ABSTRACT
This chapter includes a step-by-step guide to building a sustainable brand – corporate or consumer – with a social purpose at its heart. Update for second edition: an (exclusive) interview with Alan Jope, who took over from Paul Polman as Unilever CEO in 2019. Alan talks about the work he is doing to embed purpose in the core of Unilever’s operating model: “It takes years of disciplined focus from leaders in organisations, and especially I suppose the Chief Exec, to make this everyone’s priority. We have now enshrined purpose in our recruitment and our leadership development tools.” And “[t]here is a dominant paradigm in the world, that there is trade-off between conducting your business responsibly and good financial outcomes in the short term. And I profoundly reject that. I really believe that our brands will be more relevant, our customer relationships will be more rewarding, our innovation will be better, our consumption of resources and therefore cost profile will go down and that we’ll be a magnet for talent if we conduct our business responsibly.”
