Unilever has expanded its Go Global digital marketing incubator initiative at this year’s Mobile World Congress, aiming to help small to medium-sized, established businesses to expand their global reach.
At this year’s mobile event, the FMCG giant selected seven marketing technology start-ups to invest in as Unilever looks to create “new marketing platforms” in-house rather than just relying on agency partners.
The seven digital companies selected (named later this month) were awarded $100,000 and their technology will be incorporated into a Unilever brand’s marketing campaign in the UK, US, South Africia, Indonesia, India, Brazil or Argentina.
The selected agencies will help Unilever with seven brands: Unilever, Clear, Surf, Magnum, Flora/Becel Pro.Activ, Hellmann’s and Vaseline.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress 2014, Unilever’s Senior VP of marketing, Marc Mathieu commented: “Start-ups are very nimble, agile and very much able to take risks to invent new marketing platforms…and create new experimental and future models (that we can tap into at an early stage).
More brands are bringing (start-up companies) inside as a strategy opportunity because part of being a big corporate or agency is the need to move away from an insular world. And Go Global helps companies go from start-up to scale up.”
