 We know that more than 60% of consumers really trust creators, and trust is hard to find nowadays. Thank you Connie. How has your can been here in the south of France? Well, I was looking forward to represent Unilever at the Palais this morning to do our keynote speech and tell a bit how we are preparing Unilever for the future of marketing, what is changing, what hasn't changed. So that was the highlight of the week, but of course I'm always looking forward to see the creative work of others. You've been at Unilever for 33 years, so obviously you are a big part of how the culture has developed. Over your time, and I think maybe looking ahead, how has marketing changed more broadly, and I think about all the related disciplines, and maybe what's kind of on the horizon that kind of marketers need to be conscious of and thinking about? Well, I think marketing in essence hasn't really changed, obviously, and that must give confidence to all marketeers who've been in the profession for longer, because in essence it's about solving consumer pain points and making your brand relevant to consumers having the right value proposition, starting with the right product against the right price and then adding on to that values that matter to your consumers. So that, in a sense, hasn't changed. The way in which we do it has completely changed, obviously. I think we're in an era of channel proliferation where there's more emphasis on short-term results and measurements of matters versus the longer-term brand building. It's always important to continue to come back to everybody new in the organisation. Our success is Unilever's build on the long-term brand building activities we employed. Now, on top of that, I think the bigger trend is that there's now new channels coming in that make short-term sales happen as well, whether it's retail media, whether it is ad supported streaming, whether it is influence and creator marketing, and I think with that you touch on one of the bigger trends. So influence and creators are trusted voices. We know that more than 60 percent of consumers really trust creators and trust is hard to find nowadays. So the trust in governments, in media, in brands, in businesses has gone down. So if you find credible trusted sources, you need to treat them with the utmost respect and really make sure that with them you don't only use them to convert to sales but that you build the brands, that you stand out in culture with them and yes, that you make it easy and effortless to buy. And that's why we are very fond of the fact that we create communities of influences that we work with for a longer period of time. But at times it's also not easy because marketers need to let go a bit of their strict control and we're working through that. But if your question is what are the big changes happening in marketing, I would say it is more channel proliferation. It is finding the right balance between short and long-term in that and basically it's influence and create a marketing. Future of marketing? I'd love to dig into that a little bit more. At least conferences we talk a lot about technology. But sometimes we kind of forget that we're talking to people and actually often what we're really trying to do is kind of keep up with kind of changing human behavior. So how do you kind of keep ahead of things? How do you understand what's happening in the world of consumers? It's good that you start with consumers because that's where our marketing heart goes and if we don't understand the consumers we don't know where to start. Lots of things have changed. So consumers are changing, customers are changing, shopping is changing, technology is changing, businesses are changing and that means that marketing needs to change fast as well. And if I take a look at the consumer and if you want to make it digestible for us marketers I would say there's three major things changing at this moment in time. That's the way that consumers live, that they shop and that they play. These are the major ones changing and that has a direct effect on marketing. And I think in the way that people live the most striking one for me is that people are moving away from traditional life blue prints and the markers of success and they're finding their own way. But you also see for instance that the population is aging and then if you represent only 6% of the ads represent people above 65 it sort of gives you a hint that there is something to catch up on and that there is a way, an easy way to be seen, to be more progressive and stereotypical which we know is more distinctive, standing out and is creating better brand power. You talked just a little there about commerce and creativity. I'm interested in what happens in that overlap. As a Unilever how do you take advantage of what's happening in that overlap? I think it's one of the bigger shifts we see. So there's a couple of ways in which we prepare ourselves. The first thing is from a marketing perspective we need to bridge the gap between brands building and performance marketing. So I think that's the first thing we need to be. And I think building the gap can only be done by applying creativity throughout the end-to-end consumer journey. So I think that's the first thing we do. The second thing we've done is we've brought marketing and sales together because they need to work way better hand-in-hand. You can't distinguish anymore between marketing and sales. If you sell something via Facebook, is that marketing or is that sales? If you want to really get into decommerce it's an ecosystem, it's not a sales channel. So that's the thing we've done. And then in the countries we've made sure that we've put teams together of digital marketers, of media and of commerce people so that they have a holistic view on how you build brands and convert to sales at the same time. I do like the idea of bringing together kind of these people with different perspectives and objectives but actually kind of a commonality. I guess creativity between them. But there's an interesting theme and it comes up a lot at Cannes every year which is creativity sometimes is at odds with kind of corporates and corporate structures and how businesses operate. How do you kind of ensure that