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Raphael ThysWe catch up with the hygiene and health giant’s marketing boss, Fabrice Beaulieu, who has been nominated for The Drum and the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global Marketer of the Year award.
Fabrice Beaulieu is a veteran at Reckitt, having served in a variety of marketing roles since 1999 before being appointed chief marketing, sustainability and corporate affairs officer in April last year. Since then, he has implemented a number of new processes to accelerate the performance of the hygiene and health giant’s brands globally, including the launch of a Marketing Centre of Excellence and a new brand purpose agenda.
In the coming year, he is focusing on the ways in which it can make its advertising more sustainable – particularly through new production models such as ‘virtual studios’.
Here, we quiz Beaulieu to find out more about that plan. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
You have instigated a major shift towards a purpose-led brand strategy at Reckitt. This year has seen the idea of brand purpose come under a critical spotlight. How do you balance purpose with profit and ensure that the marketing aligns with the wider business goals?
Brands usually come under the spotlight when they behave unauthentically. We are cognizant of this and always want to act with intention, meaningfully. What our brands exist to do is clear and was always there, but it also has expanded in the last few years as peoples’ expectations shifted around sustainability. People now demand – across generations, across geographies – that brands become more sustainable.
We have pivoted our model to build categories while at the same time delivering more sustainable products (less plastic, greener chemistry, lower carbon emissions) and an active and positive contribution to society. Brands are expected to act, fight, impact!
In practice, this has two major implications for a marketer. First, it reframes innovation: top-quality must go hand in hand with higher product sustainability, and secondly, it also reframes communication: the programs of positive impact a brand creates can become the core of its communication.
In other words, sustainability is now at the heart of the brand playbook. Therefore, it aligns naturally with most business KPIs. At least that is how we see it at Reckitt.
When it comes to your purpose-led brand initiatives, are you changing the metrics by which you measure success?
Absolutely – our understanding of success has dramatically broadened. Our metrics are business and sustainability metrics. We are looking to both grow our categories and make a measurable impact in the world. It sounds perhaps a little abstract, so let me give you an example. Let’s take a look at what our [dishwasher tablet] brand Finish does around water. Today, already 2 billion people face some level of water limitations in a year. Unfortunately, that number will go up significantly in the next decade.
The Finish teams have therefore redesigned our product to make pre-rinse unnecessary. Most people who have a dishwasher indeed rinse their dishes in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher and, in doing so, waste around 40 liters of water – each time!
The brand is on a mission to tell these facts in dozens of countries globally and inspire this meaningful change of behavior: skip the rinse. And it works: in Turkey, we collect water bills, therefore we know that the water consumption of those who skipped the rinse is around 20% lower. Meanwhile, more tablets get sold overall (11% in volume last year) because the machine gets used more frequently.
That’s a concrete example of sustainability metrics aligning directly with business goals.
How are you working more effectively with agency partners in 2022/23?
We resort more and more to powerful frameworks, like the AA Ad Net Zero and the WFA Planet Pledge. These are two initiatives I have deeply admired in the last 12 months. These frameworks are designed to take our industry on a journey of concrete action in the field of sustainability and climate. These programs help us as an industry to move forward, defining joint actions together with our closest partners.
Embedding sustainability deep into marketing thinking has inspired stand-out innovation and creativity across all Reckitt divisions. It has also completely transformed the conversation with our closest creative partners. It has broadened our insights, enriched our briefs and energized our talent. It’s also made us realize even more how close our values are to theirs. I would like to celebrate here a few of our key partners, McCann Group, Havas, Brandtech Group and Publicis, for their relentless passion, their growth mindset and, obviously, their creativity.
That creativity will be more and more brought to life by new production models – virtual studio models, mostly, because they cost less if you know what you are doing and because they emit less carbon. Virtual production can also liberate your agency’s creativity. You can deliver your message from a kitchen or the top of a futuristic building, a mountain or a desert… all shot seamlessly in the same studio. We really want to lead the industry in that direction of virtual production and our partners are deeply engaged in that journey with us.
