How Unilever uses marketing to generate authentic connections and promote D&I education

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Mita Mallick, Head of Cross Cultural Marketing at Unilever.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Before we jump in, I wanted to hear more about yourself and the work you do. Can you tell us about yourself and how you got into this line of work?

Mita: My story starts from being a child who was always really fascinated with storytelling. I was the kid watching commercials. I loved going to the grocery store with my mom and checking out packaging. It was just something I was interested in. 

Most of my life I had been really driven by storytelling and had a great career in marketing at Unilever. 

And it was as I finished my assignment running the Vaseline and Dove portfolio for the US business that the CEO at the time as me to take on the assignment to run diversity and inclusion for North America. I was not too eager to do that because I saw my career staying in marketing. After they asked me about three times, it was my younger brother who said “it’s probably time for you to say yes.”

I think your family knows you the best and as I think about my own career - and growing up as a little brown girl in a white suburb in Massachusetts - my own inclusion journey as a leader, bringing Viola Davis to help turn around the Vaseline business, drove me into the role.

Stefan: Yeah, there are multicultural countries but those challenges still exist. How was it growing up - what was it like for you?

Mita: I always say I grew up in a time and place where it was not cool to be Indian. It was not cool to listen to Bollywood music. It was not cool to wear Indian jewelry. And it was not cool to bring Indian food into lunch. I was bullied pretty heavily, both physically and mentally, from elementary, middle school, and the beginning of high school. And that was really difficult. 

I think what I realized out of that is for a long time I had bullies who had taken my voice. I worked really hard to take my voice back. And that’s part of my purpose. It’s what drives me in this work - to empower the voices of those who have been excluded. To help them find their voice.

Stefan: Absolutely. I don’t think it’s fair for people in the workplace especially, where you go to make money and raise your socioeconomic status. You shouldn’t feel like you don’t belong in a space like that. 

Mita: I think when you go through experiences like that, it actually helps you build a huge sense of empathy. People always say to me “you’re incredibly empathetic. How did that happen” 

I wasn’t born empathetic. I actually think a lot of the experiences that have happened through my life have been gifts. It’s hard to think about it that way when you’re going through it and being bullied. But if you look at it on the positive side - why did I go through these experiences - I now have this enormous sense of empathy that I developed only because the experiences I went through. 

Stefan: Absolutely. So back to your role - are there any challenges you faced early on or mistakes you made? How would you recommend others avoid that?

Mita: I make mistakes every day. We all do. This is courageous work and it’s hard. I think one continuous area of opportunity for all of us is to meet people where they are in their journey. And that’s the exhausting part of this work. Sometimes that’s really hard because I have to cross the street and walk 10 blocks to meet you where you are. But you can’t assume when you’re doing this work that everyone is in the same spot. 

You also have to be really open minded and suspend judgments to the questions people might ask. For example, saying “I don’t understand Black Lives Matter - why isn’t it All Lives Matter?” You could come from a place of “how could you be asking me that question?” and flip it to say this is a great opportunity to connect on this topic and to hear your side and share my side. 

It’s an amazing opportunity when someone asks a question and you suspend judgement and help educate. That’s all there is. It’s always intent versus impact. I like to lead my life thinking 99% of people have great intentions. 1% probably don’t. But people don’t always understand their impact. And if you start a conversation or if someone’s asking you a question and you say ‘that’s sexist, that’s racist, that’s homophobic’ you’ve shut down any opportunity for learning and for building a bridge. 

And so that’s the, I think, really hard part; to suspend our own biases or judgment. 

Stefan: I completely agree with you. I think one of the things I find most interesting is when people are willing to be wrong and willing to take feedback - that’s where you see the most growth happen. But just getting to that point can be challenging. 

Mita: It’s important when we’re doing work as allies for whatever community to say “hey, I made this mistake. And I apologize genuinely. And here’s how I continue to educate myself.” 

Stefan: Absolutely. This brings me to another question - what do you love most about your job?