people are given the space or the opportunity to be creative in your organisation? Well I think the first thing always to go back to for the logical part of a corporate organisation is to say that 50% of return on investment is driven by creativity. So I think with that you already get a lot of people on board. Then the second thing is always taking a look at what are the brilliant brands that are standing out that are big and continue to grow fast. And for us for instance an example is Delph. It's a 5 billion euro brand, it continues to grow really fast and if you then take a look at what has been driving the success of it is that within this era of enormous change they have a compass that makes it easy for them to navigate all the changes. And the compass is their belief set. It is their way of looking at the world. It is their purpose as we call it. And then they create emotional connections to people which is of course really important and then they stand out in culture because the way that Delph portrays its purpose which is let's make beauty not a source of anxiety but a source of happiness for women is changing over time because of course they want to adapt to what is happening in gaming and they were terrified to see how little diversity is shown in female avatars and they wanted to make sure that that happens. But it's also on filters. Turn you back to the bold glamour filter that TikTok introduced. So these are new ways, creative ways of expressing the same purpose that has been consistent over years ever since we built Dove. I often refer to Dove as kind of the original purpose brand. It becomes the case study by which you kind of talk about purpose in other categories but it's actually not unique within Unilever. It seems that kind of purpose is something that you lean into for a lot of brands. Why is it so central to kind of your way of being in Unilever? Yeah, so it's true. So 60% of our turnover is now done by brands who consumers see as contributing positively to the planet of society. And the business case is pretty simple because these brands are growing a lot faster than the other 40%. So that's why we're continuously on a journey. If you have a purpose, you need to make sure that it's authentic, that it fits with what the brand and the category really does. You need to build it over time for it to work. But I think in the end it boils down to what our philosophy on marketing is. And our marketing philosophy in Unilever is called Get on the Frontline. And in an era of change it's quite nice to have one approach to marketing and it's built on three principles. Get real, do good and be admissible. And Get real is all about really getting into the lives of consumers, discover their pain points, use data and empathy to discover them, but also solve for them. The second pillar is do good and do good is really about what is the impact you can have in society and planets. And the third pillar and becoming more and more important is be admissible because you can be very good in the first two, but if nobody sees you, you're still not really making a fast-growing brand happen. I love that. What it feels underpins that is a relevance. I think you used the word culture earlier, but I sense that the brands all have this kind of cultural relevance, which is why they are leaning into things that concern or interest for consumers. How do you ensure that all of your team are on top of what's happening in culture and are able to keep the bands relevant? Well, there's a lot of things that we need to do for that. So first of all, of course, we have a formidable market inside team. They make sense of everything in its totality. So if you think about the four macro trends that everybody is working on, they have identified by going through all that research. The second thing is really important is to get real. Get out on the front line. That is really what was missing for a couple of years. People were sitting behind their desk reading research, but no, you really need to get out, be part of culture, see what the pain points really are, and then fall in love with the problem, not with the solution. People love the solution that they created, and we're not giving up on it anymore. It was actually the problem that needed to be put centrally. One last question. About generative AI. Oh, yeah, we haven't touched upon that one. Yeah, we can. Actually, no, let's go there, actually. I was going to go somewhere else, but it isn't because it is the topic. And every brand is obviously cognizant that it is going to impact their world. Everyone's figuring out how and how to bring it into the process. How are you thinking about AI and its place within marketing? Well, I think you expressed it perfectly well. First of all, it's a bit soon to already know exactly how it will impact. But what everybody feels is that we're at basically the cutting edge of a disruption that's going to disrupt not only marketing but enterprises. And I think we already see, whilst in the beginning we were talking a bit about efficiency gains and productivity gains, I think now we already see much better how it could create the creator world, how we can tap into more creativity, but also need to watch out for mediocrity, so mediocre results. But the bigger challenge for us, because Unilever is a responsible company and wants to do responsible business, that's why we have responsible media frameworks, is how do we make sure that the challenges are overcome of IP, of human bias, of privacy issues, etc. So I think we still have a long way to go, but it's hugely interesting and we are advising our marketeers in a safe space to start piloting and trying it out and see how this could help them. Because it's also not, it is new that generative AI has come up. Yes, AI itself has been around. AI we have been using for quite some time. I think it's interesting when you think about this less as a thing that will replace creativity but a tool for creative people. That's where I think we'll find uses for it. No, absolutely. It will not replace, but it might accelerate the process, for instance. And I think that's more the way to look at it. I think we're still wanting the human touch to creativity. Thank you very much. Thank you.