What are the biggest challenges facing FMCG marketing leaders today?
The marketing playbook is rewriting itself as we go. Embracing that change is both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge facing marketing leaders.
Sustainability is a whole new ball game for marketers. It makes everything increasingly complex as you need to look across the whole end-to-end value chain, from sourcing and production to consumption and post-use. The constant evolution of the digital landscape makes our interactions with consumers significantly different from even just two-to-three years ago. Our creativity and content are being stretched to totally new horizons.
It’s an exciting time to be a marketer, but it can also be a little daunting – overwhelming, some may say. That’s why we completely relaunched our Marketing Academy at Reckitt to be tech-led, personalized and gamified. Tech really shapes and nurtures the learning culture we want in the company, plus it ensures it is totally inclusive and that everyone can get involved! And it’s a learning culture that our closest partners also fully embrace.
In the face of a bleak economic outlook for 2023, how are Reckitt’s marketing priorities changing? What does your marketing mix look like for the year ahead?
Firstly, we truly empathize with what many of our consumers are going through all over the world. At Reckitt, we go out of our way to ensure broad access to our products, securing various price points and types of solutions in our portfolio of brands.
These economic challenges reaffirm our belief in superior product quality and brands that step up to impact society positively, delivering value in product usage and beyond!
We have a renewed focus on productivity to drive down our costs. This year, for example, we partially internalized our production to unlock major efficiencies without any compromise on quality. There is no spending bucket that remains untouched!
You can vote for Fabrice Beaulieu to be named Global Marketer of the Year. Voting closes January 31.
Google's ad business is under the gun, thanks to a new antitrust lawsuit brought by the DOJ and a handful of US states. The development has some experts saying that Google's days of marketplace dominance are limited.
What happens if a groundhog runs amok in a bar? Watch Samuel Adams’ latest spot and find out.
The root beer brand takes aim at M&M’s in a tongue-in-cheek social media post.
Google's ad business is under the gun, thanks to a new antitrust lawsuit brought by the DOJ and a handful of US states. The development has some experts saying that Google's days of marketplace dominance are limited.
Google is under fire for allegedly abusing its dominance in the digital advertising marketplace / Mitchell Luo
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) alongside eight states brought a new lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech titan of illegally operating a monopoly of the technology backing the digital advertising economy.
The lawsuit alleges that Google has “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”
The DOJ and other plaintiffs hope to break up Google’s adtech business so as to decrease its marketplace dominance. (Last year, Google owned nearly 29% of the total US digital advertising market, per data from Insider Intelligence).
It’s the second time that the Justice Department has levied an antitrust suit against the company in just over two years – and it’s the fifth major US case that’s taken aim at Google’s business model and practices. The decision adds to growing scrutiny of the tech company and its competitors among government officials and consumers.
In the case that Google’s advertising business is divested, it’s likely that the entire digital advertising ecosystem – a market worth $278.6bn in the US alone – will see a major paradigm shift. Some policy and advertising leaders think that such an outcome would be for the best, and would benefit advertisers, Google’s competitors and consumers alike. Others, however, take a far less optimistic stance.
What will happen if Google’s ad business is broken up?
Many experts see the new lawsuit as a promising step in the right direction, and one that could potentially lead to the divestiture of Google’s ad business and invite greater competition into the market.
It’s certainly the position held by Caitlin Chin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where her research focuses on technology regulation. “The numbers are clear: Google has a dominant position in the adtech industry and is in the position to divert revenue from website publishers, including newspapers and small businesses, as well as advertisers and marketers,” she tells The Drum. “A more competitive industry could usher in more opportunities for small companies and startups to innovate in adtech, potentially creating systems that are more efficient or privacy-protective. In general, greater competition leads to both more innovation and a wider distribution of its benefits.”
It’s not just competitors who would reap the benefits. “From the DOJ’s perspective, a divestiture of Google’s ad business will create positive benefits for advertisers, website publishers and consumers alike: advertisers will experience lower prices, website publishers will earn more revenue and become less reliant on subscriptions or paywalls, and publishers will also be able to invest in additional content that consumers can enjoy. I am inclined to agree with [this] assessment,” says Chin.