Mita: I love working with people. Although people are the best, sometimes it’s the worst part of the job. 

I also love problem solving and whitespace. This is a really difficult topic - building inclusive cultures - that doesn’t get solved overnight. And it will consistently be a challenge as our society changes. So that to me is what’s exciting - it’s really challenging.

Stefan: How are you adapting and acting on those changes?

Mita: This actually reminds me of a very vivid memory. My father would leave the house at 8 am and come at at 6 pm and watch the Six O’Clock news. And that’s how he got his news. It was the morning newspaper over a cup of tea and then in the evening at six. Now we have 24/7 access to social, political, and socioeconomic issues and we no longer have the luxury of leaving those issues at the door before we enter work.

One of the reasons I wanted to join Unilever was because of this great line Paul Polman, our CEO who stepped down in December, had. He said there is no line where Unilever ends in society - and that’s no truer than in the world we’re in today. 

That’s what makes it really complex because people are not checking their issues or whatever they’re grappling with in their homes, or their communities, or at the door. They come to work. That’s also what makes it exciting. 

Stefan: I’m glad you brought up Unilever here. I wanted to look at a few campaigns Unilever is running. The first one was the pledge for parental leave campaign that Dove Men + Care ran. Can you tell me more about that?

Mita: It’s Dove Men + Care taking a stand around their purpose for championing paternity leave worldwide so that every dad has the chance to care for those who matter most. I think when you think about that opportunity, it’s huge. Think about those critical moments when men are becoming fathers for the first, second, third time - whatever that might be. 

Those men and those moments matter so much. And there’s such a ripple effect when men are given and allowed the space to care for their families. I think it’s difficult as we talk about the stereotypes and the unconscious bias men face when taking leave. 

Stefan: I’d love to dig into that. What are some of the things you’ve seen men go through?

Mita: Some of the things that come to mind for most of us -- what are dads doing? They’re on the golf course. They’re not really helping taking care of the kids. It’s vacation. Men have similar fears about if they are going to be passed up for a promotion when they’re out. Or are they going to be looked down upon for taking this time off. So all of those things go through minds. 

I didn’t check with my husband, but I’ll share this story. I have a four and seven year old. And when I had my daughter, Priya (she’s four), I remember my husband not telling his employer that I was expecting until about a week before I was going to have my daughter because of his own fears, stereotypes, and biases such as “why does my employer need to know?” I said I don’t have a choice because of my body - I carried my daughter. I was physically changing and transforming at work. So it was something I didn’t have the chance to hide, but at the same time he felt like had to hide it. 

That’s just one story of many of how men grapple with that. 

And of course we know the US - everyone thinks their market is special. But in the US we know that less than one in five men are offered any sort of paid paternity leave. So I think the challenges with this understanding is that you’ve got at least, in the US, the opportunity to look at what the government is doing in terms of federal pay leave. 

Second, there’s an opportunity as we have the pledge.html">Dove Parental Pledge. Not just for men, but business leaders. Everyone taking a pledge on what you are going to do for paternity leave, especially at your company. At Unilever, we have eight weeks paid parental leave.

The third piece, which is really interesting and the big nut to crack is the utilization piece. You can have eight or 16 weeks but if men are not actually taking it, what’s the point? We wanted to also think about what our change can impact internally. I always say our employees are forgotten consumers. We often spend a lot of time thinking about how we’re going to sell Dove Men + Care to you or to that person, but what about our employees? We started to do lots of programs and employee forums about this discussion about men on panels, talking about what it was like for them to take the lead, leaving the challenges they faced. And we’ve seen in our own community, the utilization rate has actually increased. 

Stefan: So you built an internal campaign to get utilization?

Mita: It was just from having open, honest forums and discussions. Having panels that were sponsored by Galvanize, which is our women’s business resource group and Men As Allies, which is our group for men who support women in the workplace. And just having employees share their stories of one father saying “this is my third child, and I didn’t really think there was going to be much value in me taking the full leave and my manager sitting me down and telling me to take the full leave.” He shared the ripple effect it had on his family and his wife - and how life-changing it was for him to do that. 

