In a rare joint interview, we catch up with CMO Alessandro Manfredi and vice-president Firdaous El Honsali, as well as Ogilvy ECD Dan Fischer. Left to right: Dove's CMO, VP and Ogilvy ECD / Ogilvy The ethics and business case of brand purpose has been called into question in recent years, especially within Unilever. In 2022, investor Terry Smith claimed the company was “obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business.
” Its current chief exec, Hein Schumacher, recently said purpose can be an “unwelcome distraction.” But there is a Unilever brand that breaks the mold and that is Dove. The soap maker has witnessed the hype around brand purpose go full circle, having done purpose marketing before the term was even coined.
Despite cynicism creeping in, it has maintained and even strengthened its purpose strategy. Its chief marketing officer Alessandro Manfredi tells The Drum: “Dove has proven every single year for the last 20 years that purpose is not inconsistent with profit, but actually accelerates profit. People forget that it’s not necessarily easy to create a flywheel of purpose and ensure that it actually drives the acceleration of growth of brands.
” So, how does Dove do it? Creating the purpose flywheel According to Manfredi, brands need to do three things to make purpose profitable. Firstly, ensure purpose is relevant to the industry the business is in. For Dove, it makes skin care p.