From Culture to Cart - Esi Eggleston Bracey

Nearly two years have passed since Esi Eggleston Bracey took on one of the biggest jobs in global marketing, leading brand and communications at Unilever. Now, the company is in the throes of a dramatic transformation.

With a plan to channel around half of its entire marketing budget into social media and the creator economy, Unilever is overhauling how it connects with consumers. Throw AI into the mix, and the emerging change becomes even more profound.

Yet, despite the scale of the shift, Unilever's chief growth and marketing officer Eggleston Bracey insists that the fundamentals of marketing remain constant, even if the tools are evolving.

“Marketing is clearly about making sure you understand people and then you communicate the brands and products in a way that addresses people's needs,” she outlines. There should be no “getting distracted” by what is changing from delivering the fundamentals of marketing, is her belief.

Eggleston Bracey - who trained as an engineer - is fully aware of the fluidity in today’s media landscape, and the growing complexity of consumer attention. With no one-size-fits-all solution, brands are battling media, creators and audiences themselves in a war for relevance.

To meet that challenge, she has introduced a new marketing model for Unilever’s brand teams, designed to reflect the increasing personalisation of content and the fragmentation of media.

 “It is really a big transformation. What that requires is how we elevate the desirability of our brands so that we can catch attention in this complicated world,” she continues, outlining a shift away from the ‘One To Many’ approach to ‘Many To Many’.

“It's many people communicating to many other people to get scale, or many pieces of content that address this individualism. Personalisation at scale… You have many pieces of content that can appeal to many different people,” she says of brands clamouring for attention.

Preparing For the Creator Economy

Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez has called for the company’s brands to be represented by creators in every postcode. Unilever is now working with 20 times more creators than it did last year.

With roughly half the marketing budget now allocated to social media and creator collaborations, Eggleston Bracey says it’s "fundamental" for Unilever’s marketers to be prepared.

“The Many-to-Many model is rooted in others saying your brand message on your behalf and sharing your message. Every idea you have is, ‘Do I care?’ and ‘Is it worth sharing? You have to make sure every idea is meaningful,” she advises. 

To enable that, she encourages teams to find where a creator and their audience naturally overlap with the brand. Authenticity is key, as is clarity around the brand’s values, tone of voice, and cultural relevance. “You’re not just paying for fame,” she adds.

One tool helping this shift is 'Brandverse', a platform that allows Unilever to deliver hyper-local influencer marketing. It connects nano-influencers to mega ones, generating word of mouth within communities, whether it’s a local comment or a product recommendation shared with neighbours.

Eggleston Bracey denies being daunted at the prospect of involving external influencers within the marketing mix, describing it as “a new behaviour” that is both necessary and exciting for marketers.

“At the end of the day, what we're driving is our brand's competitiveness. The metrics matter, right? We want our brands to win share in the marketplace. Why? Because we're critical and essential in people's lives. If we push a message that's not relevant, that won't happen. So our marketers are embracing that,” she outlines.

At the start of May, Unilever held an internal event for its 6,000 marketers internationally to unlearn and learn to operate with the ‘Many-to-Many’ model, as well as using tools and examples to understand tips for success.

One such example is the Persil collaboration with Arsenal Women and the ‘Dirt Is Good’ platform, developed with agency Mullen Lowe. The ‘Every Stain Should Be Part of the Game’ campaign encouraged girls to embrace the messier side of sport.

Another saw a partnership between Dove and US dessert brand Crumbl, resulting in a Walmart-exclusive body care range inspired by the bakery’s most popular flavours, such as Lemon Cookie body scrub and Confetti Cake body wash

“So, Dove, in terms of cracking culture, went into this fandom and community, collaborated with Crumble and with Walmart, the biggest retailer, and created the Dove Crumble collection,” she explains. “This whole idea of building brands and culture and content to cart. This is a wonderful example because it starts with this content from culture.”

A further standout campaign was Hellmann’s Super Bowl spot starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, reprising their roles from 'When Harry Met Sally'. The ad proved so popular, the pair were invited to present the Best Film category at the Oscars a month later.

The role of agencies in a changing world

As Unilever’s marketing model evolves, so too do the demands on its agency partners. Eggleston Bracey is clear about what makes a great partner in today’s environment: "First, they need to be clear on what the brand stands for—and help us maintain that clarity. Whether you’re a creative agency, media agency or influencer agency, brand centricity is essential."

But just as important is adaptability. “In this new world, where local and global must coexist, agencies have to bring cultural relevance to life in specific markets while still holding the brand together at a global level,” she adds. “And we need partners that work at the speed of culture—agile, responsive, and willing to evolve.”

The adoption of AI

And while the company has been embracing the Creator Economy, it has also forged its path to include AI.

Eggleston Bracey has previously shared with Creative Salon how she has been accelerating its use across the entire business, including the introduction of an 'AI Playground'.

