Chapter 3 THE COMPANY

Company Overview

Wall's brand is under Unilever company. The Unilever can be found in consumers products in millions of homes across more than 170 countries. Unilever is a trusted company as their products are proven to bring benefits to consumers in terms of nutrition, hygiene and personal care. Unilever has been adding vitality to consumers life by creating products that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life. The challenge of developing brand awareness has been met eagerly by the company, with the evolution of marketing and promotional techniques, responding sensitively to the complex cultural nuances prevalent in Malaysian society. From 1947 to date, Unilever has become institutionalized for the roles it play in Malaysia today and therefore the company able to strive for its excellence and will continue to contribute to all the consumers especially adding vitality to life.

Business Description

Unilever produces different types of brands for sales besides providing the consumer their daily use products. There are three categories that Unilever focuses in their production and they are food brands, personal care brands and home care brands. Unilever has been non-stop doing their research and development (R&D) in order to fulfill consumers needs and add more vitality to consumers' life. In order to ensure the business of Unilever runs smoothly, the company are setting out their aspirations in running their business. It's underpinned by the codes of business Principles which describes the operational standards that everyone at Unilever follows, wherever they are in the world. The code also supports their approach to governance and corporate responsibility. The company also aim to have positive impact in many ways especially through their brands, commercial, operations and relationships, through voluntary contributions and through the various ways in which they engaged with society. Besides that, Unilever also wants to work with suppliers who have values similar to their own and work to the same standard as they do. Unilever Business Partner Code, aligned to its own Code of business principles, comprises ten principles covering business integrity and responsibility. Unilever also focus and participate in campaigns to reduce and solve consumers problem such as introducing their health care products to avoid certain diseases. Unilever contribute for both their consumers and all the society out there in Malaysia.

Company History

Unilever company was founded in the year 1930 by the merger of British soapmaker Lever Brothers and Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie, a logical merger as palm oil was a major raw material for both margarine and soaps and could be imported more advantageously in larger quantities. Unilever's success has been influenced by the major events of the day which are economic boom, depression, world wars, changing consumer lifestyles and advances in technology. And throughout all this, Unilever has created products that help people get more out of life in ways that cutting the time spent on household chores, improving nutrition, enabling people to enjoy food and take care of their homes, their clothes and themselves. Unilever has set up projects to improve their workers and has created products with a positive social impact, making hygiene and personal care common place and improving nutrition through adding vitamins to foods that were already daily staples. Today, Unilever still believes that success means acting with "the highest standards of corporate behavior towards their employees, consumers and the societies and world in which they live." Over the years Unilever had launched or participated in an ever-growing range of initiatives to source sustainable supplies of raw materials, protect environments, support local communities and much more.

Key people

Chairman and Managing Director

Mr Andre Rompis

Directors

Mr Nik Mustapha Nik Mohamed

Ms Julie Teh

Mr Joseph Tan Soon Ted

Mr Kong Wai Wei

Puan Jamiah Bte Abdul Hamid

Tan Sri Datuk Dr Hadenan Bin A. Jalil

Location and Subsidiaries

The first opening for Unilever is by the Lever Brothers soap and margarine manufacturing plant in Bangsar. Costing RM12million, it was reputed to be the largest factory in the country. Unilever also have a factory in Rawang, Selangor. After 56 years at Bangsar site, the company moved to its new high technology home in Menara TM. Below is the address:

Level 33-35 Menara TM,

Jalan Pantai Baru,

Kuala Lumpur,

Wilayah Persekutuan,

59672.

Brands, Major Products and Services

Unilever company focus on three major categories which are food brands, personal brands and home care brands.

1. Food Brands

• Wall's
• Knorr
• Lady's Choice
• Lipton
• Planta

2. Personal Care Brands

• Clear
• Dove
• Fair & Lovely
• Sunsilk
• Lifebuoy
• Lux
• Pond's
• Rexona

3. Home Care Products

• Breeze

Corporate Vision

Poverty, malnutrition, climate change and water scarcity are some of the big challenges facing the world as well as Unilever’s business today. Unilever has set their visions and goals to be achieve by the year 2020. Basically, their visions and goals are:

• Halve the environmental footprint of their products
• Help more than 1 billion people take action to improve their health and well-being
• Source 100% of our agricultural raw materials sustainably

Unilever aims to reduce water use in manufacturing. Unilever also work with farmers to reduce the water used in crop irrigation. Unilever also aims to design products which require less water during consumer use and address water scarcity through external partnerships. Unilever’s recently-piloted vitality metric aims to measure a product's water impact, taking into account the water added to products during consumer use which enabling them to identify opportunities for improvements.

Apart from that, in order to respond to climate change issues, Unilever has aim to build on existing reductions to cut CO2 from energy in their manufacturing operations by 25% by 2012. They also aim to improve the footprint of their existing product portfolio using our new vitality metric. Unilever also assess innovations using their greenhouse gas profiling tool and they also work with our customers and suppliers to address our wider impacts. Unilever estimates that the impact of transporting and distributing their products is around 4 million tonnes of CO2 a year. Working with customers and distributors, Unilever are making a start on reducing their impacts to prevent any negative impacts causes by this CO2.

In terms of packaging, Unilever’s goal is to reduce the environmental impact of their packaging while retaining its ability to protect their products effectively. Unilever is currently using packaging materials from paper and board, plastics, glass, aluminium, steel and mixed material laminates. Unilever’s vision is to responsible packaging takes into account environmental, social and economic considerations, as well as the diverse waste collection and management infrastructures found around the world. They have five guiding principle, which are remove, reduce, reuse, renew and recycle. In response to that, Unilever has to design sachets that use less material or material with less environmental impact, support litter awareness programmes and work with others to boost the collection and reuse of our packaging.

Corporate Mission

Basically, Unilever Malaysia has set their mission to ensure that the company will remain success all the time. The main mission for Unilever is to add vitality to life. This mission can be consider same as their company tagline and that is why it has become the main mission for Unilever. Vitality means different things to different people. Vitality defines what Unilever stand for, which represents their values, makes the company different and it has become a way of how the company contribute to society. This adding vitality means that whether it is through feeling great because they've got shiny hair and a brilliant smile, keeping their homes fresh and clean, or by enjoying a great cup of tea, satisfying meal or healthy snack. Besides that, Unilever also grow its business by addressing health and nutrition issues which focuses more on children and family nutrition, cardiovascular health and weight management.

Company's Current Promotional Strategy

1. Contest
2. Public Relations
3. TV Commercials
4. Wall's Vienetta Rai Kemeriahan Ramadhan
5. Magnum Celebrates Eva Longoria
6. Cornetto Show Your Love during Valentine's Day

Besides all the event above, the company also has set their own strategy. In order to stand out and win the other competitors, Unilever had came out with few strategies to ensure their success in winning the consumers loyalty to their products. The company strategies are:

• Winning with brands and innovations
• Winning in marketplace
• Winning through continuous improvements
• Winning with people

Current Marketing Objective

Short term:

   

• To increase the sales of products not only just in Malaysia, but as well as to all the countries around the world.

• To add vitality to every consumers life with the products.

• To make use of every media to promote their products to consumers.

Long term:

• To create awareness about their products not only for now, but as well as for the next generation consumers.

• Aware of every issues happening not just in Malaysia but also around the world and participate to solve the issues.


Media Expenditure

1. Print media
2. TV Commercials
3. Internet
4. Events and Campaigns