Achieving Social Impact with the Marketing Playbook

Myriam Sidibe

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">Idea in Brief</h4>
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  <h5>The Challenge</h5>
  <p>Brands can play a critical role in global health by combating violence, reducing infectious disease, improving fitness and diet, and more. The key is for marketers to leverage what they do best: influencing behavior.</p>
  <h5>The Approach</h5>
  <p>A framework with five elements—behavioral change, internal support, performance measurement, external partnerships, and systemic change—can help any brand effectively connect a purpose to its business and increase its social impact.</p>
  <h5>The Result</h5>
  <p>At Unilever, brands with a social mission promoted new behaviors that enhanced public health in Asian and African markets. At the same time, they grew 46% faster than the rest of the business and delivered 70% of the company’s revenue.</p>
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</article-ideainbrief><p>A beer brand might seem an unlikely ally in the campaign to end violence against women. But the clear connection between alcohol and abusive behavior made Carling Black Label, the largest beer brand in South Africa, realize it had to take up the challenge.</p>

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<p>A lot of global health problems can be prevented by persuading people to alter their behavior&#8212;something marketers excel at. That&#8217;s why brands have a critical role to play in tackling these challenges, says Sidibe, Unilever&#8217;s first social mission director. In this article she offers any brand that wants to achieve a social purpose a five-part framework for success: inspiring individuals to change behavior; winning internal backing; measuring performance at multiple levels; partnering with governments, NGOs, and other firms; and sparking a broader movement. This approach has allowed Unilever&#8217;s Lifebuoy and Knorr brands to make great strides in reducing disease and poor nutrition in the developing world, while enhancing their profiles and their growth, and it could help other brands, like Carling Black Label beer, which has taken on the task of combating domestic violence.</p>

Marketing Meets Mission

A lot of global health problems can be prevented by persuading people to alter their behavior—something marketers excel at. That’s why brands have a critical role to play in tackling these challenges, says Sidibe, Unilever’s first social mission director. In this article she offers any brand that wants to achieve a social purpose a five-part framework for success: inspiring individuals to change behavior; winning internal backing; measuring performance at multiple levels; partnering with governments, NGOs, and other firms; and sparking a broader movement. This approach has allowed Unilever’s Lifebuoy and Knorr brands to make great strides in reducing disease and poor nutrition in the developing world, while enhancing their profiles and their growth, and it could help other brands, like Carling Black Label beer, which has taken on the task of combating domestic violence.

Marketing Meets Mission

Summary.

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