comes with a minimum $12 trillion opportunity and the creation
of 380 million more jobs. It’s worth going for.”5
Unilever has demonstrated that it is in businesses’ best inter-
ests to drive societal change. And it would appear that many
others agree. One can, for instance, cite projects such as Ikea’s
People & Planet, Nissan’s Blue Citizenship, HP’s Living Prog-
ress, or McDonald’s Scale for Good.
Despite Polman’s strong commitment, not all of Unilever’s
brands have embraced the sustainable plan in the same way. It
Paul Polman
177
depends on each brand’s profile and on the level of buy-in of its
leader. However, a key learning has emerged from the compa-
ny’s observations: The most purpose-driven brands, such as Ben
& Jerry’s, Dove, or Hellman’s are also the most profitable. In
terms of sales, in 2017, Unilever’s 26 Sustainable Living brands
grew 46 percent faster than the rest of its business. And they
delivered 70 percent of the overall growth in turnover.
This powerful result is even more significant than it may at
first appear. Unilever is showing the way. It is proving to the
world that a company can be a force both for growth and for
good. We should be reassured by the fact that it is succeeding. A
journalist from the Economist puts it this way, “If Unilever can-
not make the sustainability idea pay—with its deep pockets, long
corporate history and determined boss—then perhaps no other
firm can.”6
CeO activism
Today, business leaders no longer need journalists when they
want to publicly voice their opinions. They have Twitter, which
allows Polman, and many others, to express their thoughts not
just on business or economic subjects, but also on the problems
of society.
Polman follows in the footsteps of Marilyn Carlson Nelson,
co-owner of Carlson Travel, who in 2004 took a stand against
human trafficking. It’s widely held that she opened the way back
then to what we now call CEO activism.
Increasingly, corporate leaders are entering into public debate
on topics that up until now were considered the sole domain of
politicians. They are taking positions on social issues that have
no direct link with their businesses. For example, they can make
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their opinions known on a local level regarding proposed state
legislation that goes against the values they defend. Think of the
indignation of Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Tim Cook of Apple,
or Dan Schumann of PayPal on legislation planned by the states
of Georgia, North Carolina, or Indiana that would have nega-
tively impacted gender equality. At a federal level, many CEOs
have also reacted vigorously against the Trump administration’s
new anti-immigration plan, as well as to the withdrawal of the
United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
In the last few years, more and more company heads have
been exposing their points of view on the subjects that stir soci-
ety today: gender equality, health coverage, climate change,
income fairness, immigration, and, in general, anything relating
to discrimination. Each time, the same process takes place. Chief
executives relay their messages via social networks. Then, digital
audiences support or contest them, which creates a buzz that is
then picked up by the media.
A Weber Shandwick survey7 shows that 51 percent of con-
sumers are more likely to buy from a company whose chief exec-
utive is engaged in public debate on important societal subjects.
A majority of employees say that their loyalty to their company is
influenced by whether or not their chief executive is prepared to
speak out on crucial issues. The millennials’ generation, which
possesses an acute sense of political consciousness, believes that
business leaders are more likely to make things happen than pol-
iticians who, in their view, have already demonstrated their inca-
pacity to act on a number of important issues.
The activism movement has become so large that there are
now concerns about the “cost of silence.”8 Leaders who do not
appear to be engaged on burning social issues relevant to their
companies are at risk of consumer boycotts or internal employee
petitions. CEO activism has rapidly taken on a new dimension.
