Silvia Lagnado, new group vice-president at London-based Unilever, embodies marketing championship—in particular, the ability to "span silos" by building bridges between marketing and her company's many other functions to generate cash flow. She heads a team devoted to "brand development," including conceptualizing new products and creating advertisements, packaging, and marketing strategies.


Silvia Lagnado

In her daily operations, she interacts with Unilever's finance, supply chain, research and development, and human resources departments. She also collaborates extensively with the many far-flung brand-building teams of salespeople and marketers operating around the world to bring the division's offerings to market.

Silvia says the most effective way to "market marketing" in an organization is to make it very personal for staff in other key positions. She advises: "Have people think about which brands they themselves really respect and which products they love—then ask them what has made them think and feel that way. They will likely discover that a marketer's efforts are behind their feelings of respect and love."

What follows is part of an interview I conducted with her to learn what makes her a Marketing Champion.

* * *

Roy Young: Tell me a bit about your background. Did you come up through the typical marketing ranks? Or was your path to where you are now more diverse?

Silvia Lagnado: I joined Unilever in 1986, in Brazil, after getting a degree in civil engineering. But I've always worked in marketing and brand development, and the work has taken me all over the world—Brazil, the United Kingdom, Argentina, and the United States.

RY: In your view, what skills have been most important to your ability to succeed on the job?

SL: I'd say it's hard work, the ability to combine strong analytical skills with intuition, the courage to take risks, integrity, and the ambition to do good work.

RY: Of all the groups with whom you and your team interact, which relationships are the most likely to experience some tension?

SL: My team's relationship with the brand-building groups is most likely to experience some tensions and complications. The brand builders are under enormous pressure to deliver our products to market every day, to both distributors and consumers. They need product mixes on time and in full from my team. If we don't have a good relationship with them, they may start perceiving us as uncommitted to the work.

RY: What steps do you take to construct a bridge between your team and the brand builders?

SL: I've found that aligning both sides behind a compelling vision is crucial. If we can both get emotionally attached to the vision—and agree on where we want to take our brands, why this is an exciting space, and how we plan to succeed there—each group can look beyond its own pressures to the more important, higher-level goals.

RY: In your division, are you the person who articulates that vision and strategy? If so, how?

SL: It's a bit of an art rather than a science. But to me, a good vision needs three elements: It has what I call a spiritual component; it taps into our desire to do something good for society. It has an emotional component; it makes people feel eager to be working together. And it has an intellectual or rational component; it communicates a clear marketing strategy—the set of steps we need to take to get the product to market.

In crafting our vision for a product, my team often talks with sociologists, anthropologists, and other academics about how our product could serve a real need in society.

RY: Can you give me an example of a vision that helped you create a bridge to the brand-building teams?

SL: When I ran the Dove brand for Unilever, we developed a vision that had to do with helping women feel beautiful. Core to our vision was widening the definition of feminine beauty and challenging stereotypes about what beauty looks like. We wanted to position the Dove brand as a way to help women feel greater self-esteem and appreciate the diversity of beauty. We spent a lot of time and effort on research and on talking with sociologists about girls' and women's body image.

It takes work, but you can't give up until you have the vision and until it means something personal to each person who hears it.

RY: How do you know when you've crafted a compelling vision?

Subscribe today...it's free!

MarketingProfs provides thousands of marketing resources, entirely free!

Simply subscribe to our newsletter and get instant access to how-to articles, guides, webinars and more for nada, nothing, zip, zilch, on the house...delivered right to your inbox! MarketingProfs is the largest marketing community in the world, and we are here to help you be a better marketer.

Already a member? Sign in now.

Sign in with your preferred account, below.

Did you like this article?
Know someone who would enjoy it too? Share with your friends, free of charge, no sign up required! Simply share this link, and they will get instant access…
  • Copy Link

  • Email

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • Pinterest

  • Linkedin


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Roy Young
Roy Young is coauthor of Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies for Improving Marketing's Power, Influence and Business Impact.