But there is more for her to consider when it comes to content creation and using AI. Dove and its 'Real Beauty' promise have been close to her heart throughout her seven years at Unilever. She is protective of both, especially having promised to feature only real people and not use AI-generated models within Dove’s marketing.

Eggleston Bracey is clear about the challenge of upholding the 'Real Beauty' pledge as the technology evolves.

“The AI pledge comes out of that. You have these unrealistic, idealised views of beauty, and from the onset of AI, that's what we're seeing - the old version of the supermodel that no woman could expect as the standard. It does harm to have that as a standard… We're committed to our pledge because we see it being harmful in that AI will continue to evolve, and we'll have to evaluate where we are. So, it'd be remiss to say for the next 100 years, but I'm very confident in Dove’s commitment to the idea of real beauty.”

The world of marketing, according to Esi Eggleston Bracey

What makes a good creative marketer?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is a reaction that creativity is everything. I talked about how you build the desirability of the brand and how you move to a many-to-many model. What is the fuel of that creativity? It's understanding what people want and then the creative transformation of that.

So in all the tech and tools, we can't lose sight of creativity. So what makes a creative marketer? I don't think I've ever contemplated what makes a creative marketer. I think it's the ability to blend this urge beyond reason and logic to create desirability for creativity with logic. When I say logic, it is with frameworks, crystal clarity, and focus. Creative marketers, I believe, do both. If I think about myself, I'm an accidental marketer. I'm an accidental executive. I was trained as an engineer, so I love numbers, solving problems, getting crystal clear on the problem to be solved, identifying the focus areas, and talking to you about where we focus.

When I came into marketing, what I learned was my creative side. It's like I was free. I think a creative marketer has the balance of those - the discipline to focus in this wild, wild world we're in, identify priorities, understand the problem, to solve, clear on what consumers need, clear on what - and I don't like to use the word 'consumers' - clear on what people need, because we're more than just consumers. Clear on what retailers need, clear on what the business model is to create value, and clarity. That's discipline and then the creativity to bring that to life in a very cut-through, engaging way that delivers that urge.

Is there any other marketing you've not been involved with that has inspired you, or made you jealous?

When you look in the industry, you see two different kinds of models in marketing. You have the more traditional models that come from more historically larger-scale companies, and then you have more of the insurgent models that started today. They don't have a history to reconcile with. I almost always admire those insurgent models, the freedom of brands that are born, the Poppis of the world, and other beverages, some of the makeup brands and beauty brands that launch, and how they communicate the irreverence of that and how they connect into culture. What I believe Unilever has the opportunity to do is to be like those insurgents at scale because of the heritage and nature of Unilever and our creativity, and that's what I'm seeking to drive in this role - to scale that creativity, that desire at scale, that personalisation at scale, engaging culture at scale, through culture-to-cart.

What makes a really good agency partner? What is it that you look for your agencies to deliver?

That is also an excellent question. One is to be clear on what the brand stands for, and to help us with that clarity. When you say 'agency', there are so many different kinds of agencies, there are media agencies, there are creative agencies. There are influencer agencies, but every agency needs to be clear on the brand and what it stands for. So embracing that brand centricity.

The second thing is responsiveness in this new world that is local and global together. When I say 'responsiveness in the New World', you have to build the brand and respect the brand holistically, but the brand comes to life in local culture. So I need agency partners that can manage that local relevance, but also bring to life the glue that works in the brands, right? And then I need agencies that work at the pace and the speed of culture, that are willing to evolve and to change.

What has been your boldest creative play so far in your career? 

I’ve been lucky to use my strengths to break barriers and create opportunities. To help people, even in a small way. 

One bold moment was creating Febreze with my team, that is now a $1bn business at P&G. It started with an insight I uncovered, a concept I wrote, and a test market launch. Originally named Fabreze - short for “fabrics back to fresh”- it was later changed to Febreze for national launch for trademark strength. It was designed to help people in small spaces, especially those with pets or smokers, feel more comfortable in their homes.

Secondly, it would be diversifying the face of beauty by bringing faces like Queen Latifah to Covergirl. That one change 20 years ago felt incredibly bold at the time. And then again to have the privilege to work for Unilever and Dove. Being the executive founder of 'The CROWN Act' in the face of children being turned away from school and adults denied employment because they wear their hair in a style like mine, because they are viewed as untidy or unprofessional.

Through my position at Unilever, I’ve had the great fortune to lead and champion, so many other brands and initiatives to help people and grow our business.

What is feeding your creativity at the moment? 

Sleep! When I’m well-rested, I’m more creative. I take inspiration from the world around me, everything from people, music, books, smells, streaming, and food. The other thing is walking. The more I walk, the more I observe - and my mind makes connections. For me, creativity starts with wellness.

Is there a recent campaign or ad that you haven’t made that you have particularly admired? 

 I really liked Billie’s recent deodorant advertising in the US – where you could smell the deodorant from posters in the street.