Unilever

Crafting a global annual award

Brand identity
Brand campaign
Brand assets
Brand guidelines
Brand activation
Award design
Art direction
Tone of voice

Client

Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, known for its diverse portfolio of brands spanning beauty, personal care, home care, nutrition and ice cream.

Brief

Unilever had recognised their focus on market share, innovation and execution was overshadowing their desire to build brands that change people’s lives. So they created a new global marketing strategy around 3 core principles: were they putting people first? Were they building love for the brand (either individually, or for Unilever as a whole)? And did they have that magic ingredient which captivates and excites audiences? To engage their 7,500+ marketing staff around the world, and encourage them to deliver against the new strategy, they created an awards scheme to recognise exceptional marketing, that changes people’s lives. Unilever asked Rose to create the brand identity and design the trophy for the ‘Crafting Brands for Life Awards’, to inspire their teams to think differently and follow Unilever’s new marketing strategy for all of their global brands.

Solution

Working with the concept of ‘crafting’, Rose created a brand identity and campaign for the awards, that reflected the ethos of the new marketing strategy by using craft throughout the awards identity and trophy design and creation. Rose designed a set of hallmarks, to denote the quality and craft inherent in each category of the awards. To support Unilever’s commitment to sustainability, Rose also recommended they should recycle aluminium from their used products to make the trophies. Working with a metalsmith, the recycled aluminium was smelted down, cut and polished into perfect hand-crafted cubes, before the hallmarks were stamped into each award – one for each category. Rose documented the different stages of the process to use in the design of all awards marketing and communications. To extend the commitment to sustainability, Rose also designed the box for each trophy as a stand, so no aspect of the award or its packaging was wasted or thrown away.

Result

In the 5 years following the launch of the annual Crafting Brands for Life Awards, Unilever’s commitment to a holistic approach to marketing that aims to create brands that are not only profitable but also contribute to a better world, saw an average underlying sales growth year on year of 4.9%, whilst their waste impact per consumer had reduced by around 29%.¹

¹ Unilever Annual Report and Accounts

Unilever

Crafting a global annual award

Client

Brief

Want to discuss a project?

Additional Case Studies

Fresh Awards

D&AD