Herrish Patel has worked for Unilever, one of the world’s largest CPG companies, for 24 years. In nearly a quarter century, the global company specializing in beauty, personal care, home care, food products and ice cream has taken Patel and his family around the globe, giving him a multifaceted perspective on how to innovate and grow already-strong brands. He became the president of Unilever USA and the CEO of its Personal Care division in 2024. I spoke with him about how he’s growing brands that are already in 98% of American homes, plus how he strengthens his team at a company that is an international behemoth. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. What is your strategy to build the U.S. market and getting to growth? Patel: It starts with the trends that are going to shape the U.S. I’m a big believer that the role of leadership teams in your categories is to predict where a category is going to be in three years from now. I call it getting to the future faster, or take the organization to the future and then bring them back. If I look at personal care and where it will be in three to five years, there’s certain segments, like whole body deodorants. The reality is, over the last couple of years, some insurgent brands brought to life the idea that we sweat beyond the armpit, and it’s built a whole new leg to the category, to a segment that could be $500 million going forward. The second piece is serum technology. We invented bar [soap] in a way. We then went into liquids. The next frontier will be serum technology, which is starting to converge the next generation of moisturization and body wash. Again, technology led. Lastly, you see it on TikTok and social media, people are looking for mood transportation through showers through neural signaling. We’re making an adjacency move on a brand called Olly, a vitamin supplement brand full of scientific claims and a sense that is good for karma, it’s good for mood. We are obsessed about having the science and technology, the right packaging, the right communication platform. That’s the first thing that is at the heartbeat of the business, and we’re obsessed about being market makers, category builders. The second piece is you work with the biggest retailers in the U.S. to be a category leader. You act like a category leader, you show up like a category leader and you start to share how you’re going to build the category over multiple years through your marketing and science investments. We’ve shared this U.S.-for-U.S. [A recent quote said] it’s like a new Unilever that’s agile, it’s fast and it’s moving with consumer trends which move fast in the U.S. You mentioned team building. How do you do that with a company that is as large as Unilever? In Personal Care, we call it ‘Making it personal.’ Once you have your strategy and your big bets, you build a structure to be in service to the strategy. Then strategy, structure and sourcing. Sourcing is the talent. There’s also a strategic position. You’ve built a team first that is designed to deliver the strategic position of Unilever. We serve 98% of American households, so we are going to move categories forward. The second piece that I’m a big fan of, is what I call wasting time together. It means that you invest and spend time getting to know the team. Trust and unity comes when you know beyond the face: what’s important in their lives, family, friends, how they grew up. That shapes some of the behaviors you see. Thirdly, once you’ve got a structure, you waste time, you build trust. We call it objectives, key results, OKRs. I call them mountains we’re trying to climb. Behind that strategy’s three or four mountains, we constantly sit and review where we are on that mountain, what have we learned, what we want to adjust. Then we work as a team to say the next stage of that mountain looks X or Y. Yesterday, we sat for a whole day as a leadership team and did exactly that. What are we celebrating? What is the strategic progress we’re making? Is the organization running to its potential? What are some of the leadership learnings, and where do we need to inspire and move the organization forward? I call it hardware and software. 50% is hardware, is strategy. 50% is software, and making sure the team is united in that journey. Right now we are in a period of economic uncertainty, and it’s hard to forecast anything. How does that impact Unilever? We see the recession as an opportunity, [rather] than more of a threat. What we will see is a polarization where people will seek value, while some consumers will still seek premiumization. From a U.S. perspective, we’ve got a portfolio that serves brilliant value, but we’ve also got a premium portfolio. As it continues to polarize, we’ve got a portfolio—I call it how you win the recession. We consciously talk about it. How do you come out stronger from the recession? That takes leadership, it takes a point of view. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, but it’s important to have a strong point of view. That you take the moment where there might be some economic uncertainty for maybe two or three quarters, but we come out stronger as a consequence. What advice would you give to other business executives? This is a really important time of leadership. I think it is the time to reflect on who we are, what we stand for, and make sure that we continue to serve the U.S. with the latest innovations and grow our businesses. Personally, I think this is a moment of your own values, your own leadership style, and how you continue to adjust to lead the organization through it. I think the future is really bright in the U.S., so I think the economic outlook long-term, mid-term, will be very strong. What I’m inspired by is the thousands that work for Unilever U.S. still wake up wanting to make an impact at 98% of US households. That’s my job. How do I create an environment where everyone can flourish and maximize their potential? And that's what I do every day. My reflective moment is how can I lead to create that environment, to serve all of America, and my people are inspired to do it; they believe they have an impact. |