How Does Unilever PR Operate?

Unilever’s PR operations function through an integrated Communications and Corporate Affairs structure spanning five business groups across 190 countries, coordinating approximately 220 communications professionals globally. The company recently merged its corporate affairs, external communications, and sustainability functions under unified leadership to address the interconnected nature of reputation management in today’s policy-sensitive environment.

What makes Unilever’s approach distinctive is its 2025 strategic pivot away from traditional corporate-led messaging toward what CEO Fernando Fernandez calls “said by others” communications—a fundamental restructuring that allocates 50% of marketing spend to influencer and creator partnerships rather than conventional PR tactics.

The Structural Foundation: How Communications Spans a Global Empire

Unilever’s communications architecture reflects the complexity of managing 400+ brands across vastly different markets and product categories. Rather than operating as a centralized command center, the function distributes responsibility across multiple layers while maintaining strategic coordination.

The Communications and Corporate Affairs team organizes around three core objectives that guide all activities: shaping and protecting Unilever’s reputation as a high-performing sustainable business globally, delivering growth and savings through corporate affairs and policy advocacy, and embedding strategy and performance culture throughout the organization. This tri-part mission statement reveals something crucial—Unilever doesn’t view communications as merely a messaging function but as a driver of commercial outcomes and organizational behavior.

The structure spans Unilever’s five Business Groups (Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care, Nutrition, and Ice Cream), the corporate center, and regional markets. Each business group maintains semi-autonomous communications capabilities while connecting to central strategic direction. This means a brand like Dove has dedicated communications support that understands beauty and personal care dynamics, while simultaneously aligning with corporate-level reputation priorities.

The global corporate communications team comprises approximately 220 people, though this represents just the core corporate function. When you factor in brand-level communications staff, agency partners, and regional market teams, the actual PR ecosystem supporting Unilever’s operations extends into thousands of professionals worldwide.

The recent January 2025 reorganization fundamentally reshaped this structure. Following the departure of global head of communications Paul Matthews after six years, CEO Hein Schumacher merged corporate affairs, external communications, and sustainability under Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer Rebecca Marmot. This wasn’t merely organizational housekeeping. Schumacher explained the move reflected “the increasing extent to which the external policy environment impacts our commercial and sustainability ambitions”, acknowledging that reputation, policy, and sustainability have become inseparable in practice.

The Operational Model: Three Pillars of Communications Execution

Unilever’s PR operations execute through three distinct but interconnected pillars, each requiring different skill sets and strategic approaches.

Media Relations and Thought Leadership

Traditional media relations remains a cornerstone, though its execution has evolved significantly. The company maintains a global media relations team contactable through Press-Office.London@Unilever.com, serving as the primary interface for journalists and commentators worldwide. But the real work happens through a distributed network of regional and brand-specific media specialists who understand local market dynamics.

Unilever publishes detailed annual sustainability reports that highlight progress and acknowledge areas where progress has been slower than expected, providing a balanced view rather than hiding challenges. This transparency-first approach to reporting extends beyond sustainability into financial results, brand performance, and corporate strategy—all communicated through coordinated PR efforts that balance honesty with strategic positioning.

The media strategy prioritizes original sources and authoritative platforms. When Unilever makes significant announcements, it typically releases information through multiple channels simultaneously: press releases via PR Newswire, direct media outreach to tier-one business and consumer publications, and coordinated social media activation.

Crisis Management and Reputation Protection

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Unilever quickly shifted messaging to address urgent consumer and community needs through its “United for the Future” campaign, demonstrating commitment to supporting frontline workers, providing essential products, and ensuring safety. This rapid-response capability illustrates how the communications function operates under pressure.

The crisis management framework operates on multiple time scales. For immediate issues (product recalls, facility incidents, leadership changes), pre-established protocols kick in with designated spokespersons and message frameworks. For slower-burning reputational challenges (sustainability criticism, labor disputes, brand controversies), cross-functional teams assess, strategize, and execute longer-term response campaigns.

