Unilever’s marketing spend hits €900 mn in 2024, highest increase in over a decade

New Delhi: FMCG major Unilever, on Friday, announced a massive increase in marketing spends for the year 2024. As per the results published by the conglomerate, the brand and marketing investment went up by a total of 900 million euros, amounting to 15.5% of the total turnover.

Unilever announced that the increase in investment toward brand and marketing was the highest in over a decade. Boosting the investment resulted in an improved gross margin, the FMCG giant stated. 

The turnover increased by 1.9% year-on-year, taking the total to 60.8 billion euros for the year 2024.

The operating profit declined by 3.7% year-on-year and stood at 9.4 billion euros. As per the company, the reduction was driven by “higher non-underlying charges, most notably a loss on disposals and higher restructuring costs as a result of accelerating the productivity programme.”

The mammoth-sized marketing investment also included Unilever’s sponsorship of major global football tournaments, including the UEFA EURO 2024 and the CONMEBOL Copa America USA 2024.

Sales growth was registered at 4.2%, whereas the volume growth for Unilever came in at 2.9%. The company also reported a 1.3% price growth in its filing on the stock exchange.

Hein Schumacher, Chief Executive Officer, Unilever, on announcing the results this year, said, “The results reflect a year of significant activity as we focused on transforming Unilever into a consistently higher-performing business.

Market growth, which slowed throughout 2024, is expected to remain soft in the first half of 2025. The steps we have taken in 2024, including the launch of our refreshed GAP2030 strategy, further reinvestment in our brands, and strong innovation pipelines leave us better positioned to deliver on our ambitions in the years ahead.”

Charting out the future course, the company stated, “We expect underlying sales growth (USG) for full year 2025 to be within our multi-year range of 3% to 5%. Market growth slowed throughout 2024. We anticipate a slower start to 2025 with subdued market growth in the near term. We expect the market and our growth to improve during the year as price increases, reflecting higher commodity costs in 2025.

We expect a more balanced split between volume and price. We anticipate a modest improvement in underlying operating margin for the full year versus 18.4% in 2024. We expect this improvement to be realized in the second half, given the very strong first-half comparator of 19.6%, which benefited strongly from the combination of carry-over pricing and input cost deflation.