Paul Polman argues that companies exist to improve the world, and that a company showing positive impact is one people will allow to continue. Purpose, in his account, is not new and not optional: he quotes Colin Mayer’s definition that purpose is to profitably solve the problems of people and planet.
The conversation moves from how he turned Unilever, through what purpose did to brand growth, to a direct challenge to marketing leaders about the responsibility they carry.
Key findings
- Sustainability was translated into commercial terms before it was acted on. A taskforce turned the UN goals into business language, and four areas alone produced an opportunity of 12 trillion dollars to 2030 and the chance to create 380 million jobs.
- Purpose showed up in growth. Brands that had internalized a stronger purpose, about half the business, grew 50 to 60 percent faster than the rest and were more profitable.
- The employer outcome is the statistic he values most. Over the following decade the company became the most desirable employer brand in most of the markets it operated in.
- He rejects the idea that stakeholders must be balanced against shareholders. The companies he describes believe shareholder return is the result of doing everything else well.
- Responsibility extends to the whole value chain. Companies that limit themselves to their direct impact, which he equates with corporate social responsibility, are working with a model that no longer functions.
Turning a large company starts with people
His first move was people rather than strategy. The company was too big and complex for one or two people to set direction, so it had to be co-created with enough critical mass to move the organization.
The motivations he works with are ordinary. People want to succeed, to be valued, and to know where their efforts lead, and an environment that allows that unlocks a store of creative energy.
A disproportionate amount of the early years went into leadership development, structured over three years: finding your purpose, then making your purpose influence others, then getting results.
The payoff he describes is alignment. When personal values and purpose match the company’s, people are more motivated and energized, and the program let the company see and develop talent at the same time.
What marketers were asked to change
He is blunt about the requirement for the job. In his view you cannot be a successful marketer or CMO if you do not care about people, and you have to go out there actively.
The practice he introduced was physical rather than analytical. Home visits and then retail visits became the norm, and bit by bit the brands recovered what they had originally been created for.
He also insists the basics do not change. Quality, price, availability, customer service and a working value chain still have to be right, which is why the company built a compass stating what it would not compromise on.
Purpose sits on top of that as differentiation. Whatever the business, it exists to make something better, and a purpose defined that way will by definition connect to one of the sustainable development goals.
The argument about having no space
Asked how a leader creates room to act when markets and investors push the other way, he refuses the premise. He says he never felt in his career that he did not have the space.
His challenge to the audience is about privilege. They are educated and largely financially secure, they survived childhood and got an education, and they belong to the 5 percent of the world’s population who won the lottery ticket of life.
The advice attached is uncompromising. If a company genuinely does not care, leave it, because you will not develop in line with your values and life is too short.
His definition of leadership follows from that. Real leaders put themselves in the service of others and are better off as a result, and self-worth measured by net worth does not work.
What the crisis exposed
He lists the lessons: that nature, health, climate and the economy are linked, that the system leaves too many people behind, that the social contract fails the people most needed, that science counts, and that global cooperation is unavoidable.
His warning is historical. The social cohesion problems left unaddressed after the financial crisis produced populism and nationalism at the polls, and he asks marketers not to make the same mistake twice.
The opportunity he sees is redesign rather than restart, with bike paths and green energy creating an economy with better and more secure jobs, because they are the jobs of the future.
Marketing’s part in that is narrative. It is often the narrative that drives human behavior, behavior changes shift boundaries, and shifted boundaries produce system change.
The courageous CMO
He sees little difference between the CMO and CEO roles, and says the marketing job is a great one if the holder assumes the right level of responsibility. His criticism is that the profession became complacent and stopped staying ahead of what matters to people.
The evidence he offers is that consumers are ahead of companies on plastics in the ocean and on climate change, and that ninety percent of consumers in one market said they did not want to return to how things were.
His definition of marketing is broad enough to include himself. Guiding collective behavior toward a better planet, better global cooperation and opportunity for future generations is a movement he wants to be part of.
On courage he goes to the etymology. The word comes from the French for heart, and people who have courage start with the heart.
He also declines to be copied. His advice is not to mimic anybody, because everyone is unique and the combined strength of different backgrounds is what is needed, and to use the defining moments in a life to work out what matters.
What he asks a group of CMOs to do
His challenge to the network is to pick a small number of issues and use collective scale on them. He nominates wealth inequality and climate change as the two most burning.
His theory of change is about critical mass rather than politics. Change happens because groups of people come together and give politicians the confidence to make it.
He points to advertising itself as leverage, using the example of portraying women differently, and admitting the company had been as guilty as anyone of the old depiction.
The conditions, in his reading, have improved. Five years of data show ESG funds doing well, governments are moving, technology has moved, and young people are purpose driven, so the job is different rather than easier.
He closes on what he expects to be remembered for. Not the shareholder return, the profitability or the growth, but having touched over a billion more lives and shown that long-term multi-stakeholder models beat a narrow focus on shareholder primacy.
Scope and limitations
This is one leader’s retrospective account of his own tenure, given in conversation. The brand growth and employer brand results are his own reporting rather than independently sourced.
Source
This page summarises Humanizing Growth Series: Paul Polman & Marc de Swaan Arons in Conversation, by Paul Polman, Marc de Swaan Arons, 2020.