Earlier this week AdAge published a piece by Jack Neff highlighting remarks made by Unilever’s CMO Simon Clift at Ad Age Digital Conference.  Here are a few thoughts I scribbled down:

Unilever is moving on.  The corporation feels they are unlikely to be successful in the social media arena.  Why? Unilever has a scale problem when it comes to launching social marketing initiatives.  Think about it. People don’t wake up and share what brand of toilet cleaner they used this morning to make the toilet shine.  Even if a few people do are you really going to care? I think Simon Clift, CMO of Unilever, has already answered that question for us by noting, “social media is not a strategy” for his company.  Unilever can’t amplify and syndicate enough dialogs to achieve business growth using social media. So what do you do if you’re Simon Clift and you want to harness a little word of mouth power?  Leverage the existing relationships you already have and innovate PR and ad agencies strategies around storytelling media.  Perhaps even introduce a few well-timed Cause Campaigns that can leverage social media distribution to reach new consumers so that they can stimulate unaided dialogs with new audiences.   Short bursts.  Easy to implement.  Pull at our heart stings.  But don’t be broken hearted.  Social media may not be a strategy option for Unilever but for your business who knows…