Unilever is stepping up its corporate responsibility in the storm over obesity. But is anyone listening? Simon Mowbray reports
It’s 9.30am on a sunny Monday morning and Unilever UK chairman Gavin Neath has just spilled the first drop of blood in his company’s fightback over obesity. OK, it may literally be just a drop (a sample for a cholesterol test) but at least it’s a start.
Neath has made the generous donation after leaving the salubrious surroundings of Unilever HQ for a ramshackle community centre in the deprived Clapham Park area of London to launch the Flora Fit Street campaign. The groundbreaking 12-month programme, co-funded in equal parts of £333,000 each by Unilever and local government, is aimed at getting a deprived community healthy.
All that’s in it for the multinational food giant, it appears, is a sense of having done the right thing and earning some subsequent Brownie points for showing corporate responsibility.
As a result of Unilever’s intervention, over the next year hundreds of residents will be invited to throw themselves into the £600,000 initiative, which will include free MOT health checks, help to give up smoking, a host of exercise activities and a ‘cooking for a healthy heart’ programme. If successful, the scheme may be rolled out to deprived areas nationwide.
The good news for Unilever is that more than a hundred Clapham Park residents, determined not to miss the chance for the help that they say central government has failed to give them, have jammed into the community centre for the launch. And they seem genuinely appreciative of an industrial behemoth’s efforts to help them.
“I don’t care if they’re the so-called enemy,” one resident tells me. “We’re just grateful that someone is trying to do something positive for a change.”
Potentially even more encouraging for the food giant is that a Channel 4 researcher is
out scouting for ‘guinea pig’ families to take part in a documentary about the scheme, scheduled for broadcast this autumn and around which Unilever is considering doing some key advertising.
So it’s fair to assume that on this particular Monday morning Unilever is more than a little hopeful of a decent turnout from the consumer press, the same body which has given all food manufacturers such a hard time over the last year.
Within an hour, such hope has turned to disappointment as it emerges that only one national newspaper journalist has made the trip to the Knights Youth Centre in Streatham Place and that a TV crew from London Tonight has been pulled off the job.
However, Neath, it appears, is not surprised. “The press are not good on good news stories but I would be cautious at this stage anyway until we have hard data to show how we’ve made some real progress.”
But why should anyone, other than the community taking part,take the initiative seriously? After all, an investment of less than half a million is a drop in the ocean for Unilever and is dwarfed by the multi-million pound spends it puts behind its bestselling brands.
“This is not like sponsoring the football league,” admits Neath. “But it does have a genuinely serious purpose. Sure, we have a broad range of products at both ends of the health spectrum but the whole thing about the health debate is balance - the balance of diet and the balance of lifestyle and there is no reason why Unilever should not be involved in that.”
Only time will tell how much difference Unilever will make and how the company is judged by the wider world for its efforts.
Melanie Johnson, the minister for public health this week told the British Soft Drinks Association that there was a large number of people “whose health is at 1930s levels”.
“We need to make sure healthy choices are available for the most vulnerable.”
At least Unilever is having a go.
<<p12 Soft drink action urged
It’s 9.30am on a sunny Monday morning and Unilever UK chairman Gavin Neath has just spilled the first drop of blood in his company’s fightback over obesity. OK, it may literally be just a drop (a sample for a cholesterol test) but at least it’s a start.
Neath has made the generous donation after leaving the salubrious surroundings of Unilever HQ for a ramshackle community centre in the deprived Clapham Park area of London to launch the Flora Fit Street campaign. The groundbreaking 12-month programme, co-funded in equal parts of £333,000 each by Unilever and local government, is aimed at getting a deprived community healthy.
All that’s in it for the multinational food giant, it appears, is a sense of having done the right thing and earning some subsequent Brownie points for showing corporate responsibility.
As a result of Unilever’s intervention, over the next year hundreds of residents will be invited to throw themselves into the £600,000 initiative, which will include free MOT health checks, help to give up smoking, a host of exercise activities and a ‘cooking for a healthy heart’ programme. If successful, the scheme may be rolled out to deprived areas nationwide.
The good news for Unilever is that more than a hundred Clapham Park residents, determined not to miss the chance for the help that they say central government has failed to give them, have jammed into the community centre for the launch. And they seem genuinely appreciative of an industrial behemoth’s efforts to help them.
“I don’t care if they’re the so-called enemy,” one resident tells me. “We’re just grateful that someone is trying to do something positive for a change.”
Potentially even more encouraging for the food giant is that a Channel 4 researcher is
out scouting for ‘guinea pig’ families to take part in a documentary about the scheme, scheduled for broadcast this autumn and around which Unilever is considering doing some key advertising.
So it’s fair to assume that on this particular Monday morning Unilever is more than a little hopeful of a decent turnout from the consumer press, the same body which has given all food manufacturers such a hard time over the last year.
Within an hour, such hope has turned to disappointment as it emerges that only one national newspaper journalist has made the trip to the Knights Youth Centre in Streatham Place and that a TV crew from London Tonight has been pulled off the job.
However, Neath, it appears, is not surprised. “The press are not good on good news stories but I would be cautious at this stage anyway until we have hard data to show how we’ve made some real progress.”
But why should anyone, other than the community taking part,take the initiative seriously? After all, an investment of less than half a million is a drop in the ocean for Unilever and is dwarfed by the multi-million pound spends it puts behind its bestselling brands.
“This is not like sponsoring the football league,” admits Neath. “But it does have a genuinely serious purpose. Sure, we have a broad range of products at both ends of the health spectrum but the whole thing about the health debate is balance - the balance of diet and the balance of lifestyle and there is no reason why Unilever should not be involved in that.”
Only time will tell how much difference Unilever will make and how the company is judged by the wider world for its efforts.
Melanie Johnson, the minister for public health this week told the British Soft Drinks Association that there was a large number of people “whose health is at 1930s levels”.
“We need to make sure healthy choices are available for the most vulnerable.”
At least Unilever is having a go.
<<p12 Soft drink action urged
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