14032: Calling Out Carl’s Jr.

Carl’s Jr. recently hired a new White advertising agency, and the new campaign is nauseating on a number of levels. Yes, the over-the-topless sexism prevalent in past work was always inappropriate—and intolerable in today’s society, where inclusive sensitivity especially relating to females is a growing movement. But like other brands undergoing reform (e.g., Axe), the reactive results are generic and contrived, which flies in the face of basic branding objectives for uniqueness and breakthrough. “The Call of Carl’s” feels culturally clueless too, featuring a bug-eyed Black character and urban-vibe voiceover copy. The burger chain has replaced soft porn with food porn—and shifted from White male to White stale.

13407: Dulling The Axe.

Adweek interviewed Unilever EVP of Global Marketing Aline Santos on the #Unstereotype initiative, which included a discussion on the ultra-lame and patronizing Axe commercial. Can’t wait to see the next Fair and Lovely message.

Q&A: Unilever’s Global Marketing Chief on Busting Gender Stereotypes in Advertising

#Unstereotype initiative aims to level playing field

By Christine Birkner

Brands are increasingly addressing the issue of gender stereotypes. In June, Unilever launched #Unstereotype, an initiative that aims to level the playing field in terms of how gender is portrayed in advertising. Unilever’s past efforts in that regard include the long-running Dove “Real Beauty” campaign and Axe’s “Find Your Magic” campaign, which helped the brand ditch its hypersexualized frat-boy persona in favor of more accurate portrayals of men.

Adweek caught up with Aline Santos, evp of global marketing for Unilever, at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Fla., last week to talk about how Unilever is putting its plans into action.

Adweek: How does Unilever’s #Unstereotype initiative aim to break gender stereotypes?

Aline Santos: In the last two years, we’ve done studies on how people are portrayed in advertising and how those portrayals were connecting, or not, with our consumers. We found that across many different industries, there’s a big gap between what the industry is saying and how consumers are living. We found that 40 percent of consumers aren’t relating to advertising in the broader industry. It’s a very serious number.

One of the things we’ve found is that gender has evolved, but we still look at gender in a stereotyped way, which creates a big distance between us and consumers. We felt that it’s time for us to correct that and be much closer to the reality of gender and people today. We want to create an environment where our advertising is going to be progressive and inspiring. We want to focus on people, not just women. We believe that if we want to unstereotype people, we can’t unstereotype women by creating a stereotype for men.

What’s your advice for other marketers in “unstereotyping” their ads?

When you’re creating a new piece of content, you have to think about the role of the main character. If she’s a woman, what is she doing? Only 3 percent of ads around the world show women in leadership roles. You have to think twice about the role your main character has to play. With Dove’s “Real Beauty,” it’s about talking about how beauty becomes a source of self-expression, not a source of anxiety.

Talk about how Axe has helped bust gender stereotypes with its new positioning.

Axe is a brilliant example. It’s about understanding people in a better way. The stereotype of manhood that we had been portraying for years isn’t relevant anymore. Not only was it not relevant, but it wasn’t right. “Find Your Magic” and the way they put it together with different personalities is one of the best examples of unstereotyping. The response from consumers was great. They really identified with it.

What are the biggest challenges in breaking gender stereotypes?

The biggest challenge is that people get in automatic mode [when creating ads]. They don’t think about it—they just appeal to stereotypes. The second is if you use stereotypes, it’s going to be easier, so you have to get away from that.

Also, a diverse culture at brands and agencies is a fundamental element to win in the marketplace. It’s not a moral case, it’s a business case. You have to have a more diverse set of leaders to come up with a diverse set of ideas.

13382: Unilever’s Stereotypical Bullshit.

Advertising Age spotlighted Unilever VP-Global Marketing Aline Santos, who discussed the company’s new initiative to eliminate stereotypes from its advertising. Um, MultiCultClassics continues to wait for Axe or Fair and Lovely to demonstrate the grand plan. It would actually be easier and better for society—as well as ultimately lead to fewer stereotypes—if Unilever launched an initiative to eliminate exclusivity from its White advertising agencies.

