We work hard to ensure our products are safe and effective. We are committed to making our products accessible and affordable, and to marketing and communicating their benefits responsibly.
Meeting consumer needs
As one of the world's leading consumer goods companies, we use many forms of brand communication. Advertising helps inform people about the benefits of our products and innovations. It is also a way for us to engage with consumers on issues that matter to them. Dove's successful Campaign for Real Beauty broke current stereotypes about beauty. Omo/Persil's 'Dirt is good' campaign emphasises the importance for children of feeling free to play outdoors as part of their learning and development.
At the same time we recognise the influence of marketing and advertising on consumers and take our responsibilities seriously. We have a set of Food and Beverage Marketing Principles to guide our approach to advertising our foods. We do not advertise to children under six years of age. We recently extended this commitment to restrict marketing to children between the ages of 6 and 12, for all products except those that qualify for our Choices stamp.
As part of our commitment to portray healthy images of beauty, our advertising and marketing principles now state we will not use size-zero models to promote any of our brands.
Online advertising and communication are a growing trend. With people everywhere being able to access online material, our new internet marketing guidelines ensure that campaigns aimed at a particular market are sensitive to cultural differences in other parts of the world.
Accessibility & affordability
We continue to seek new ways of bringing our products within the reach of people of all income levels. One way we have done this is by offering our products in small, low-cost packs. This makes them more affordable for consumers on limited incomes and those with only small amounts of cash to spend daily.
For example, our 30g pack of Pepsodent toothpaste in India – enough for a family of five to clean their teeth once a day for ten days – costs just six rupees (around €0.11). Six rupees is also what three eggs would cost locally. The chart below compares the cost of toothpaste with a common staple food – eggs – as an illustration of affordability.
Consumer safety
Consumers trust us to provide them and their families with products that are safe for their intended use. Safety is always considered at the design stage of a new product or process. Safety approval decisions are made through our Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC), which handles over 10 000 approvals a year.
Incidents can occur if we accidentally release a product to the market that does not conform to the standards applicable to the product. Examples can include quality defects, contamination of raw materials or mislabelling of ingredients. Globally, in 2007 we had 10 public recalls because of a deviation in quality or a potential risk to public health (compared to 12 in 2006). All incidents were successfully managed, risk reduction measures taken and follow-up actions carried out to prevent future occurrence.
We recognise that consumers may be concerned about the use of certain chemicals in products. We continue to work with research organisations, industry partners, NGOs and regulators towards enhancing consumer confidence in chemicals, while trying to find alternatives, where appropriate. (See the Public policy engagement section of this report for REACH legislation.)
Assuring safety without animal testing
Consumers trust us to provide them and their families with products that are safe for their intended use. Safety is always considered at the design stage of a new product or process. The vast majority of our products reach consumers without testing any material on animals. We are committed to eliminating animal testing for our business and we are at the forefront of a Europe-wide initiative to find new ways to ensure products are safe without animal testing.
See the Animal Testing section of this report for more on our approach and policy.
Consumer communications
We are guided by four principles in our communications with consumers:
we are committed to building trust through responsible practices and through transparent communication – both directly to consumers and indirectly through other key stakeholders and thought-leaders;
it is our responsibility to ensure that our products are safe and that we provide clear information on their use and any risks that are associated with their use;
we fully support a consumer's right to know what is in our products and will be transparent in terms of ingredients, nutrition values and the health and beauty properties of our products;
we will use a combination of channels, which includes product labels, websites, carelines and/or consumer leaflets to communicate openly with our consumers.
