As Unilever’s Global Chief Growth Operations Officer, Debora Koyama has a very simple, but important mission: unlock growth for the company. With more than 25 years of experience, Debora has worked for some of the biggest companies in the CPG space including Mondelez, Anheuser-Busch InBev, L’Oréal, Diageo and Kraft Foods. She left her last company and role as CMO for the opportunity at Unilever to get closer to the operations and P&L side of the business and because she couldn’t be any more aligned with Unilever’s vision, mission, and values as a company. Right now, Debora’s focus is on maximizing innovation for the company across the business.
On the premiere episode of The Business of Marketing podcast, Debora shares her thoughts on optimizing end-to-end customer experiences, the rise of brand trust, and putting purpose at the center of everything you do as a brand or business.
Tune in to hear more from Debora on the first episode of The Business of Marketing alongside Janey Whiteside, Chief Customer Officer of Walmart and be sure to subscribe to The Business of Marketing podcast via Apple, Spotify, Anchor, or Google Podcasts.
How do you think about growth and how do you work with your CMO?
We have a CDMO at Unilever, Conny Braams, and she’s a wonderful leader. And it’s great that her role combines the two disciplines, digital and marketing, because the two disciplines are just so intertwined and it’ evolving to be even more connected.
In the more classic CMO scope, I would say Conny will be responsible for everything that’s under that umbrella, including marketing philosophy and capabilities. Then I’ll come in and make sure that we are applying those philosophies with teams in the markets across the entire world. Especially from an end-to-end standpoint, not only consumer, but also shopper and customer.
Can you describe this concept of optimizing end-to-end customer experience at the local level?
As for any CPG global company, the consumers, shoppers and customers differ quite significantly in the local markets. We have 15 big geographies for Unilever globally, so we want to be sure that you’re adapting your messaging, behaviors from the brands to the local communities end to end to be relevant and compelling locally.
How are you thinking about marketing to deliver a service to the company and to consumers?
Marketing is critical in adapting fast to the evolving consumer shifts, be in relation to portfolio, communication, pricing so it is a constant adaptation capitalizing on tailwinds or minimizing headwinds.
Especially after last year, we are still in this quite uncertain territory and then be able to shift very fast in terms of what you’re going to be supporting in terms of portfolio, channels, communication, pricing to really maximize the parts of the business that are potentially more posed to do well, like hygiene for example, is key. Marketing to me is critical. In the growth hackathon that we ran last year, we focused on two categories that were much more impacted by COVID, haircare and deodorants because people were just using less of those products while spending so much time inside. We really leveraged the power of marketing in those occasions as well to unlock and find new ways of growing those two categories.
Another big topic has been brand health and purpose and really having a step up into providing a service for society. How do you think about that?
I have been a champion and believer of purpose, social impact and sustainability for 10 years now, since I launched my first platform in that space. That’s what I was saying before, I couldn’t be more aligned with Unilever’s vision, mission and values.
We just released some very bold, I would say humbly, social commitments that are leading the way. I think what we saw last year, even more so is that people were looking for one, availability, giving the pandemic, but also trust in brands. So that favored big brands and big companies. And linked to that, going back to purpose, I believe it’s even more relevant these days and critical to make sure that you have purpose at the center of everything that you do. I’m excited about what we can possibly do going forward. If you’ve seen the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, basically in 2020, people were really trusting businesses above any other institution, so I think we have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to lead the way as brands and businesses. I think it’s an exciting time for us with that role in society.
I believe it’s even more relevant these days and critical to make sure that you have purpose at the center of everything that you do.
With everything that has happened in the last year, we saw a massive technological leapfrog. What are some of the things that you’re excited about that are coming down the pipe?
I’m going to step back for a second. When we had the pandemic hit globally, we ended up having what we call an agile squad, thinking about what the big implications for Unilever were in the short to mid-term. We all said “this is the moment to really double down on digital transformation” as we all have been looking to do in CPG. So that’s a macro lens of what we are trying to do in terms of totality of digital transformation. At the end, we saw last year the acceleration or even the emergence of social commerce or the massive explosion of aggregators and DTC.
But for us, I would highlight the focus on eCommerce, both Omni channel, as well as pure play, but also different business models. I’m very passionate about digital, and this is an exciting time and landscape. I think we must accelerate even more as the landscape has progressed so much faster across all these different sectors. We’re focusing on making sure that we’re getting ahead on e-com and everything that goes under that.
What advice would you give a CMO today on how to truly have impact?
Continue to be obsessed about consumers and customers, especially in such evolving and uncertain times that we are in right now. Last year we were all addressing the crisis at hand. I think this year in this new normal, if you will, it’s even more important to continue to be focused on what’s happening with consumers and customers, because I feel that everything can change quite fast, and you must be able to pivot fast. If you’re not being essential to consumer and customers, you may miss opportunities or challenges.
If someone wrote a book about your life, what would the title be?
My title would probably be “The Journey of Purpose” and the reason why I would say that is the combination of my own personal purpose and finding that linked to my career as a journey.
My own personal purpose is about inspiring and unlocking the best out of people, especially young talent. I’m very passionate about that – motivate them to be the best that they can possibly be putting purpose at the center, and ultimately impact the world. I am very happy that I’m able to live that purpose being in business today. There was a time that I thought maybe I should potentially one day work for the UN or a non-profit to have a bigger impact in the world. I feel very lucky and privileged because I realized that, as I was saying earlier, we in brands and business can have a big role in impacting society and the world today. So those two points coming together – personal and professional – leads me to “The Journey of Purpose” as my book title.
