Unilever's "Positive Beauty" Vision

Unilever's "Positive Beauty" Vision Unilever shared the Positive Beauty vision of its beauty and personal care brands including Dove, Elidor, Simple and Axe at the Sustainable Brands Conference, where purpose-driven companies, brands and leaders present their visions for change. At the Turkey leg of the conference, held annually in 14 different countries by the 'Sustainable Brands' community of global brands that integrate positive-impact innovation into their business models, Unilever Turkey, Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran Marketing Director responsible for Beauty and Personal Care Category and Unilever Turkey Board Member Alper Eroğlu discussed Unilever's sustainability legacy, the Positive Beauty vision and commitments, and global and local research on consumer expectations from the beauty and personal care sector within this vision. The panel was moderated by journalist Şirin Sever. After addressing the comprehensive actions undertaken by Unilever Beauty and Personal Care Category under the Positive Beauty commitments, Eroğlu also introduced for the first time at the Sustainable Brands Conference an artwork created by multidisciplinary artist and illustrator Gökçe İrten for Positive Beauty. Alper Eroğlu: "At Unilever, our path has long been shaped by purpose-driven and future-ready business models. Ten years ago, with the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, we declared ambitious commitments to reduce our environmental impact and create value for the planet and people, while asserting that it would be possible to grow our business while doing all this. Looking at the results we achieved ten years later, we see that we have proven that a company can grow its business while simultaneously creating value for the world. However, at the point we have reached today, there is much to be developed regarding climate crisis, environmental degradation and inequality in income distribution. This year Unilever made a number of new commitments. The Positive Beauty vision is among the most current of these. With our beauty and personal care products, we reach 1 billion people daily, and with our marketing activities, far more. This gives us real power to make a difference. With this vision, we will redesign our entire way of doing business from A to Z to make our beauty and personal care business more inclusive and equitable for people and more sustainable for the planet. Consumer expectations from us actually point in this direction. With these commitments, we work in many areas from our understanding of beauty to gender equality, from our work on global bans on animal testing to projects we conduct for forests and oceans. According to a global research we conducted for Positive Beauty, 74 percent of people want "a more inclusive definition of beauty." In Turkey, more than half of people don't see a similarity between themselves and characters in advertisements. One in three finds the characters in communication work exaggerated and unrealistic. From this perspective, we can see the alignment of the Positive Beauty vision with consumer demands and the spirit of the times." Eroğlu stated that they are inviting all stakeholders to the movement they have launched with Positive Beauty: "We aim to lead a transformation that cares for the planet and all living things on it, and embraces individual differences and needs of people. We hope that roadmaps similar to Positive Beauty will be adopted by stakeholders in the sector and that benefit-oriented strategies will increase. When sustainability and inclusivity become sectoral, their reflections on both our planet, humanity and our business will be much stronger." Eroğlu continued: "Working with artist and illustrator Gökçe İrten to visualize the rich world of the Positive Beauty vision added a new dimension to our vision. Thanks to this work, inspired by the values we seek to protect and highlight in our commitments, imagination, the plurality of beauty, the World and every living thing on it, Positive Beauty will now live in artworks and continue to spread its messages more powerfully through artistic expression!" Artist and illustrator Gökçe İrten, expressing that Unilever's Positive Beauty vision and effort to create value for all living things is very valuable, said: "Unilever's Positive Beauty vision not only reminds us that it is time to look more inclusively at the colorful and diverse beauty of one another as humans, but opens a much wider door in the name of inclusivity. The Positive Beauty vision reminds us that as all living beings we share the same home and that we need to create benefit for one another. We have one home, our world. Just as we care for our loved ones, we embrace our world with the same compassion and respect. We exist with our world and all its beauty. Beauties where different bodies and different souls come together for the same purpose. That is how I portrayed Positive Beauty."

Consumers Find Advertisement Characters Unrealistic and Exaggerated

Online research conducted by Unilever Beauty and Home Care category with Twentify Bounty in Turkey with the participation of 1,200 people presents striking insights into consumer expectations:

• 51 percent cannot establish a connection between the characters/actors they see in advertisements and their own lives; 59 percent say there is no similarity between characters in advertisements and themselves.
• 36 percent say advertisements do not reflect their lifestyles.
• 27 percent of people find elements in advertisements exaggerated, 25 percent find unnatural/artificial characters unrealistic.
• 77 percent of people say beauty and care category products should make them feel good mentally.
• 81 percent of people in Turkey say they would prefer environmentally friendly brands to other brands.

• • Among the factors affecting product choice; products being environmentally friendly (31 percent), effective use of natural resources (17 percent) rank in the top 5. Offering economical products ranks third.
  • 50 percent say they would choose products that harm the environment less even if they were 50 percent more expensive.
• The proportion of those who believe brands should conduct solution-oriented work on nature and environment is 83 percent.
• 46 percent expects brands to conduct purpose-driven work on natural production that does not harm the environment, while 32 percent expects focus on recycling.

With the "Positive Beauty" vision, Unilever is moving forward to deliver greater positive impact for people and the planet beyond reducing its environmental footprint. In this context, it aims for its brands to lead an understanding of beauty that is equitable and inclusive for people and sustainable for the planet. Drawing strength from Unilever's superior innovation and technologies, the Positive Beauty vision also points to a transformation in all processes related to products. This new and ambitious vision consists of the following commitments:

• To free the understanding of beauty from narrow frameworks and contribute to ending discrimination and advancing inclusivity in this field, by reaching 1 billion people annually until 2030 to promote health and wellbeing and foster development of an equitable and inclusive perspective. Accordingly;

o Creating a more inclusive product portfolio that counters narrow definitions of beauty trapped in stereotypes, contributing to ending discrimination in beauty and advancing inclusivity. (Among the steps taken in this context, the first was removing the word "normal" from products and communication work, which caused people to feel excluded.) o Supporting gender equality through communication that includes advertising and advocacy free from gender-based stereotypes. o Taking steps to improve health and wellbeing by conducting educational initiatives on hand washing and oral hygiene, and developing the focus of these educational efforts to encompass new areas including physical and mental health.

• Contributing to the protection and restoration of 1.5 million hectares of land, forests and oceans by 2030. (This corresponds to an area larger than the land needed to grow renewable ingredients in Unilever's beauty and personal care products.)
• Collaborating with lawmakers, animal welfare organizations and similarly minded companies and conducting advocacy to introduce a global ban on animal testing for cosmetic products by 2023.