I think it’s really important for people to role model as senior male leaders taking the full leave off. We’ve had a few of our leaders do that which has been phenomenal. 

The other thing I’m proud that we’ve done is Dove Men + Care set up a paternity leave pledge fund. It’s a million dollar commitment over two years. So any father that doesn’t have access to paid leave can apply for a $5,000 grant. That’s really important to us.

Stefan: Can you talk a bit more about what type of ripple effects this has for men who take advantage of paid leave or the pledge?

Mita: It allows men to have the time at home with their families - and they have financial support to do so. It’s easy to say you want time off, but there are financial considerations and other considerations like if you have support. So that’s really important.

Stefan: Awesome. The other campaign I looked at was around “Show Us.” Can you talk a bit more about that?

Mita: It was really core to Dove’s mission, which is the insight that 70% of women still don’t feel represented in media and advertising. I definitely can relate to that. So this idea of strong, powerful women who look like us, that are represented in this beautiful online marketplace of images in collaboration with Dove, Girlgaze, and Getty Images to start Project #ShowUs. 

I have memories of being a marketer and sitting through agency presentations where there were stock images and they would be all white models looking the same. And I might ask a question about if the images can be more diverse. I’d be told not to worry, it’s just stock images. But I should be worried because that’s what gets rooted in our bias and unconscious bias because we start to think, well, this is what beauty looks like. 

Stefan: Yeah. It’s so important to start changing what representation looks like in advertising and media. 

Mita: Yeah. There are 5,000 images that are really inclusive of beauty. And it’s 100% powered by women - 39 in front of and behind the camera. You can also go online and submit your own photos as well - we’re trying to create a movement to make the largest database of images of real women. 

Some of the most important things can be subtle. Whenever I see a dark brown hand holding a product or something I’m thinking wow, that’s subtle. 

Stefan: It’s inspiring to see the type of impact brands can have in society. You mentioned before that there’s a lot of development around cultural competence that you’ve done internally. Can you share a bit more about how you define cultural competence at Unilever and why it matters?

Mita: I would start by talking about my passion for inclusion and marketing. The way I try to explain this to people is to start on the workforce side and say you can hire me because I’m an amazing talent but you can’t include me because I’m a brown woman/ and that’s the inclusion piece on the workforce side. Then you go to the brand side and the content side - you can put me in a piece of content because I am a brown woman but you cannot include me because you don’t understand the history of my community or my experiences. And we see that happening over and over again, the marketplace and people being very vocal about it. 

Cultural competency to me is at the heart and the foundation of marketing because my job is to know you so well and so intimately as a consumer that I can surprise and delight you with a product or service you didn’t expect. But that means understanding you as a person and your experiences in your community. That’s why it’s essential to do what we do. 

Stefan: How do you speak to someone in a way that they resonate with?

Mita: It’s really understanding your consumers and understanding an experience that you might not have lived through or that’s not your own. That’s where empathy and deep understanding is so important because I’m never going to fully know what it’s like to be you. I can only as empathetic as I can to try to understand what that experience is. 

Stefan: How do you build that skill over time?

Mita: We started a series called the cultural immersion series. We started with unconscious bias training. But the cultural immersion series was really to say we need to study and deeply understand the communities we want to serve. So it’s very different than different than unconscious bias training. 

We created the first in the series with a company called Language and Culture Worldwide, based out of Chicago. It’s called The Experience of Being Black in America. We have that understanding The Experience Of content for being LGBTQ, Latinx, and we just rolled out Muslim experience. And we’ve trained over 5,000 people locally and globally. 

Stefan: How does this differentiate from unconscious bias training?

Mita: I think unconscious bias training gets a bad reputation in the marketplace. I would argue that unconscious bias training is really critical if you have a continuous plan of learning afterward. But you have to actually make people do the work. 

