Alessandra Bellini

…who was hired to Unilever Italy to launch a new deodorant under the brand name Dove. They used insight in a smart way to move female preference from deodorant and sweating is good (the market leading competitor) to antiperspirant (Dove) with a promise of sweat regulation not blocking, fuelled by insight that people did change their behaviour to hide sweat even though they said they weren’t bothered. Today Dove deodorant is market leader in Italy and still one of the fastest growing deodorants in the world.  She also ran Ice Cream Brand Development in North America. They found a way to turnaround the commercial performance of the largest Ice Cream Brand in the USA,   by giving the vanilla variant sold in big tubs (branded Walls in the UK) a more premium feel by leveraging its well-known little vanilla specks as the magic ingredient which was both sustainable and the evidence of its high quality and unmistakable taste. This move was prompted by Unilever’s desire to grow purpose in all its brands through sustainability-related thinking. This Core business relaunch and other launches and acquisitions, meant Unilever reversed a massive profit loss in one year into a share-gaining, profit-making, higher margin business. Then most recently, she was Chief Customer Officer at Tesco with work including the relaunch of its Own Brand Portfolio, a new set of award-winning communication and reinventing Clubcard by taking the bold step, rubber-stamped by Dave Lewis the CEO, of transforming all promotions into member pricing instead. This made the loyalty rewards relevant at shelf edge, and it led to a 20% increase in penetration up to more than 80% in every country, growing crucial customer data and insight in the process. It’s now created a stampede of competitors.