Meet the Expert
Geoff McDonald
Former Global VP - Marketing, Communications, Sustainability and Talent, Unilever
- London-based thought leader and global advisor in HR, marketing, communications and sustainability.
- Career at Unilever spanning 25 years, culminating with his leading the company's groundbreaking work in business model transformation with purpose at its core.
- Previous roles at the company have included work across Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Unilever is a global corporation with turnover of £50 billion and 150,000 employees in 90 countries.
- A sought-after speaker, he inspires and provokes organizations to put purpose at the center of everything they do. Has spoken at Cambridge University, Warwick and Oxford as well as corporate events across Australia, Europe, Japan, North America, and Africa.
Meeting Packages from $500
Your Meeting Package Includes:
- All 7 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
Purposeful Business - Doing Well by Doing Good
Former Global VP - Marketing, Communications, Sustainability and Talent, Unilever
Key Trends
- Capitalism 1.0 has fostered a lack of trust.
- There is a growing awareness that Capitalism 1.0 is not working.
We've got a crisis in liquidity and a crisis in reliability. As employees and as customers, people have lost confidence. If your pension was dependent on Enron surviving, you would not have confidence in Capitalism 1.0 today, or in the big banks either, after 2008.
Capitalism 1.0 has not been mindful of the environment. There is a growing awareness that the planet cannot indefinitely support consumption-driven wasteful lifestyle.
The “trickle-down” effect of wealth creation we were told to expect has not materialized. There’s a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.- Studies show that the 83 wealthiest people in the world today are worth as much financially as the 3.5 billion people who are at the bottom lower half of the population.
- The wealthiest 1 percent are worth $110 trillion, which is 65 times the worth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
- In the U.S., the wealthiest 1 percent has captured 95 percent of the post-financial crisis growth since 2009.
- Since 2008, the bottom 90 percent just became poorer.*
*Source: Forbes, 1/23/14; Oxfam International “Working for the Few,” January 20, 2014 - Wealth is increasingly concentrated, but social media has dispersed the power.
- Just as the industrial revolution empowered companies, the digital revolution has given individual people the power to communicate instantly with just about everyone else in the world. One false move that leads to one negative story can damage a company significantly and with astonishing speed. Your company or organization can be famous overnight, but for all the wrong reasons.
- When a Goldman Sachs employee spoke out about the culture of cynicism and greed he'd encountered working there, the story went viral and the value of the company was down by more than $3 billion within 24 hours.
- Two guys who got on to Twitter and YouTube and Facebook were able to form a movement which led to the overthrow of the Egyptian government in just 17 days.
- The growth markets are moving South and East.
- Growth is going to come from the developing emerging markets. Europe and North America are not going to be the growth engines of the future. The world is moving east and south. By 2050, according to U.N. projections, Nigeria will have a larger population than the United States. India will soon have more people than China.
By 2020, there will be two billion new first-time consumers on the planet. In these markets, people tend to be more exposed to the hardships climate change is already producing, and well-acquainted with the hardships related to disease. The brands, products and companies that help alleviate those hardships and make their lives easier and healthier will win their business and their trust.
In the emerging economies, it's all about building trust in a brand by being useful and seeking opportunities to create social and environmental benefit. The two are often very closely linked. For a first-time consumer in the developing world, it's all about "what is this product going to do for me?" You have to know your market well and really know and understand what the people are actually up against. if you have a short supply of water, for instance, a product that is insensitive to that reality is not going to win your business. You have to be ready to innovate and adjust based on the realities that exist. - Women are gaining power and independence.
- While there's still a long way to go, women are steadily gaining power, independence and influence throughout the world. Without succumbing to stereotypes, as executives, women do tend to bring a different dynamic to business because they tend to be more inclusive and cooperative, and these factors are going to be increasingly essential to success in business on a global level.
In emerging fast-growing economies, women are working more and entering the consumer population. Many are buying packaged products for the first time.
Companies should keep women in mind throughout the business cycle.- Develop products and services based on a deeper knowledge of the needs of women.
- Hire and develop key women executives.
- The company's behavior as a corporate citizen should reflect a respect for women.
- Almost 10 percent of United Nations countries now have women heads of state, a huge increase from the three female heads of state in 1975.
- Women also hold about 20 percent of legislative seats worldwide, nearly double that of 1995's 11.3 percent.*
- Develop products and services based on a deeper knowledge of the needs of women.
- The world population is growing rapidly. It's beyond 7 billion now and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050.
