Until recently, I thought that Unilever was a company whose primary purpose was to make products such as shampoo.
No longer. Last week, I chaired a panel of business leaders on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. And during that debate, entitled “The Future of Business”, it became clear that most business leaders do not really want to talk about the grubby financial realities of business these days, or, at least, not at Davos.
Instead, Keith Weed, the charming head of marketing at Unilever, earnestly outlined the social and environmental initiatives that Unilever is now pursuing to help the 2 billion consumers who apparently buy its products each day. Whereas the company used to think of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes as separate from core business, he said, these days CSR is at the core of everything it does.