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I mentioned earlier some of those activist CEOs who stood
up against the new American immigration policies. Let me cite
now another, Hamdi Ulukaya, who adopted a courageous and
unusual approach. He’s the founder and CEO of the multi-
billion-dollar yogurt company Chobani. In less than two decades
he has been able to hoist his company to the ranks of Dannon and
General Mills in the United States. He owes his meteoric success
to a new kind of business leadership he installed, “one that fuses
competitiveness with an unusually strong sense of compassion.”9
He was featured on the cover of Fast Company with the headline:
“Immigrant. CEO. Billionaire.” The subtitle was “How Chobani
founder Hamdi Ulukaya is winning America’s culture war.”10
Chobani’s employees come from over 15 different coun-
tries. Almost one in three is an immigrant. The company actu-
ally employs more than 400 refugees. And Ulukaya has given 10
percent of Chobani’s equity to its workers. All this doesn’t stop
him from being very tough in business, and even feared by his
competitors. He has a reputation for moving very fast, while at
the same time maintaining an extraordinary sense of detail. He
is clearly at the dawn of creating a food giant. Not a bad perfor-
mance for a guy who, in his early years in Turkey, had a clearly
anti-capitalist spirit. His stance has been criticized by the most
rigid U.S. political leaders when it comes to immigration, but
this has not made him budge an inch. On the subject of helping
others, he says, “I don’t want more, I just want to do more.”11
Increasingly, this will be the case for those leaders driven to
be true forces for good. Apart from the inevitable and thorny
issues they must face internally, such as gender equality, salary
fairness, and religious expression in the workplace, chief execu-
tives will also have to deal with those dramatic topics that will
influence the future of humanity as a whole. We all know that
our world is going through a very difficult time, and are aware
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of the absolute necessity to help the most fragile, those whose
voices are not heard. Chief executives, whose voices do carry,
know they no longer have the right to stay silent. It’s not just
a moral obligation, but also an opportunity for their business.
People who are forgotten today, and see no cynicism in this, may
be customers tomorrow.
Coming back to Polman, he evolved naturally into this global
trend. He also rema
ined realistic and knew that most heads of
industry are still far from being convinced that it is in their inter-
est to serve society as a whole. This is why he spent so much of
his time fighting for his convictions. Instead of talking to the
press about his company’s results, he spoke as often as possi-
ble about the need to work toward a better world. That was not
something all investors wanted to hear.
Yet, things started to change when the financial community
actually began to share his point of view. In this sector, Black-
Rock has led the way. BlackRock is the world’s largest investor
and manages no less than $6 trillion. Its CEO, Larry Fink, sent
a letter in January 2018 to the heads of the largest public com-
panies, stating, somewhat unexpectedly, “Society is demanding
that companies, both public or private, serve a social purpose. To
prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial
performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution
to society.”12
This stance was astonishing for many. BlackRock had gen-
erally invested in companies that followed the Friedman the-
ory, whereby their only duty was to generate more profit. Fink
decided that his company would no longer be a passive investor,
but that it would now take into account the triple bottom line
in the companies in which it invests. BlackRock will evaluate
prospective investments on three criteria: their financial per-
formance, their environmental impact, and their social commit-
ment. No more non-engagement.
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181
Fink is now convinced that profit and purpose can work
together—or rather that they should work together. Since, as
The New York Times reported, “It’s worth noting he’s not playing
down the importance of profits and while it’s a subtle point, he
believes that having a social purpose is inextricably linked to a
company’s ability to maintain its profits.”13 Like a growing num-
ber of chief executives, he feels that the long-term survival of
business itself is at stake. For him, if a company doesn’t embrace
social purpose, “it will ultimately lose the license to operate from
key stakeholders.”14
I hope that his letter will be a turning point. It would seem so.
When BlackRock talks, everyone listens.
Chapter 19
EmmanuEl FabEr
ON SOCIAL PURPOSE AND THE BOTTOM
OF THE PYRAMID
Danone is a French multinational food conglomerate. In
America, its products are branded Dannon. They sell
yogurts and mineral waters, as well as products for infant and
medical nutrition. Its sales reached €24.7 billion in 2017 and its
market capitalization was €42.1 billion at the end of 2018.
Antoine Riboud was chairman and CEO of the company from
1965 to 1996, and left his mark on the business world with his
avant-garde thinking, in particular in terms of environmental and
social affairs. In France, he remains one of the most charismatic
bosses of his time.
In 1972, the remarkable speech he gave in Marseilles was a
milestone in his career. Fifteen years before Norway’s former
prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was at the time
President of the UN World Commission on Environment and
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Development, laid the foundations of sustainable development,
Riboud had been promoting the idea inside his company. In the
early 1970s, he insisted on including societal concerns in corporate
strategies. He launched the “double project,”1 with both a social and
economic dimension that is still felt in the heart of the company.
His heritage is, above all, illustrated through its social breadth.
