Unilever: Brands becoming like publishers and media owners

Brands are set to act more like publishers and media owners as the drive to produce branded content naturally evolves, according to Unilever’s Hamish Priest.

However, the distribution for branded content is deemed as important as the creative process, the global lead for the Dove brand has warned.

Priest said Unilever had continued to diversify its content to reflect a new “media reality” and that the business was embarking upon an era in which branded content was meeting new consumption behaviours.

“I think we’re at the beginning of a revolution, particularly with the idea of engagement,” Priest said, discussing the short film Dove Real Beauty Sketches, which has had over 170 million online views and thousands of tweets and Facebook ‘likes’ and comments.

However, despite Unilever’s strategy to “satisfy consumer demand for content” whilst telling “new parts of [the] brand story that don’t fit into a TV spot,” distribution of content is now considered as essential as the creative process itself, Priest said.

“Content and experiences [on their own] weren’t making the difference to the bottom line…and making expensive content that nobody sees is like building cathedrals in the desert.

“We have to consider distribution as important as the creative development,” he said.

To meet these needs, Unilever runs a YouTube property, All Things Hair, featuring well-known video bloggers – or vloggers – using Unilever hair products, including Dove.

“There are over 110 trillion searches a year around hair,” Priest said. “There’s a lot of demand for content.”

Exporting the idea to its logical extreme, in China Unilever even commissioned a 36-episode drama on prime time TV to attract a new audience for its Clear hair care brand – although Priest conceded that the idea holds less cultural clout in the UK.

Priest’s comments came at the start of the latest IPA Adaptathon, a 100 day experiment from new president Ian Priest. In what is the second of five events, it will explore how, through diversification, agencies can produce more “multi-dimensional” output, moving away from traditional advertising to embrace new forms of communication and technology platforms.

Ian Priest said the sessions have been designed to make agencies adapt faster and better.

“We need to reshape our business model to reflect an evolving and dynamic landscape,” he said.

“Whether it’s content creation, providing new services in data and insight, or generating word-of-mouth via social media, there are new revenue streams out there.

“But we need to know how far we’ve come, what impact this is having on our commercial creativity, what clients need, and what we can do better.”

Attendees at Monday evening’s opening event were also told that business models for the entertainment industries – including film, TV, music or gaming – are shifting.

MediaCom’s Nick Cohen, who before his career in advertising held roles working in content and digital at both ITN and the BBC, said the reality is the industry is evolving very quickly.

“Increasingly brands are becoming absolutely essential…I think whoever you are – whether a TV production company, a music label or a digital start-up – brands are a vital component of the funding you put together to make the brilliant things we all consume.

“But [brands] need to know why it’s relevant for them to be in that space,” he added.