The company’s internal communications strategy fosters collaboration and transparency, with regular updates, virtual town halls, and digital platforms allowing employees to engage directly with leadership. This internal-first approach ensures employees understand company positions before external stakeholders, turning the workforce into informed brand ambassadors rather than surprised bystanders when issues arise.

One often-overlooked aspect of Unilever’s crisis approach: the company doesn’t fight every battle. Head of communications Paul Matthews acknowledged in 2023 that “Unilever perhaps overstepped a few years ago talking about brand purpose in isolation to everything else you need for a brand to grow and be successful”—a rare public admission of strategic miscalculation that actually strengthened credibility by demonstrating willingness to course-correct.

Policy Advocacy and Stakeholder Engagement

The policy advocacy dimension has grown increasingly critical as regulatory environments impact business operations. The merger of communications with sustainability wasn’t accidental—environmental regulations, plastic packaging laws, labor standards, and data privacy rules all require coordinated communication strategies that span multiple functions.

Unilever engages in active policy dialogue with governments, NGOs, industry associations, and international bodies. The communications team doesn’t just react to policy changes; they proactively shape conversations around issues like sustainable agriculture, plastic waste reduction, and supply chain transparency. This requires deep expertise in both communications and substantive policy areas, which is why the team includes specialists in campaigning, advocacy, and research alongside traditional PR professionals.

The Radical Strategic Shift: From Corporate Voice to “Said by Others”

The most consequential change in Unilever’s PR operations isn’t structural—it’s philosophical. In March 2025, newly appointed CEO Fernando Fernandez announced a transformation that fundamentally challenges how consumer goods companies think about public relations.

“Today, brands – by definition and by default – are met with skepticism when their messages come directly from corporations,” Fernandez stated. “Creating marketing activity systems where others can speak for your brand at scale is incredibly important. Influencers, celebrities, TikTokers – these are the voices that matter”.

This isn’t marketing hyperbole. Fernandez committed to increasing influencer and social media investment from 30% to 50% of total marketing spend and working with 20 times more influencers than previously. His vision: “There are 19,000 zip codes in India. There are 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want one influencer in each of them”.

For PR operations, this represents a seismic shift in resource allocation and capability requirements. Traditional PR focused on crafting messages and securing media placements. The new model requires identifying, vetting, contracting, briefing, and managing relationships with thousands of individual creators—each with their own audience, voice, and content style.

Dove’s #ShareTheFirst campaign exemplifies this transformation—it’s the brand’s first campaign made entirely from creator content without studios or added production, developed with agency partner Edelman. Rather than treating creators as media channels to amplify centrally-produced content, Unilever increasingly hands creative control to influencers who create authentic content that resonates with their specific communities.

A Dove spokesperson explained their approach: “Our approach to influencer marketing has always been to develop long-term relationships with content creators through consistent engagements. This includes nano-influencers (less than 10k followers) with highly engaged audiences, and micro and macro influencers with bigger audience sizes”.

The scale challenge is substantial. Managing partnerships with potentially tens of thousands of creators requires “extensive management and expertise” according to Kantar’s Jane Ostler, who notes that brands typically have “little control over influencers’ output”. This represents the inverse of traditional PR control mechanisms.

Purpose-Driven Communications: The Evolution of Brand Activism

Unilever built significant reputation capital over the past decade through purpose-driven brand communications—Dove’s Real Beauty, Ben & Jerry’s climate activism, Lifebuoy’s handwashing education programs. But the approach has evolved in response to both criticism and commercial reality.

The company faced pushback for what some viewed as overly aggressive purpose positioning. By 2024, CEO Schumacher justified revised sustainability targets by saying Unilever was “not watering down” but “doubling down in those areas that most materially impact the business”—signaling a more selective approach to which causes warrant significant communication investment.

Matthews explained the recalibration: “What we’re trying to do is break the paradigm which says that sustainability and business performance don’t go hand in hand. We’re not an NGO, we’re a corporation, so we have to be clear about sustainability as a performance driver, rather than just a good thing to do for society”.

This doesn’t mean abandoning purpose—it means being more strategic about which brands pursue which causes and ensuring clear business cases support communications investments. For Dove, purpose remains central, with leadership emphasizing “Purpose is the secret sauce of Dove, and purpose has been at the center of the growth trajectory of this brand”.