- By 2020, we will have 2 billion new consumers who will be consuming packaged products for the first time. We will have an extra 3 billion people entering the middle class by 2020, and by 2050, that figure will be 8 billion.
Urbanization may help stem this a bit but in the rural agrarian economy, there is tremendous incentive to have more children because there's such a high infant mortality rate and the children who do survive provide added labor. In the cities, children are more clearly an added cost, and the incentive to have a big family is reversed. Children who grow up in urban areas may be more likely to have better access to education, and likewise may be less likely to have big families when they grow up.
Education is the single most effective form of`birth control, and there may well be a role for some businesses to play in helping to educate the urban population about birth control, and bring affordable and effective birth control products to them. This is in everyone's best interest. We're going to see a huge stress on the entire planet if the global population rises to 9.6 billion people by 2050.*
*Source : Pew Research - More people now live in cities, and that trend is on the rise.
- As people migrate closer to the cities and move into urban areas and the power is more distributed and the people have more of a voice, it becomes all the more important for a company to have purpose as their priority. If you don't, then people won't trust you and will not want to associate themselves with you.
- For the first time ever, the majority of the world's population now lives in a city, and this proportion continues to grow. One hundred years ago, 2 out of every 10 people lived in an urban area. By 1990, less than 40% of the global population lived in a city, but as of 2010, more than half of all the people on earth live in an urban area. By 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will live in a city, and by 2050, this proportion will increase to 7 out of 10 people.
- Globally, urban growth peaked in the 1950s, with a population expansion of more than 3% per year. Today, the number of urban residents is growing by nearly 60 million every year. The global urban population is expected to grow roughly 1.5% per year, between 2025-2030. By the middle of the 21st century, the urban population will almost double, increasing from approximately 3.4 billion in 2009 to 6.4 billion in 2050. Almost all urban population growth in the next 30 years will occur in developing countries.*
*Source: World Health Organization - All the stress on the environment will soon result in a global slowdown in business growth.
- Climate change is a reality. We are already seeing lower yeilds, and likewise a rise in the price of goods and manufacturing supplies. We are seeing increased costs for transportation and energy. Water is going to be in alarmingly short supply as we go into 2030-2035.
Liquidity is also a problem. We can't continue to fund growth on debt. With the coming surge in population and all the added demands on the environment this will create, growth will inevitably begin to slow all over the world.
Right now, most companies are still in a state of denial about all this. It's just human nature to resist change and most won't pay attention until it really hits them financially. At that point, they will be forced to face the fact that we are consuming at a capacity beyond what this planet can bear. It will become too obvious to ignore, and human beings as a species will wake up and start to seek ways to collaborate on the solution.
There are some smart companies that see this wave coming, and they recognize that it's a tsunami. They are taking a more proactive approach and shifting their process to produce brands, products and services that use renewable resources, and offer a positive social and environmental impact. - People now care more about their own well-being.
- Companies around the world have been seeing an alarming increase in absenteeism. Anxiety and depression are on the rise and it's costing a bundle. According to a recent Forbes study, in 2012, absenteeism cost U.S. companies more than $576 billion.
As much of this cost is associated with illnesses associated with work-related stress and depression, it has prompted many companies to take more interest in developing programs that foster a better sense of well-being and satisfaction among their employees.
Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post calls this the "Third Metric." As she points out, too many companies have made it their priority to make money in the short term, often at the expense of their own employees. There's been too much focus on money and power. While this can add up to success in the short term, in the long term, we need a "third metric," a measure of success that goes beyond the first two, and includes:- Well-being
- Wisdom
- Wonder
- Giving
- Well-being
- Mobile telephony has revolutionized economies in Africa.
- In recent years, mobile telephones have done a great deal to improve the quality of life in Africa. Mobile banking has revolutionized the economy by reducing the need for cash, and the subsequent vulnerability to theft, which was a big problem when the economy was running almost entirely on cash. Farmers and other vendors can now safely bring products to market and their customers can now pay via mobile banking for those goods. The reduction in cash has led to a reduction in theft, led to a big boost in the economy, and yet also opened an enormous new market for mobile telephony and mobile banking.
Mobile technology has also made it easier to support a good cause in a more immediate way. At the recent opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games, UNICEF raised more than 2.5 million pounds sterling by asking the people attending that opening ceremony to text a $5 donation to the organization.
Purposeful Business - Doing Well by Doing Good:
Key Trends
Expert Topic