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Unilever is overhauling its entire relationship marketing structure and agency alignments in preparation for a global CRM push in 2005, the senior executive in charge of project has revealed to Marketing Direct in an exclusive interview. Unilever is also looking for an agency partner to build and manage regional databases from the bottom up, country by county.

Currently one of the world's biggest advertisers, Unilever is now turning its focus on direct and relationship marketing (see Profile, page 14).

For the CRM project alone, around x250 million is up for grabs in western Europe, and about the same is allocated to the US and Japan. In the UK, Unilever will spend some x92 million on CRM this year.

The first step for Unilever global media director Alan Rutherford has been to create a central, global relationship marketing team, based in the three centres of Paris, Rotterdam and London. The all-female line-up is drawn from Unilever's Relationship Marketing Innovation Centre in France, which handles the company's customer magazines in France, the US, Germany and the Netherlands, and also from its global branding team in Rotterdam.

Next, Rutherford and the team will devise a new way of working. Currently, 40 per cent of the CRM spend in Western Europe, the US and Japan is funnelled through the WPP Group's Wunderman and OgilvyOne networks, and via Interpublic Group's Draft Worldwide networks. The rest is shared among local agencies.

It's a highly fragmented, localised approach, with no lead agency offices.

In the UK, as in many other countries, agencies are appointed by brands, with country-specific relationship marketing teams reporting to the marketing director.

"Our ambition," says Rutherford, "is to pull together to have one CRM strategy and team. We need consistency in our approach, both geographically and by brand, with all the synergies it brings in strategic and financial terms. The implementation can be different, but the strategic plan needs be consistent."

What exactly that will entail is under review, but the result will affect both internal Unilever marketing structures and its agency relationships.

"We could have just one agency globally, or one agency co-ordinating with local agencies doing implementation," says Rutherford. "Or we could let each local market do its own thing, or have one central team offering up a way of doing things that countries adapt. There are different ways to cut it. This is a big project."

Rutherford claims Unilever genuinely does not know what the best model for the business will be. "What we do know is that we need co-ordination and consistency," he says.

New structures for Western Europe and the US are expected by the end of the year. At just over 20 per cent of overall brand communication budgets in those markets, CRM spend "could well accelerate - if the returns start coming through," Rutherford claims.

The global relationship marketing team consists of Christine Melous, head of the Relationship Marketing Innovation Centre in Paris, plus global brand relationship marketing planners Caroline Slootweg and Heidi Karhohen, both based in Rotterdam and London.

Rutherford also has the task of untangling the web of separate databases Unilever holds on various brands across the globe. The aim is to appoint an agency partner to help build and manage regional databases from the bottom up, country by country. He is talking to several in the UK, France and Germany.

But it's early days. "Is it even relevant to pool data across Europe in every case? We haven't got to that stage yet," he says. "First we need a proper database management system. And nobody else (in FMCG) has that - for all their shouting."

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