Despite many ad industry insiders agreeing with the DOJ’s fundamental argument, some anticipate logistical challenges arising from the dilution of Google’s power. “Short term, everyone loses. Advertising gets harder. Google's [adtech] stack was that good, and it was cheap, scalable and performant,” says Shiv Gupta, managing partner at digital marketing education firm U of Digital.
Still, in the longer term, a dissolution of Google’s ad business is likely to benefit the digital advertising ecosystem by supporting “more competition, more startups, better pricing, better products and more investment," Gupta says. "It would be a boon for the ad industry.”
Many are in agreement that in the long-term a broken up Google will benefit marketers. “Adtech companies will have more freedom to have a dialogue around innovations that put marketers and consumers first [and will] have more room to develop products to accomplish those ends," says Matt Sotebeer, chief strategy officer at Digital Remedy, an adtech platform that specializes in streaming ad performance. "Marketers will benefit from a much more competitive industry with lower costs and more innovative products. Decoupling the ad server from the exchange will open up the supply chain for more competition.”
Of course, not everyone shares the same positive outlook. Josh Withrow, a fellow of tech and innovation policy at the R Street Institute, a free markets-focused think tank based in Washington, D.C., argues that breaking up Google’s ad business will only reduce the seamlessness and efficiency of the current digital advertising ecosystem. “A vertically-integrated system like Google’s adtech stack generally creates efficiencies that lower costs. Forcing costs higher on Google’s platform by breaking it up may benefit its competitors, but it’s difficult to see how this advances consumer welfare,” he says.
“By seeking to break up Google's ad stack wholesale, the DOJ is making the mistake of substituting a hypothetically better alternate history of digital ad markets for the generally well-functioning, competitive one that exists now. That shouldn't be the role of antitrust enforcement.” In essence, Withrow’s point is: why try to fix what’s not broken?
But will the DOJ win the case?
Of course, for now, nothing is a sure bet, as the outcome of the lawsuit is not yet clear. And predictions vary wildly.
Withrow, whose research at the R Street Institute largely focuses on regulation and antitrust efforts in the tech sector, is confident that Google won’t take a real tumble any time soon. “The DOJ is filing this case just as the biggest story in digital marketing has become how quickly rivals like Amazon, Netflix and TikTok are eating into Google’s ad market share.”
In essence, he argues, Google isn’t eating up more of the marketplace right now – it’s losing share. And he’s right: reports from earlier this month indicate that, for the first time in almost a decade, Google and Meta are no longer capturing the majority of digital ad spend in the US. For this reason, Withrow says, “The government’s overarching argument that Google wields monopoly power in the digital ad industry ought to be a hard sell in court.”
Despite Google’s already-diminishing stance in the market, the public discourse surrounding digital advertising – and the data brokering economy more broadly – is reaching a fever pitch. With consumers and policymakers demanding increasingly stringent data privacy protections, the digital advertising sector as a whole is under the gun – which has some experts predicting real consequences coming down the pipeline.
“Google is likely going to have to pay this time,” says U of Digital’s Gupta. “There is far too much negative public sentiment against big tech and targeted ads – with Google being a symbol for both – for Google to go unpunished.” He suggests that Google’s prior efforts to appease government concerns – which included shifting some of its adtech stack to its parent company Alphabet and opening up YouTube’s ad ecosystem to third-party sellers, haven’t satiated officials. “I eventually expect some kind of more meaningful divestiture,” says Gupta. “The DOJ is out for blood.”
Others agree that Google’s days of dominance in the digital ad market are limited. “It's not a matter of if but when Google will be split up,” says Digital Remedy’s Sotebeer.
Unlike Gupta, however, Sotebeer believes the US government may not have to drive the nail in the coffin, as he says the lawsuit could “be designed to push Google to divide on its own.” He suggests the tech company might be pushed to “restructure through its own design rather than by force” – a move that could be accelerated by a recession. As such, he says, the new DOJ lawsuit may prove more symbolic than anything.