The operational implication: PR teams must now demonstrate not just media impressions or sentiment scores, but measurable commercial impact from purpose-driven campaigns. This elevates the analytics and attribution requirements for communications teams.

Digital and Platform Strategy: Where Modern PR Actually Happens

While traditional media relations persists, the bulk of Unilever’s PR operations now unfolds across digital platforms where the company engages billions of consumers directly.

Unilever developed a global playbook through collaboration with major partners like TikTok, Meta, Google, and Twitter/X, outlining guidelines for various platforms considering factors like video length, pacing, and tone of voice. These playbooks represent operational knowledge that communications teams use to ensure brand consistency while adapting to platform-specific norms.

The company’s partnership with TikTok launched a #CleanTok content hub that garnered over 98.5 billion views in its first year, demonstrating how platform-native content strategies can achieve reach that traditional PR couldn’t match.

The digital operations require constant adaptation. Ana Paula Duarte Rocha, who leads Unilever’s Latin American digital efforts, notes that “digital marketing creativity is catching up, but there’s still work to be done in automating and making creative production more dynamic”—highlighting ongoing operational challenges in scaling content production to meet platform demands.

Social listening and real-time response capabilities have become essential. The communications team monitors conversations across platforms to identify emerging issues, track campaign performance, and spot opportunities for engagement. This requires analytics capabilities that go well beyond traditional media monitoring services.

The Agency Ecosystem: External Partners as Force Multipliers

Unilever doesn’t operate its PR function in isolation. The company maintains relationships with dozens of agencies globally, each bringing specialized capabilities or regional expertise.

Major agency partners include Edelman (working with brands like Dove on creator-led campaigns), various WPP agencies, Publicis Groupe (handling multiple Southeast Asian markets), Dentsu, and Interpublic’s Initiative. The agency roster expanded recently as Unilever split global media duties among six agencies rather than consolidating with fewer partners.

This multi-agency approach reflects both Unilever’s scale and its strategic philosophy. Different business groups and regions have distinct communication needs that single agencies struggle to serve optimally. A beauty brand launching in Indonesia requires different expertise than a food brand navigating European grocery retail.

The downside: coordination complexity. Managing consistent messaging and strategic alignment across multiple external partners and internal teams requires significant project management and relationship management capabilities within the corporate communications function.

Measuring What Matters: How Unilever Evaluates PR Performance

The metrics evolution mirrors the strategic shift. Traditional PR measurements (media impressions, share of voice, sentiment analysis) still matter, but they’ve become table stakes rather than primary success indicators.

The new measurement framework emphasizes business outcomes. When evaluating influencer campaigns, Unilever now tracks conversion metrics, sales lift, and customer acquisition costs—measurements historically associated with performance marketing rather than PR. Success metrics for influencer campaigns now include sign-ups/downloads (46% of campaigns) and sales (44%), both figures up sharply from previous years.

For corporate reputation work, the company monitors trust scores, brand power indices, and stakeholder perception studies. But critically, these feed into commercial metrics. The question isn’t just “Do stakeholders view us favorably?” but “Does favorable perception translate into purchase intent, partnership opportunities, or regulatory goodwill?”

This measurement rigor creates accountability but also pressure. Communications teams must justify investments with data-driven business cases rather than intuition about brand building. Some argue this short-changes longer-term reputation work that doesn’t immediately translate to sales, but Unilever’s approach reflects broader industry trends toward demonstrable ROI from communications spending.

Challenges in the Current Model

No organizational model operates without friction, and Unilever’s faces several notable challenges.

The influencer-first strategy, while directionally sound, presents execution risks. Tracking how thousands of influencers represent Unilever’s broad portfolio of brands is a massive task, and investing so heavily in one marketing strategy without diversifying approaches is risky, even for established companies. Brand safety concerns multiply when control diffuses across numerous external creators.

The merged sustainability-communications structure has drawn criticism. Some sustainability advocates argue that combining these functions subordinates environmental and social goals to corporate messaging priorities—exactly the concern that led many companies to establish independent sustainability roles in the first place.

