Despite rising raw material and input costs which have hit the top and bottom lines of corporate India, the country’s premier FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) multinational, Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) is bucking the trend and declared excellent operational results for its second quarter ended June 30. Sales revenue at the half year stage is Rs.8,100 crore — 21 percent higher, and net profit at Rs.93 crore, 13 percent higher.
There’s more good news for HUL. According to reports emanating from London, two HUL top brass — former chairman Manvinder (‘Vindi’) Banga who was promoted to the London/Rotterdam head office of the Anglo-Dutch parent company Unilever Plc as a director four years ago, and the incumbent chairman of HUL, Mumbai-based Harish Manwani — are in the running for the executive chairman’s corner office in London/ Rotterdam.
Against this backdrop of Indians going great guns and rising to top positions in HUL and the parent company in Blighty and Holland, it might be a good time for HUL to review the unethical advertising campaigns of one of its heavily promoted products — a skin lightening cream branded Fair & Lovely. According to the F&L ad campaign repeatedly plugged in myriad television channels, this wonder cream will whiten the user’s skin which according to HUL, is the prerequisite of social and sexual popularity, and the passport to business success and unlimited prosperity. F&L has the largest share of the growing skin lightening products market and reportedly contributes more than 10 percent of HUL’s annual sales revenue.
Such blatantly colour prejudiced advertising is banned in most western countries and is clearly anti-social in India, where the great majority of people are dark complexioned. It is more than likely to generate feelings of anxiety, insecurity and inadequacy within the general population. Yet despite protests from right-thinking people, the expats and compradors of HUL driven by greed and profit, continue to heavily advertise F& L and other products of this genre.
According to biblical lore, God created man in his own image. Now Unilever and its insensitive compradors in HUL seem hell-bent on re-creating Indians — or at least deracinated middle class Indians — in the white man’s own image.