AMSTERDAM, June 7: Unilever, one of the world's biggest advertisers, told marketers to change fundamentally the way they promote goods and services or risk being swept away by today's empowered consumers.

Chairman and CEO of Unilever Morris Tabaksblat warned manufacturers and their ad agencies to stop telling people what to buy and instead work harder at finding out how to satisfy consumers who are well-informed, busy and jaded.

"The maker can no longer make the consumer do what he decides. The era of `push selling' is definitely over. We are now well and truly in the era of `pull marketing'," he told a business conference in Amsterdam.

"The question is no longer, `What can we sell the consumer?' But `What learning can we draw from the consumer in terms of his or her needs and then how can we help satisfy those needs?'" Tabaksblat said.

The growth of the Internet also means consumers are not only deciding what to buy and what to ignore, but increasingly have control over the medium carrying the commercial message.

"They are now also going to be in charge of the media through which we reach them," Tabaksblat said at the second and final day of the International Advertising Association's (IAA) annual European conference.

Rowan Gibson, creative director of Two's Company-Euro RSCG communications company, said that consumers with access to unprecedented amounts of information about products and manufactures were forcing marketers to rethink their roles.

"That turns the tables on us, and people are having a very difficult time reacting to that," he said in a speech.

Gibson quoted Regis McKenna, the chairman of McKenna Group consultancy and a pioneer in technology marketing in California's Silicon Valley, as saying marketers were too busy searching for scientific ways to manipulate people.

Unilever's Tabaksblat told the advertisers, ad agencies, other marketing-related firms and media groups gathered at the conference that today's demanding consumer was forcing Unilever to redefine itself as a company.

"The empowered consumer expects me, you -- all of us -- to answer his needs, not ours. He expects us to inform him, entertain him while we're doing so — and above all, involve him. Or there's no deal," he said.

Tabaksblat said Unilever was experimenting with ways to reach consumers, including creating a website called "Mama's Cocina" for Ragu spaghetti sauce, at http://www.eat.com.

He said another successful Unilever experiment with newmedia was an interactive television package promoting Dove soap that offered home movies on demand, interactive supermarket shopping, a home-delivery restaurant and a telebanking service.

Tabaksblat said Unilever wanted to emulate companies like Nike which used its "Just Do It" campaign to communicate with young people in a way that went beyond traditional advertising.

"Nike is a company busy defining itself. We (Unilever) are a company in the process of redefining ourselves in certain areas -- one of which is the way we speak to young people," he said.

He said Unilever's perfume, cK one, became the best-selling US fragrance by targeting a "multi-racial, multi-ethnic, ageless and genderless audience" in places like record stores."But what was almost as pleasing was to hear our competitors say, `That was a very UN-Unilever-like thing to do'," Tabaksblat said.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.