Unilever estimates that it spends 12.5 per cent to 13 per cent of sales on advertising and promotional activities, which suggests that the company spent slightly more than 5 billion euros ($4.73 billion) in 1999. JWT, a unit of ad holding company WPP Group PLC, London, handles Unilever advertising in 56 countries, promoting such brands as Lipton tea, Persil laundry detergent and Organics shampoo.

As competition heats up between ad agencies working for multinational consumer-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Unilever, most are reorganising to provide quicker, more global service. J Walter Thompson created Day's position to unify the agency's world-wide ad campaigns that Unilever is counting on to boost its core brands.

Unilever once was notorious for its local advertising policy that relied on separate campaigns in separate markets to promote its wide array of brands. But the maker of Bird's Eye frozen foods and Dove beauty products, among others, recently announced a five-year programme to eliminate or at least stop promoting three-quarters of its existing brands and focus its marketing power instead on the remaining 400.

"Unilever's narrowed focus on its portfolio of brands puts more pressure on us to create campaigns that can work in numerous markets," says Tim Davis, J Walter Thompson's global business director for Unilever. Day's appointment, he added, is "consistent with the strategic objectives of Unilever's focus on global brands and raising the quality of its advertising."

Unilever has numerous agencies that work with its brands around the globe, including Lowe Lintas and Partners and McCann-Erickson Worldwide, each units of the Interpublic Group of Cos., New York; and Ogilvy & Mather, which also is part of WPP Group.

Competition between the agencies for various parts of Unilever's business has increased because of the consolidation of the company's brands. And Unilever's pending $20.3 billion acquisition of Bestfoods of the US will add such famed names as Knorr soup and Hellmann's mayonnaise to the Unilever arsenal. "There will certainly be more narrowly focused advertising efforts," when the acquisition is completed, says Charlie Mills, retail analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in London. The addition of the Bestfoods lineup, he adds, will add pressure on Unilever's current brands to perform.

Day, known for his copywriting on behalf of such clients as Mercedes, Motorola and Emirates Airlines, predicts that the advertising business will become more sharply focused in the future. "There will either be massive global campaigns or very local work; I want to be on the big side," he says.

Day spent the past few days in Juan-les-Pins on the southern coast of France, meeting with 15 of J Walter Thompson's creative directors from around the world. His work largely will consist of co-ordinating their efforts to produce cross-border work that can be implemented in major markets with little or no adaptation.

"It's a bit of a Holy Grail," Day says of creating an effective global campaign. He identifies three crucial elements for all advertising work: empathy, focus and surprise. "The greatest of these is surprise," he quips, adding, "That's the element most absent from global work. I'm going to try to change that."

The Wall Street Journal