Lessons from Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty: Unilever marketers forgot product in ‘purpose' mission; ESG the new corporate ‘Voldemort’ but employee, stakeholder strategies a ‘massive opportunity’ for marketing influence in c-suite: Institute for Real Gro

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It’s not often Suncorp’s CMO Mim Haysom is mentioned in the same conversation as Leonardo da Vinci but the latter’s rare ability to combine creative and analytical thinking is what 50 Australian CMOs working with WPP were briefed on recently as the next frontier for business growth and their own professional cred and advancement.

Indeed, Marc de Swaan Arons, a former Unilever marketer who co-founded the non-profit Institute for Real Growth [IRG] - backed globally by Google, Meta, WPP and Tata Consulting - says there’s a ‘massive opportunity’ for marketers to increase influence and impact with executive leadership colleagues via ‘humanised growth'. How? In this instance, it’s by customer-minded marketing bosses offering their strategy and insights nous to help build out divisional and all-of-company stakeholder-employee management blueprints and programs. It may seem fanciful and foreign to already stretched marketing remits but a new global study by IRG across 450 CEOs, CFOs, CMOs and HR leads suggests the notion would be welcomed by company leaders and seen as a credibility enhancer for marketers - if they don’t turn it into a land grab on colleagues.

Suncorp’s Haysom and Piedmont Healthcare’s CMO Douwe Bergsma (US) are already front-running the trend, says de Swaan Arons, who also injects some cool pragmatism into the ESG, DE&I and purpose programs often championed by marketing teams. He cites the raging success and subsequent reality check for marketers working on Dove’s acclaimed Campaign for Real Beauty rollout in 2004 - within two years of that launch, it was in trouble. Purpose had usurped product development. Here’s more from de Swaan Arons and the Institute for Real Growth’s new study.

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