Unilever rethinking advertising

Unilever has created a team to try to rethink the way the company advertises. Traditionally dependent on TV advertising, they see that medium as increasing ineffective, and have cut its share of their budget from 85% to 65% since 2000.

"The ad industry is struggling at the moment in . . . pulling all the components of brand communication together," Mr Rutherford said. "There is a struggle to have traditional media and digital and content and public relations all brought under one roof under the agency side."

Mr Rutherford said Unilever was stopping well short of setting up internal agencies, but was trying to spur change in its outside agencies. He said Unilever had assigned six people to help work on devising integrating campaigns for leading brands. Five were charged with finding new digital advertising ideas.

I think media fragmentation may be the biggest marketing issue of the next few years. At the national level, it's caused by the decline of network TV, and at the local level by the decline of newspapers (see the next post -- above).