Super retailer TESCO has been having trouble lately with
lack of increase in its sales and threats to its profits. This saw an exit of its
CEO Philip Clarke who is a veteran TESCO. The new CEO is Dave Lewis, he comes
from Unilever. I think Dave will be successful.
I believe Dave Lewis was responsible for the success of Dove
soap from the early 1990s. For a long time Dove was a high price product,
people wanted it but could not afford it. Then due to a combination of
circumstances such as the expiry of patents and change of marketing strategy,
the price fell. This made an aspirational product affordable and peopled voted
for it with their purses. The internet also tells me that Mr Lewis knows a
thing or two about price wars. I have a feeling he knows the link between
aspiration, affordability and pricing.
Unilever itself seems a sort of place which knows about
innovation and how to put it across. Pepperami is a Unilever product. Read its
constituents. They tell you it is made with 145% pork. Now that should make
anyone think. They take 145 grams of pork and dehydrate it to make 100 grams of
pork which is then used to make Pepperami sticks.That is certainly innovation, marketing and value creation all in one.
Each of us will have our own views about the usefulness of
the products made by multi-national companies but we cannot deny they do know a
thing or two about adding value into a product and creating value for their
customers. Unilever certainly does.
While I am aware that many predictions will turn out to be
wrong, the combination of Unilever, Dave Lewis and TESCO seems very positive.
Time will tell whether it really turns out positive.
HEMADRI
follow me on Twitter @HemadriTweets
