Using Social at Scale

I spoke yesterday at We Are Social's FMCG Social Summit and used my taxi ride home to reflect on some of my key points from the evening, showing how an FMCG company like Unilever is using social media at scale. Social media today is all pervasive – anyone with a smartphone can set up a periscope account and start broadcasting. But at Unilever our brands reach millions of people every day, so a key criteria in determining how we operate in this space is scale; everything we do needs to drive reach and provide brilliant brand experiences at large. With this in mind I focused on three key areas – connecting with authenticity, engaging with relevance and innovating with talkability.

First up was authenticity, and one brand that does this brilliantly is Dove. But this time I wanted to turn the spotlight on our Axe brand, or Lynx, as it’s known here in the UK. The recent Find Your Magic campaign represents an evolution in focus for the brand, to connect with today’s more progressive view of masculinity. It’s really captured and held the attention of consumers – check out the ad on YouTube! 

Next I moved on to the importance of engaging with relevance. This is very much focused on context, and driving deeper engagement through a clear understanding of the time, the place and the culture to boost the power of the message. Cornetto’s Snapchat campaign at London’s Winterville event last December, which got over half a million views in 24 hours, is a great example of this. What’s particularly exciting about Snapchat though is how it is maturing and starting to deliver ROI. This has not always been the case and we had to go into this newer platform without a fear of failure in order to explore it. As marketers it so important in a world that is constantly changing that we have the space to experiment… and to fail. Just remember, fail quickly, learn from your failures and don't repeat them! 

I rounded up by talking about innovating with talkability. Create a campaign with talkability at its core and you'll have a campaign that spreads across markets. Unilever’s Farewell to Forest film, on the very non-sexy topic of deforestation, is a great example here. A piece of content about a tree being safer in the city than in the forest, which got people all over the world talking about the actions they can take to tackle this critical issue.

You can catch the full keynote on my Facebook page.