We don’t have enough discussions, I think, about continuously learning. The cultural immersion series is very different in the sense that you are thinking about unconscious bias and stereotype threat. And things that a certain community might be facing or up against. But you’re going to deep into that one community. At Unilever, we’re not unilaterally choosing these communities. We’re looking at the majority in the US and the populations we want to serve and have to serve - and figuring out how we can deeply and authentically connect.

I would also say my experience here - people ask me what’s the result. I mentioned 5,000 people we’ve trained locally and globally. We have a lot of our agencies participating now as well. Ogilvy in London, to give a shoutout, has taken their agency through these experiences. Because Unilever is just one of many clients, there’s so much demand for these that we can’t actually have all of our agency partners come and sit on the session. So we offer the curriculum. We’ve actually used our intellectual capital and time to create it - but anyone can use the curriculum as long as they pay for the facilitation costs from Language and Culture Worldwide. 

To our discussion on continuous learning, this is an opportunity to help marketers continuously upskill themselves. Growing up, it was always data, insights, to action. And to trust your gut. And I think that’s really dangerous because the gut is a product of life experiences - and it’s completely biased. So we’re trying to re-train marketer’s guts. It doesn’t happen overnight. 

Stefan: How does this training impact the bottom line?

Mita: The proof is in the pudding. As you think about Unilever and other amazing brands with purpose. From Dove, it’s from marketers thinking really critically about who we are serving and how we can authentically connect with them. Another great example is what Dove is doing with the crown-act.html">CROWN Coalition, a movement to fight hair discrimination in the workplace. 

Stefan: Amazing. How did you get buy in to put 5,000 people through this education?

Mita: I’m really passionate about piloting things and bringing people along the journey. It’s hard to get people to come and have maximum utilization for learning.

We did as much as we could to get the program in a really great place (through pilots). I’ll tell you - when you pilot something with 30 people and those people all feel like they’ve touched it. That it’s an ecosystem that created it. Those people go around and say “oh my god, I was just part of this amazing pilot. We’re going to roll it out. Please go.”

So it wasn’t overnight that we trained 5,000 people. It was really to think about how you can get a group of people who are committed to help and feel like they own it - then they become your ambassadors to spread the word on how important it is. 

Stefan: So you’ve got workshops. What can people do outside of these workshops to keep learning going? 

Mita: It’s never ending. There’s lots of things post immersion that we include. I’m personally very active on LinkedIn, other social channels, or podcasts or articles - there are so many ways to learn online. I just discovered that Yale University has open source education - you can watch a lot of their lectures are recorded and available to anyone. One of them is a course on African American History, which I would like to upskill myself on.

It’s kind of overwhelming the amount of information you have. 

Second, attend business resource group events that are in your companies or colleague’s companies. There are so many events happening that you can participate in. 

Stefan: How does impact change in different areas of the world?

Mita: For sure. The Black Experience, for example, we teach in certain different parts of the world and it’s in a colonized and conquered country.so the theme is still there - it just depends on how it landed in each part of the world. 

When you look at diversity and inclusion globally, gender is always the entry point. So we’re working around issues on gender and we’re looking at how to be a great ally for the LGBTQ community. We’re looking at how we can be a great ally for individuals with a disability. So there are some themes that work globally. 

Stefan: Awesome, thank you. Onto the lightning round - what’s your favourite quote?

Mita: Almost anything Maya Angelou has said, but specifically “people won’t remember what you said or what you did, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.”

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Mita: My family - specifically my daughter, Priya, and my son, Jay, and what kind of world they’re going to be raised in. 

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed the way you look at the world?

Mita: Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Becoming by Michelle Obama. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Mita: I’m going to give the worst answer: Alexa. Only because we ask her for the weather every morning.

Stefan: How can people connect with you or opportunities at Unilever?

Mita: I’m very active on LinkedIn!

Stefan: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining the podcast!