Unilever’s Selina Sykes on Rethinking Marketing for an AI-Driven Consumer

Selina Sykes (0:04)

In Transformation, what I've learned is you've got to focus on the people. Every single function in Unilever, finance, legal, supply chain, they all came on this journey. And it was one of the best transformations I've led in terms of huge scale. We did this at 24 markets. We looked at the people, we thought about how you create that mindset and that storytelling, and then we built huge systems. And we're doing exactly the same with AI transformation.

Yeah, my biggest learning for all my transformation roles is put people at the center of it. Think about the people. Don't think about the tech. Don't think about the process. Think about the people.

Sarah Hofstetter (0:41)

Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce. I'm Sarah Hofstetter.

Rachel Tipograph (0:45)

And I'm Rachel Tipograph. And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in commerce for the world's biggest brands.

Well, I know we've had a lot of Unilever guests onto the show over the years, but the reason why is because they keep pumping out talent and they keep upskilling their talent. And we're going to have Selina on the show and she's going to talk all about Unilever's AI transformation, which is fascinating because they're truly not just using it to create marketing, but they're using it to operationalize their business. And Sarah, I know that there was a great catch phrase that you grabbed onto during the show.

Sarah Hofstetter (1:31)

Yeah, I mean, she was talking a lot, and you'll hear this in a couple of minutes, about the DNAI. Like, how do they capture the critical components of each of their brands, whether it's Love or Axe, or the multitude of iconic brands that they have, and train their AIs on those brand tones and guidelines and whatnot. And I'm not going to spoil it any further, because we want you to listen to the whole episode. But one of the areas that I've been thinking a lot about in AI transformation is, what are the things that you build that help kind of take your creative work and your brand beliefs and all that other stuff from sitting on a shelf to being ingrained in everything that you do. And so like being able to train AI so that they can speak like your brands and all the things that they're doing.

But then there's like this other part which we kind of address, but I want to pause it back to our audience, which is how do you then get it into your everyday ways of working? I'm not necessarily convinced, and I think the data shows that there's a lot of enthusiasm about AI. But AI transformation is not held back because of what Selina is doing. Because I think there's a lot of excitement about being able to codify a lot of things and make it more consistent. I think AI is constrained and AI adoption becomes constrained because there's a belief problem. We have a belief problem that people don't necessarily believe that AI is going to help them individually. You can help a company grow, but there's so much fear.

There's so much psychological safety involved. If I use this, does this mean I'm going to be out of a job?

If I use this, is it going to be good enough? Whatever that part is, is it going to get it right? Do I believe that that's going to be the case? You have to take people on that journey while you're doing all the technical and technological stuff alongside it. And so, I want to caution the audience that I think the thing that Selina talks a lot about is what she's doing to create those environments and systems. But what she talks about a little bit, but she's doing so much, is actually driving that belief arc and creating that environment for that to happen. And that, I believe, is a hell of a lot harder than a lot of the other stuff. Sorry, a bit of a diatribe on that one.

Rachel Tipograph (4:08)

No, no, we're going to listen to Selina talk about how she's focusing on people transformation to then lead to the adoption of AI within the organization. So on that note, let's bring Selina onto the show.

Today, we are very excited to have Selina Sykes, the Global VP, Digital, Social, and AI Transformation at Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing. Hello, Selina.

Selina Sykes (4:33)

Hi, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to chatting.

Rachel Tipograph (4:36)

We're super excited, especially because with a title like that, I feel like there's a lot to unpack. You're a long time Unilever employee, and even though you're working within this organization that goes back nearly 100 plus years, you seem to build a career there that is defined by what's coming next. Just looking at your LinkedIn, it looks like you built out Unilever's e-commerce capability. You ran their internal startup incubator, and now you're leading this marketing transformation, given the backdrop of AI that we're all living within.