So long as you are not Ukrainian, it is difficult to imagine a more caring and sensitive ally than the food, cosmetic and hygiene giant, Unilever. “We strive to do more good for our planet and our society,” its website tells everyone.
If you are poor, marginalised, old, young, unhappy, persecuted, fearful for the planet or just feeling ugly, the manufacturer of Marmite and Domestos, Cornetto and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, feels your pain. Though not the bloody, battlefield kind. “Stereotypes,” it warns, “are making Gen Z consumers feel unsafe on social media.”
Spreading happiness is another priority. “We are committed to creating an unbroken chain of happiness.” And why not? Only common decency says a company can’t be proudly “purpose-led”, like Unilever, at the same time as it remains on the Ukrainian government’s list of “international sponsors of war”. That’s inclusivity. It means that even Vladimir Putin will find at Unilever, should protracted military frustration ever cause low mood, a social impact mission to suit his needs: Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream.
On the eve of the 2022 Russian invasion, the Ben & Jerry’s team tweeted at Joe Biden (but not Putin) to stop “fanning the flames of war”. Unilever’s then boss regretted that intervention but the company still advertises Ben & Jerry’s as the closest that a mixture of fat, sugar and sulfated polysaccharides has ever come to beatitude. In comparison, even Unilever’s inspirational Dove and Omo are, much like the Church of England, less performative ethical brands. “Guided by core values,” says Unilever, “every level of Ben & Jerry’s works to advance human rights and dignity, support social and economic justice for marginalised communities, and protect and restore the Earth’s natural systems.”
The ice-cream is among a range of “essential” Unilever products still produced and sold within Russia, and therefore continues, as campaigning groups have long been protesting, as a contributor to Putin’s war chest.
One of these, the Moral Rating Agency, recently calculated how Unilever’s costs and taxes in Russia translate into armoury that might make Ukrainians feel unsafe or unhappy: 39 bullets every second, or one Iranian drone every 15 minutes. Another group of activists, the Ukraine Solidarity Project, recently mocked up a huge billboard featuring a Dove-style line up of “real” models dressed in white: all of them young veterans who had lost body parts. “Dove,” said the caption, “helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
But Unilever finds it can resist, to a point reminiscent of Siegfried Sassoon’s verse, Does it Matter?, the reproaches of double amputees. “Does it matter? – losing your legs?/For people will always be kind.”
Last month, after a wounded 26-year-old veteran, Oleh Simoroz, told Unilever: “You’re paying taxes to the aggressor country and thus financing terrorism,” its latest CEO, Hein Schumacher, said he’d look at its Russia operation with “fresh eyes”. Around 600 casualties later, he has yet to advance on a statement from February, that “exiting is not straightforward”.
What many more principled companies have managed, Unilever, fatuously even without its world-beating sanctimony, seems to find impossibly difficult. For instance, if it closed its businesses, “they would be appropriated – and then operated – by the Russian state. In addition, we do not think it right to abandon our people in Russia.” That would be the same people it would have to allow to be called up. People who might even end up firing at British tanks. If Unilever leaves, Russia loses prestige brands, its taxes won’t buy weapons, and financially its losses might be less damaging, as Putin’s war crimes multiply, than the reputational attrition. That boycotts have yet to take off in the UK does not guarantee Dove will continue innocent of landmine associations.
As it is, the company has been content to sell ice-cream under a regime that bombs maternity hospitals, while bleating about women’s sport or children’s mental health in countries a few hours flight away. Unilever’s Happiness Project for schools, a collaboration with the expert Richard Layard, was launched in March, after a whole year of refusing to exit Russia. “Wall’s would like [the] international day of happiness to become a tentpole moment for the Happiness Project,” said its global lead, Barbara Scala. An international day of happiness could, admittedly, be just the thing to cheer up the 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia since February 2022.
Unilever’s dodging, pretty much, of domestic cancellation could of course be interpreted as an impressive purpose-signalling win. Possibly the relentless preachifying really has cultivated consumer reluctance to believe in a connection between, say, Hellmann’s (“food waste should be socially unacceptable”) and the Wagner group; between Cornetto (“we want a world with more joy”) and the horrifying death toll of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Its sales are still far from indicating pariah status outside Ukraine. The company says it will keep things under review. It could find existing apathy in the face of unconscionable non-divesting is helpfully reinforced by the “Ukraine fatigue” feared by Olena Zelenska. “My plea is,” she said last week, “please continue to support our fight.”
For civilian sympathisers, avoiding goods made by international sponsors of Russia’s war remains a promising way to respond. All the more so when the relevant products are from household brands, like Unilever, not luxury or technology suppliers. The Yale academics Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian say the exit of more than 1,000 multinational businesses has already helped drive Russia’s economy towards “self-immolation”.
Consumers who can’t clear minefields or help rebuild Ukraine’s towns could yet discover that not buying Marmite, Dove, Knorr cubes, Domestos, Persil, Wall’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Cif, Persil or any of its 400 brands offers a sense of ethical connection that the UK company should, given its passion for consumer allyship, readily understand. It might even, since the boycotters are not demanding the impossible, work. If the chance of a humiliating defeat by Vegemite did finally trouble Unilever’s conscience, it could deprive the Russian economy, annually, of hundreds of millions of dollars.
It would be quicker, of course, if the company studied its own publicity and better still, acted on it.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
