As an FMCG giant, we have all become accustomed to Unilever talking about customer experience -- and so it is odd that the company was so incompetent in not only reading investors' signals, but also the average person in the street.
The next time anyone from Unilever gets up at an event to talk about serving customers better by listening to them, anyone can put their hands up during the Q&A session and ask how much listening they did on the proposed ditching of London.
OK, so the jobs that were in London were going to remain -- let's be clear on that. However, the move was nothing other than a massive snub to the capital right at the time when the UK needs its big companies to stand by its side.
Unilever has claimed endlessly that the move had nothing to do with Brexit, and that may be partly true. However, it is clear that it chose the time of Brexit uncertainty to suggest ending its unusual arrangement of an HQ being split between London and Rotterdam. And riddle me this. Which one did they choose? That's right, Rotterdam. Nothing to do with Brexit, eh?
One has to have a little empathy for the board. City analysts agree that having a single HQ and a single stock, rather than a UK and a Dutch stock, would help the giant defend itself from takeovers, such as the hostile bid from Kraft two years ago.
However, all were agreed that city investors who track London's top 100 shares would almost certainly have been forced to sell their shares in Unilever once it dropped London and so fell out of the FTSE 100.
Also, the timing to drop London as the Brexit deadline loomed large was unfortunate, to say the least. A company that was completely British and is now half British just appeared to be ditching its home and leaving the rest of us to cope with Brexit alone. It may not have been what the board wanted or intended, but it is certainly how it was felt.
For all their claims of listening to customers, Unilever seemed to miss this fundamental fact. Unilever is well loved as a huge British success story. I have a lot of family in the northwest, where the company has its roots in Lever Brothers. Family members will tell you about the housing they grew up in Port Sunlight, a village set up by Lord Leverhulme for his workers. They can also tell you the docks and mooring points along the Mersey where soap was picked up and taken around the world. One is a great spot for fishing known only by locals, by the way.
Moving to Rotterdam might have made sense on a spreadsheet or as a corporate governance tactic. As a piece of doing what it preaches, and listening to stakeholders, it was an abject disaster.