Since then, semantics have evolved. Corporate language has
changed, but today’s ideas have been around for some time. It
was inconceivable for Riboud that progress should leave behind
workers who, in his own words, “were numerous to benefit insuf-
ficiently from the fruits of growth.”2 He thought that compa-
nies’ responsibilities did not end at the doorstep of their offices
or factories. He was convinced that their actions had repercus-
sions on local communities, impacting the life of each citizen. In
Marseilles, he concluded his speech in these terms: “Lead our
companies with our hearts as well as our heads, and don’t forget
that if the world’s energy resources are limited, those of man are
infinite, if they feel motivated.”3
Nearly 50 years later, Emmanuel Faber, the current CEO of
Danone, took up the torch, and has shown himself to be a wor-
thy successor of Riboud. As a business philosopher and human-
ist, Emmanuel Faber distinguishes himself with his far-reaching
ideas. These open up unexplored and promising paths, but they
are also disturbing for some people, including some sharehold-
ers and investors. Emmanuel Faber is a leader who could be
described as dissident because of his unique vision of the com-
pany, a vision that is in many ways disruptive.
Side roads
Chemins de Traverse (in English Side Roads) is the title of a book he published in 2011. In it, he pleads that another economic model
Emmanuel Faber
185
is possible. His ideas are bold, but his feet are firmly planted on
the ground.
Passionate about social justice, he rejects the notion of the
company with no other mission than maximizing shareholder
value. Evoking a world seen through financial eyes, he speaks of
“lobotomized, dehumanized thinking.”4 He castigates the dicta-
torship of numbers and rebels against the preeminence given to
the rational. He considers the rational as “the realm of deduction,”
and argues that “deduction creates nothing.” For him, “It is intu-
ition that creates new things.”5 Without it, nothing would be
possible.
Emmanuel Faber is also a critic of management jargon, which
he considers too narrow and restricting. This vocabulary seems
to him all the more penalizing since it influences the thinking
of the leaders of the world, preventing them access to another
conception of the economic sphere. He goes so far as to attri-
bute a social responsibility to globalization, which would lead to
an equitable sharing of the work, the natural resources, and the
know-how of the planet. “The challenge of globalization is to
know what social role it can and must play,”6 he says.
Emmanuel Faber does not in any way deny his obligations
to Danone’s shareholders, but at the same time, he stresses his
obligations to his employees. “In a large publicly traded com-
pany, no shareholder has taken the same personal risk to the
company as one of its employees. None of them has used their
salary to obtain a loan to buy a house near the factory, nor to
raise their family in this small town with its social structure of
which Danone is a part. This obligation therefore entails an
even stronger responsibility, more complex for employees than
for shareholders. It is a fact.” He goes on to say that “we have
opposed the social and the economic, but they are the two facets
of one and the same reality. The border between the two goes to
the very heart of our consciousness, nowhere else.”7
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Danone has always believed that the well-being of society
starts with health. From the beginning, the company placed it at
the center of its concerns. In the 1920s, Danone products were
exclusively available through pharmacies. In the late 1960s, when
its products were being sold in supermarkets, the company had
launched a multitude of gourmet desserts, which risked diluting
its health-related image. That’s why in the mid-1980s, its man-
agement made the decision to refocus on health. At that time, I
recommended creating an institute dedicated to the pursuit of
a deeper understanding of the relationship between food and
health. The Danone Institute for Health was born. It devoted
itself to major public health topics such as obesity, aging, and the
strengthening of the immune system. The Institute funded the
work of doctors, scientists, and nutritionists. Our agency later
conceived an advertising campaign to publicize the Institute’s
activities. This campaign took the theme of what Hippocrates
had recommended, to make food our first medicine. It was
signed with a simple line explaining Danone’s commitment to
health: “Danone, entreprendre pour la santé.”
For Danone, food is anything but a commodity. It is much
more than just a consumer product. With the “One Planet, One
Health”8 plan, Faber advocates equal health for all. Over and
above the sale of healthy products, the company’s mission is to
promote better eating habits. The road ahead to achieve this goal
is long and arduous. Not only do the inhabitants of our planet
have unbalanced diets, but also the entire food chain has been
degraded, starting with the simplest of products. According to a
study conducted by Canadian professors and published in L’Obs
magazine9, an apple now contains 100 times less vitamin C and
an orange 20 times less vitamin A than they did in 1950. This
was one of the reasons Faber wanted Danone to buy WhiteWave
Foods, the American champion of bio and vegetable proteins,
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