Aline Santos: Why Unilever Is Banishing Stereotypes

Unilever VP-Global Marketing Aline Santos explains the impetus behind the company’s newest initiative.

11626: Unilever To Cut Out Fat.

Advertising Age reported Unilever plans to axe about 800 marketers and slash advertising agency fees, which won’t be a real beautiful move.

Unilever Plans To Cut 800 Marketers As It Slashes Agency Fees, Products

Weed: ‘We’ll Be Able to Remove Quite a Few Regional People’

By Jack Neff

If there was a single theme at Unilever’s investor seminar in London today it was cuts. The company will slash marketing headcount by 12% globally, or more than 800, mostly in regional operations such as the U.S. It’s also cutting the number of product varieties it sells by 30% and will continue to trim agency and commercial production fees, company executives said.

Unilever executives framed the moves as part of continuous cost savings of the sort that have been common since Paul Polman became CEO in 2009. But the talk of spending cuts, particularly in marketing, was more detailed than usual in this year’s investor presentation, which followed a quarter when Unilever disappointed investors with top-line growth that fell behind that of its biggest global rival Procter & Gamble Co. for the first time in years.

Unilever’s growth has slowed particularly in what had been its biggest competitive strength—developed markets—as economic growth there slowed and competition from the likes of P&G and L’Oreal, among others, increased.

Chief Financial Officer Jean-Marc Huet said Unilever expects to find more than $470 million in marketing savings this year, up from $260 million last year, in part from reductions in “non-working media,” or what the company spends on such things as agency fees and commercial production. It also expects to save by shifting more spending to digital, which now accounts for 15% of ad spending for the world’s No. 2 spender. That’s up from 14% last year and 12% in 2011.

Unilever also will reduce the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs), or sizes, flavors and varieties of products, 30% by the end of 2014, Mr. Huet said. It’s a huge cut for a company in an industry that has been trying to control SKU proliferation for decades, but also a risky one given industry trends favoring variety and smaller players with SKU-intensive product lineups that have been taking share from bigger players in the U.S. in recent years.

A Unilever spokeswoman in an e-mail declined to give details on precisely how, when or where the company will cut marketing jobs, but said it was safe to assume the 12% applies to a base of 7.000 global marketers referenced by Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed in his presentation at the seminar.

“The marketing world has changed dramatically,” Mr. Weed said. “There’s an awful lot we can do to tailor our organization.”

Go direct

Part of that will be to allow global brand leaders to “go direct to big countries, rather than through regional hubs” and by using more global concepts and advertising, he said. “You can see in that organization we’ll be able to remove quite a few regional people.”

While Unilever has hiked advertising spending by $2.7 billion since 2009, Mr. Weed said it’s also saving money through lower-cost “earned” and digital media, or close targeting, such as only showing taxi ads near stores.

Some of Unilever’s biggest cost savings have come in so-called “non-working media,” or what it spends on such things as agency fees and production. Mr. Weed said non-working media outlays have shrunk from 32% of advertising and promotion spending in 2010 to 26% last year and an expected 24% this year. He said his ultimate goal is 20%.

Unilever spent $9.1 billion on advertising and promotion last year, which would suggest nearly $2.4 billion in agency and production costs. That compares to $8.2 billion in reported marketing spending for 2010 and $2.6 billion in agency and production costs.

The agency and production savings have come from doing fewer, bigger and higher-quality initiatives, Mr. Weed said, also pointing to the company having been recognized by Advertising Age as the advertiser with the most creative awards globally in the past year. Overall, the marketing spending per new initiative has risen 29% the past two years as the number of smaller projects has declined, Mr. Weed said.

7992: Advertising With Balls.

This Axe infomercial has been around for a while, but it’s still worth a look.