Geographic coordination remains challenging. While Unilever has some geographic elements to its organizational structure, the core focus on Business Groups means there’s potentially limited support for market-specific operations. Communications strategies that work in North America or Western Europe may not translate to emerging markets with different media landscapes and consumer behaviors.

The pace of change creates adaptation challenges. Communications professionals hired for traditional PR skills must rapidly develop capabilities in creator management, platform strategy, and data analytics—or risk obsolescence. This transformation requires significant investment in training and potentially difficult decisions about team composition.

Where Unilever PR Operates Differently From Competitors

Comparing Unilever’s approach to competitors like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, or Coca-Cola reveals distinctive operational choices.

First, the integration of sustainability into communications leadership is relatively unusual. Many competitors maintain separate sustainability and communications functions, which Unilever argues creates silos and misalignment. Time will tell whether the integrated model delivers better outcomes or simply creates role overload.

Second, the aggressive 50% allocation to social and influencer represents a bolder bet than most competitors are willing to make. While everyone is increasing digital and influencer spending, few established consumer goods companies have publicly committed to such dramatic reallocation away from traditional advertising and PR.

Third, Unilever’s transparency about missteps—acknowledging the purpose positioning went too far, admitting sustainability progress hasn’t met all targets—stands out in an industry where corporate communications typically emphasizes positives and downplays challenges. This honesty carries risks but potentially builds long-term credibility that serves the company during inevitable future controversies.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Unilever’s communications function structured after the 2025 reorganization?

Communications now operates under a unified leadership structure combining corporate affairs, external communications, and sustainability, led by Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer Rebecca Marmot. The function spans five business groups, the corporate center, and regional markets with approximately 220 core communications professionals globally, plus extensive brand-level and agency support.

What does Unilever’s shift to “said by others” communications actually mean?

It represents a strategic pivot from traditional corporate-led messaging to influencer and creator-driven communications. The company is increasing influencer investment from 30% to 50% of marketing spend and plans to work with 20 times more creators, essentially outsourcing brand storytelling to trusted third-party voices rather than relying primarily on corporate PR channels.

How does Unilever manage crisis communications across 190 countries?

The company operates a tiered crisis response system with pre-established protocols for immediate issues and cross-functional teams for longer-term reputational challenges. Internal communications receives priority to ensure employees understand company positions before external stakeholders, and the global media relations team coordinates messaging while empowering regional teams to adapt to local contexts.

What role do traditional PR tactics still play in Unilever’s operations?

Media relations, press releases, annual reports, stakeholder engagement, and policy advocacy remain important foundations. However, these traditional tactics now represent a smaller share of total communications activity and budget compared to digital platform engagement and influencer partnerships. The balance continues shifting toward “earned attention” through creator content rather than “earned media” through journalist coverage.

The way Unilever operates its PR function reflects both enduring principles and dramatic evolution. The core mission—building reputation, managing relationships, and shaping narratives—remains constant. But the methods, channels, and capabilities required have transformed substantially even in just the past few years.

The company’s willingness to publicly embrace major strategic shifts, acknowledge past missteps, and experiment with approaches that carry meaningful risk reveals an organization trying to maintain relevance in a rapidly changing communications landscape. Whether Unilever’s specific choices prove optimal matters less than the broader recognition that standing still guarantees obsolescence.

What’s particularly interesting is how Unilever has expanded the definition of PR operations beyond traditional boundaries. Policy advocacy, sustainability strategy, influencer partnerships, and digital platform optimization now sit alongside media relations and reputation management as core communications capabilities. This expansive view better reflects the interconnected nature of modern reputation work, even if it creates daunting complexity for teams trying to execute across such varied domains.

For organizations studying Unilever’s approach, the key lesson isn’t necessarily to copy specific tactics but to embrace the underlying principle: PR operations must evolve as quickly as the media landscape and stakeholder expectations change. What worked five years ago won’t work today. What works today probably won’t work five years from now. The organizations that build adaptive capacity—not just fixed playbooks—will be the ones whose PR operations remain effective through whatever transformation comes next.