Unilever’s Mita Mallick on representation in advertising: “I didn’t often see myself reflected”

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Unilever’s Mita Mallick has a unique remit for a marketer. She is both head of cross cultural marketing and head of diversity and inclusion at Unilever, the 155,000-person consumer packaged goods giant. The company says its 400+ brands, which include popular household names like Dove, Hellmann’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Lipton and more, touch more than 2.5 billion people each day. Mallick’s job? Reaching them. And finding more. 

The company has been at the center of recent conversations for its leadership on diversity and inclusion efforts, its decision to pause advertising on social media in the U.S. for the rest of the year and the announcement to rename Fair & Lovely, one of its global products. The company beat estimates for its second-quarter sales, largely fueled by pandemic-driven demand for its food (stay at home comfort foods like soup, ice cream and mayonnaise) and hygiene products (hand soap and sanitizer and cleaning sprays) that offset lower sales in personal care items like deodorant. 

When I asked Mallick to tell me more about her title, she said, “Cross cultural marketing involves understanding and serving countless lived experiences that may not be your own. I am brown. I am a working mother. My pronouns are she, her, and hers. I am Hindu. My family is biracial and bicultural. I am American. There are so many ways in which we as individuals identify. And cross cultural marketing speaks to intimately understanding all of those experiences, and ultimately, surprising, delighting and serving communities with products and services as marketers.” Here's more of her story:

1. What has had the most impact on your perspective as a marketer?

Growing up, I never “fit in” and I was hardly ever included. I was a funny looking dark girl with a long black braid with a funny name who wore funny jewelry carrying her funny-smelling lunch who would get dropped off in a mini-van which some days played funny music, whose funny looking parents would waive bye, who also spoke funny and wore funny clothing. It was funny. Until it wasn’t anymore. As a result, I was bullied both heavily verbally and physically growing up.

As a marketer, I always carry those experiences with me of being excluded because others perceived me to be different. I ask myself the following questions: Who are we choosing to speak to and why? Whose stories are we including? Who are our products serving? And who are we not including and how can we change that?

2. What’s changed the most about your job as a marketer over the course of your career?

As a kid, I loved watching commercials growing up. It’s how I made my Christmas list, bugged my mom for the latest cereal, and saw trailers for Disney movies. It’s how many kids grew up.

 My 5-year-old and 7-year-old are growing up in a completely different world, even more pronounced in this pandemic. They never watch commercials. They watch most of their content on Disney + and Netflix, including new movies. They hardly ever enter a store; everything is delivered to our city apartment.

How do we reach my kids as they grow up? What will their journey be like in their social and digital channels? Will they even be on TikTok and Instagram? As the world rapidly changes, so too do our jobs as marketers, and we have to stay close to the experience of those we are serving.

3. What’s the hardest part of a marketer’s job today?

Building deep empathy and understanding of experiences that are not our own. One of the jobs of a marketer is to surprise and delight someone with a product or service they didn’t expect or didn’t know they needed. And do you truly understand that person’s life experience? Their history? Or the history of their communities? We aspire for our brands and our products and services to serve many communities. And we need to be able to build deep and authentic relationships with those communities. We have to continuously push ourselves to increase our cultural competency and cultural agility as marketers.

4. Tell us about the marketing campaign you’re most proud of working on in your career.

Signing award winning actress and activist Viola Davis to be our Healing Project Ambassador for Vaseline. It was one of the biggest highlights of my career to date. Viola Davis was even more kind, generous, and inspiring in person than I could have ever imagined and an amazing ambassador for the brand.

5. What’s a marketing campaign you wish you’d thought of and why?

The Dove Real Beauty Campaign. As a young brown woman growing up in this country, I didn’t often see myself reflected in content. Dove was one of the first brands who spoke to young women who looked like me. It was game-changing, and one of the many reasons why I choose to work at Unilever.

6. What’s your must read, watch or listen for all marketers?

Anything and everything involving Scott Galloway.

7. What’s an under the radar brand you’re watching and why?

Encantos Tiny Travelers (part of the Encantos, focused on family entertainment in a multicultural world) founded by Steven Wolfe Pereira (CEO and Co-founder) and Susie Jaramillo (President, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder.) Tiny Travelers help our kids become citizens of the world, helping them to explore geography, language and culture, through books, wall decals, notebooks and more. I can’t wait to get my kids and nieces and nephew the “Let’s Explore India” series.

8. Name a product you can’t live without (that doesn’t connect you to the internet) and tell us why.

Melissa and Doug Deluxe Face Paint Set $14.99 on Target. It has been a critical product to surviving a pandemic with my kids in Jersey City. My kids have been a witch, a zombie, a bunny, a magician and more. My only complaint has been the orange and yellow paint does not show up well on brown skin and needs more pigment; note to self to write to Melissa & Doug when I get a break from my other full time job as my kids’ summer camp counselor.

9. Finish this sentence. If I weren’t a marketer, I would be…

An investigative journalist.

10. Finish this sentence: The marketer I most want to see do this questionnaire is…

Adrienne Lofton, Vice President, North America Marketing, Nike 

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