Tag Archives: access

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POST #9: Corporations and Sustainable Living for All?

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unilever-proj-sunlight

unilever-proj-sunlight

As I was trying to clear my head by streaming a few shows, I stumbled on an advert for Unilever’s Project Sunlight – a social mission that provides stories and insight for how we can make small changes in our everyday lives. Now I’m all for sustainable living and would like to think I do a small part to make a bigger difference; as I’m sure many of us wish we could do more. So needless to say, this ad caught my eye.

We live in a society whose lines are beginning cross boundaries/countries. Technology has provided access to global and local issues that impact all of us. And it seems during the holiday season that we see an increase in corporate advertising. This could be a result of a more common presence and realization that everyone is struggling; although dependent on where we are in the world, our struggles may vastly differ.

Unilever's Project Sunlight

Unilever’s Project Sunlight

In what Unilever refers to as a “global movement,” Project Sunlight is a campaign created leveraging Ogilvy’s expertise – if you haven’t heard of Ogilvy, they are an amazing international advertising, marketing and public relations agency. Project Sunlight is about establishing a unified belief that “creating a #brightfuture for all children is possible through simple, sustainable choices.” The initial locations launched for Project Sunlight include: UK, US, India, Brazil and Indonesia – all of which can be viewed via the initiative’s media wall.

If you are unfamiliar with their history, Unilever is certainly in a spot where they could use improvement with creating a more progressive brand image. Unilever’s ploy with their video launch of Why Bring a Child Into This World for Project Sunlight is to send a universal message to people from many different backgrounds. Not to mention tug and pull on our heartstrings as effectively in each locale. This global standardization of Unilever’s campaign provides them with multiple benefits – including a brand image refresh.

People’s lifestyles have become increasingly similar (at least in relation to socio-economic background) with the establishment and improved access to the Internet, not to mention social media in particular. So I suppose a certain amount of support for global standardization on the topic of creating a brighter future is not far off the mark.

There will always be critics, cause haters gonna hate. Check out The Daily Banter’s post or the article published for The Guardian for a variety of commentary about this initiative. I can easily state that I’m not brand loyal to Unilever, but I have to commend them on trying to do the right thing. As with many moral dilemmas, I think time will tell (or sell) us on the idea or not.

I suppose the question is this; do we live in a global society who has the same drive for social justice to serve the improvement of all humanity? I for one, hope so!

Additional deets and interesting links that may be of interest…


Partnerships (via the Unilever website)

A brief personal commentary on Unilever’s social media campaign for Project Sunlight (a Twitter bias?)

Unilever has created Project Sunlight somewhat as a social media campaign. So it was weird to me that each social media venue doesn’t connect to the others (e.g., there’s no link to Twitter via YouTube). Even on the Unilever website they don’t provide insight or links to various social media venues – unless you count the media wall, which appears to display selected tweets. Not even when you redirect to Unilever’s main website’s Contact Us page – that’s a sure miss on their part! Yet on their official Facebook page (vs. the one that came up in auto search (another fail)) you can immediately click to either post or tweet. Tweet on!