The world's second biggest advertiser has made CRM its marketing communications priority for 2005. It's looking for an agency partner to build and manage regional databases country by country to replace its hotchpotch of separate databases for various brands around the world (see News Analysis, page 9).
In addition, Unilever is studying ways of consolidating the agencies that oversee the EUR500 million (£340 million) it will spend on CRM across western Europe, the US and Japan. Three networks handle 40 per cent of that business, with the rest spread out among numerous local agencies.
Rutherford is seeking greater consistency and efficiency by working with fewer agencies, a pattern he has followed with advertising and media agencies.
The story also reveals the formation of a global marketing relationship team based in Paris, Rotterdam and London to implement the CRM push.
In Profile (page 14) Rutherford explains why Unilever has moved away from TV to focus on other channels with the goal of making an emotional connection with consumers. But direct mailers shouldn't get over excited.
The programme will have an emphasis on SMS and online rather than what he terms "old-style direct marketing" to cold prospects.
That's the type of disparaging remark by an FMCG company that leads us to our second exclusive (page 7). In a groundbreaking study, leading FMCG marketers, including both Unilever and Procter & Gamble, married data from more than nine million direct mail pieces sent to named individuals to actual purchases made by 10,000 Tesco Clubcard holders. The two-year study, commissioned by Royal Mail and conducted by Dunnhumby, found, among other things, that direct mail increased sales of FMCG products by an average of 21 per cent.
Such findings would have brought cheer to the participants in this month's Think Tank (page 16), who chewed over the reasons why FMCG marketers are the biggest above-the-line advertisers, and hardly invest loose change in direct mail. Maybe Unilever's now high-profile CRM push will show them differently.
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