and exploring opportunities in them is now part of the mix, to be deployed strategically brand by brand. See how Nike has used a social purpose around gender equality to drive brand growth for over 50 years.
Businesses are well advised to avoid corporate wokery. But commentators should also be wary of calling on companies like Unilever to score anti-woke points. To do so would be to throw the baby out with the Radox bath water.
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