• Ad Age, Monday, August 24, 2009 10:43 AM

Unilever's success in its second quarter -- 4% organic sales growth and 2% volume growth -- can be credited to a product portfolio well suited to recessionary times, as well as some price "adjustments." But that would be selling Paul Polman, its CEO since Jan. 1, short, Jack Neff reports. The Procter & Gamble and Nestle veteran has created a more efficient organization that's better attuned to marketing.

Polman says he isn't surprised as much by Unilever's results last quarter as by those of its competitors. "There must be a whole area of the market disappearing that we are not competing in," he says. But beating his old companies isn't the point. "We are focused on the consumer," Polman says. "I live in a world where someone's gain doesn't need to be someone else's pain."

Neff describes Polman as "a devotee of data-driven decisions yet a foe of lengthy cogitation [who] appears bent on changing both." He feels that restructuring in the late '90s made the company too internally focused. He wants it more focused on consumers, with "a little more bias toward action."

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