Unilever Reengineers R&D and Marketing for the AI Age
Unilever’s recently announced research and innovation center is the latest step in the company’s transformation into a digital-simulation-driven, algorithm-optimized enterprise.
During the recent dbAccess Global Consumer Conference, CEO Fernando Fernandez said that five years ago, 80% of the action in Unilever's laboratories was physical. Today, 80% of those operations are digital, a shift that has shortened the company's innovation timeline from two to three years to just nine to 12 months.
The company reports that it can now run more than 10,000 virtual experiments in its labs in seconds by connecting more than 25 million consumer and laboratory data points to drive growth.
"This basically results in what we call advantaged discovery and design. We have more than 15,000 active patents today," Fernandez said.
Beyond R&D, Unilever is applying this accelerated digital approach to its marketing, using an automated content approach designed to "flood the feeds" and ensure its brands remain unmissable in digital culture.
Also: Unilever drives digital commerce growth with AI-enabled strategy
According to Fernandez, these scientific and digital breakthroughs have given the company a distinct advantage in AI discoverability as well, particularly as consumer search habits evolve.
"AI plays in favor of scientific proof, patents, claims, publishing, clinical proof, ratings," Fernandez said, noting that large language models naturally prioritize verifiable data over generic marketing.
Unilever aims to convert this algorithmic advantage into actual sales through its relationship with retailers. Fernandez emphasized that optimizing for large language models is only half the battle; brands must maintain a dominant presence on retail platforms like Amazon to capture consumers the moment an AI assistant recommends a product.
"We now have 26 brands in the U.S. using Amazon-sponsored programs. They fundamentally are integral to the path to purchase of the consumers," Fernandez said. "On Amazon, we now have more than 50 brands in 20 geographies in which we are tracking our presence in LLM versus competition."
