Dive Brief:
- Unilever has struck a five-year partnership with Google Cloud as the CPG giant prepares for a shift toward agentic commerce and artificial intelligence-powered marketing, according to a press release.
- The owner of brands like Dove and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise will migrate its integrated data and cloud platforms to Google to build out an enterprise-wide AI infrastructure. Unilever will use tools such as Google’s Vertex AI to develop capabilities in areas including brand discovery, measurement and marketing.
- Unilever is trying to account for potential coming changes in consumer behavior, where more people find brands and shop via conversational AI assistants. Google has also recently signed agentic deals with several major retailers that sell Unilever products.
Dive Insight:
Unilever’s five-year pact with Google demonstrates that the CPG marketer is taking the rise of agentic commerce seriously. The deal will see the sprawling company migrate its own data platforms and enterprise applications to Google Cloud as it tries to stay on the leading edge of the AI race. Linking with Google is a sign that technology “has moved to the core of value creation at Unilever,” according to Chief Supply Chain and Operations Officer Willem Uijen.
“As brands are increasingly discovered and chosen in environments shaped by AI, we must lead this shift,” Uijen said in a press statement.
The news follows Google inking agentic shopping partnerships with top U.S. retailers like Walmart and Target last month. Target separately is among the first companies to test ads in OpenAI’s ChatGPT program, including for advertisers that buy campaigns through its retail media network.
Unilever will leverage Google Cloud technology to evolve its approach for new consumer behaviors that could emerge with agentic commerce. The partnership is also meant to help Unilever generate demand faster, convert data into actionable insights and respond more quickly to changing market trends. In addition, Unilever will create internal agentic workflows for completing complex tasks.
Unilever, which is in the midst of a lengthy reorganization, has previously highlighted AI use cases for its marketing, including through the creation of “digital twins” of its products that can be easily adapted across different storytelling formats. Last year, the company launched an internal division, Sketch Pro, that relies on generative AI for graphic design. More recently, CEO Fernando Fernandez discussed outfitting Unilever “for the AI age,” a process that will involve transforming every piece of the value chain.
“That means deploying AI to supercharge demand generation, scaling and hyper-targeting marketing content, partnering with consumer faces, [large-language models], and working with retailers on agentic shopping models, creating a future fit model for how our brands are discovered and shopped,” said Fernandez on an earnings call last week.
Doubling down on AI follows the departure of Unilever Chief Growth and Marketing Officer Esi Eggleston Bracey late last month amid a move to bring the firm’s business and marketing groups closer together. Leandro Barreto, former CMO of Unilever beauty and wellbeing, took over the top marketing job.