In any case, the DOJ has a long journey ahead of it, predicts the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Chin. “The DOJ has laid out a compelling case … but will realistically face a long and challenging path to its desired outcome. In the United States, antitrust enforcers face very high burdens of proof to demonstrate anticompetitive harm, and courts have generally been reluctant to ‘overenforce’ competition cases,” she says.
Even if the DOJ achieves its goal of requiring Google to break up its ad business, there’s no guarantee that the decision will stick. Chin recalls United States v. Microsoft, which, following a DOJ antitrust investigation, culminated in a 1998 court ruling that required the tech company to divide into two separate companies. Despite the damning decision, a federal appeals court reversed the decision just two years later.
However, even if the DOJ’s case against Google fails to result in the divestiture of its ad business, the company “still has many reasons to be worried,” says Chin. Chief among them are the fact that the Biden administration’s top antitrust officials have indicated that they’re “willing to push the boundaries of traditional antitrust jurisprudence to challenge anticompetitive practices in the technology industry,” Chin notes. Plus, a handful of notable antitrust bills were introduced in the previous Congress, which, if passed, would establish new restrictions on Google’s business practices.
At the same time, Google and other tech giants are under coming under increasing fire in the EU, where regulators are attempting to crack down on anti-competitive practices with frameworks like the Digital Markets Act, which was signed into law last September.
Ultimately, Google may have to reevaluate its course into the future. “Since so much of Google’s infrastructure is based on data, it will be interesting to see how they pivot their strategies around innovation if this lawsuit impacts them,” says Brian Mandelbaum, chief executive at Attain, a commerce data platform. “Undoubtedly there will be an effect on revenue, but when all the pieces of a company’s puzzle are focused on data, and one of those pieces is [challenged], it makes you wonder what happens next.”
For more, sign up for The Drum’s daily US newsletter here.
What happens if a groundhog runs amok in a bar? Watch Samuel Adams’ latest spot and find out.
The root beer brand takes aim at M&M’s in a tongue-in-cheek social media post.
A new teaser from Doritos confirms that the “Queen of Rap,” Missy Elliott, will be joining rapper Jack Harlow in the snack brand’s Super Bowl LVII campaign.
A new teaser from Doritos confirms that the “Queen of Rap,” Missy Elliott, will be joining rapper Jack Harlow in the snack brand’s Super Bowl LVII campaign.
Doritos is plotting a star-studded Super Bowl LVII ad featuring not only Jack Harlow but also the “Queen of Rap” herself, Missy Elliott, per a new teaser released this morning.
The teaser, titled ‘Collab,’ shows Elliott answering a phone call from Harlow, with a bag of the brand’s new chip flavor, Doritos Sweet and Tangy BBQ, in her other hand. She seems to respond positively to Harlow’s offer to “collab” – until he evidently brings up a possible “love triangle.”
“I don’t know about that,” she responds. Then, the teaser abruptly ends, leaving fans wondering what this talented duo has planned.
‘Collab’ follows another teaser, titled ‘The love triangle,’ which confirmed fan speculation that rapper Jack Harlow would be starring in the Super Bowl campaign last week. The creative agency behind the campaign has not yet been disclosed.
Frito-Lay has big things in store for Super Bowl fans this year. Last week, another one of its snack brands, PopCorners, confirmed that it plans to bring back Breaking Bad’s iconic antiheroes Walter White and Jesse Pinkman during the big game.
For more Super Bowl LVII ad coverage, check out The Drum’s ongoing scoreboard here. For all coverage, sign up for The Drum’s daily US newsletter here.
Google's ad business is under the gun, thanks to a new antitrust lawsuit brought by the DOJ and a handful of US states. The development has some experts saying that Google's days of marketplace dominance are limited.
What happens if a groundhog runs amok in a bar? Watch Samuel Adams’ latest spot and find out.
The root beer brand takes aim at M&M’s in a tongue-in-cheek social media post.