Unilever Unifies Online

In 2004, Unilever embarked on an ambitious global initiative: To unite Unilever under one brand and a single mission. Through this project, "One Unilever," the company envisioned becoming a brand in the consumer arena, like its sub-brands of Dove and Lipton, as well as being a corporate brand. One of the components to this initiative was changing the face of Unilever through its Web site. The goal was to follow a single consistent approach to communicate Unilever online.

External research revealed that consumers were the largest single visitor group (33 percent), and consumer tasks -- brand-related -- are the most popular reasons for visiting Unilever.com.

"Before the 'One Unilever' project began, we understood that for the first time, the Unilever brand would become a brand in the consumer arena, as well as being a corporate brand," says Katherine Attoe, IT manager, global solutions, Unilever. In addition, she explains, a large proportion (30 percent to 50 percent) of the other audiences identified themselves as consumers, and expressed interest in brand content. "To consumers visiting the site, it should be clear that we are a food and household product company first and a corporation second," says Attoe.

To accomplish this, Unilever Global Communications decided to completely revamp its Web presence. The project involved the universal adoption of the Unilever name, eliminating the need for multiple identities, and the move to one operating company per country, negating the need for multiple corporate sites. "Prior to the project, company and country Web sites were developed locally with a wide range of site designs, content and messages of varying quality. A number were managed and hosted by agencies (against policy) using a wide range of technologies and platforms, which all needed to be supported by Unilever IT," she adds.

This presented a risk for Unilever; as it did not own nor control the domains or content. Most countries had a national site and often a number of other sites for careers and operating companies. Because the corporate sites had little consistency in look and feel, functionality and messages, they created confusion.

To maintain Web sites locally, Unilever chose the centralized Tridion Content Management System (CMS). The CMS enables editors to create, maintain and publish content online without needing any technical knowledge. Tridion CMS runs on standard supported infrastructure and utilizes de-facto industry standard technology based on XML, SOAP and Web services to enable easier content migration or transition in the future. The CMS is independent from the Content Delivery platform, providing support for various delivery channels and easy migration of the target application if required. The Tridion CMS stores all content and generates the Web site pages using content templates.

"It enables users to publish many Web sites that all use the same basic structure and design -- this is ideal for country sites and multilingual sites," Attoe says. Additionally, it is administered through the Web browser so there is no need to install any software or plugins.

The project provided a single, high-quality framework. All sites are hosted and managed internally. The need for agencies to duplicate designs for individual countries has been eliminated.

Global Challenges

Unifying the company's Web site under one brand and mission was not without some difficulty. Attoe says that stakeholder management was a challenge since, in the past, each country had the freedom to develop its own style, design and content. Initially some countries did not want to adopt the framework, but as more countries came on board the others followed more willingly.

"The approach to develop the pilot across different regions of the world supported this. The project was considered truly global. Other projects have failed in the past by implementing in a lead region and then failing to engage the rest of the world," she explains.

Having an efficient process and the choice of proficient technology assisted in dissipating this challenge. Attoe says, "We have implemented a process for creating country sites, which re-purposes assets form Unilever.com. This has provided the capability to technically generate each new site in less than five days using the Tridion Blueprint Structure developed during the project."

During the next step, the country editors populate the site with localized global content (facilitated by the system) or new content. "This approach has been termed 'freedom within-a-framework,'" she adds. "By using the same technical platform and following a single set of guidelines, we share resources to shorten the time to launch and keep sites up-to-date easier than ever before. And we are able to achieve a consistent consumer-focused design on all sites, which perfectly communicates our brand and vividly expresses vitality."

International appeal

According to Attoe, the overall benefit to Unilever is considerable in reducing complexity and duplication, and ensuring messages are globally aligned. The program was piloted in February 2005 and comprised Unilever.com and five country sites. Fourteen sites were delivered by December 2005.

Now, consumers can better access up-to-date product issues and have clear entry points to company sections to enable them to easily navigate to their areas of interest. In addition, Unilever.com now has a scrollable display of brand logos, linking to brand profiles, language and country detection messages for an international audience and direct access to the most important company content.

A consistent look, feel and message has been developed to provide visitors with the same experience whether they visit the corporate site, Unilever.com or their local country site.

"In a survey we conducted in April 2005 on visitors to Unilever.com, 64 percent of our customers responded that they were more aware of Unilever's brands after visiting the site; 38 percent had a better understanding of how Unilever brands can help them to feel good, look good and get more out of life; 56 percent had a more positive impression of Unilever; and 39 percent were more likely to buy one of Unilever's brands after visiting the site," cites Attoe.

So whether a company is launching a new product or online strategy to support a branding initiative, certain final steps need to take place to ensure success of the project, Attoe indicates. "Similar to a product launch, we needed to communicate the new system to all of our stakeholders, partners, customers, investors, suppliers and, especially, to our employees, to rally all of these groups around the global Web site initiative. By properly articulating the initiative through training courses and collateral to our employees (especially our communications department, website editors and IT staff), we prepared them for the website overhaul and ensured a smooth transition for the company."