The Strategy Review

Sugaring the pill ... when manufacturers front up to obesity

Interesting to read this piece in today's Guardian regarding the response of Paul Polman, the Unilever boss, to the proposed 20% sugar tax which is getting a big push from health groups lately.

I think Mr Polman's point - that the tax is not in itself the Holy Grail and that a more holistic response is required from all stakeholders - is well made.

It does however need to said that among its peers, Unilever has arguably placed the biggest bet in this area with its brave, commendable (not to mention "so much more than just a press release") Sustainable Living Plan.

I've worked in the past with some of the Unilever players who are pushing the agenda forwards. This is a real programme, with real action, meaningful and tangible targets and, so far, significant impacts beyond the predictable halo effect around their brand communications.

The challenge for the company is matching its undeniable sincerity, along with the difference the programme is making in the world, with its impact on its bottom line. In other words, making consumers in more developed economies, who are not directly threatened by dangerous diseases and profound deprivation, care enough about these initiatives to improve brand equity and loyalty.

With this in mind, it's commercially in Mr Polman's interests - and this is categorically not an accusation of cynicism: he does an outstanding job of balancing principle with profit - to push back a little on the sugar tax. It's too easy for an affluent consumer who is troubled neither by poverty nor a painful concern with the state and future of the planet and its underprivileged people, nor indeed the familial or social problem of obesity and related health concerns, to both shrug off the extra cost that the tax would add, and, more worryingly, assume that simply by paying the tax, that the problem would then lie firmly in the hands of government.

This would arguably dilute the social effects and brand differentiation conferred by Unilever's noble work on its products and its revenues, while solving not nearly enough of the larger problem, which is that far too many people are getting progressively both fatter and sicker, because they are eating far too much of the wrong nutrition.

There is, of course, a further dimension that needs to be acknowledged here, which is the sheer power of the global sugar lobby, in particular in the USA. Michael Bloomberg, then the mayor of NYC, famously took on Big Sugar several years ago, trying to achieve a ban of super-sized sodas, whose sugar content (or aspartame, if you like - neither flavouring is appealing in terms of health) had been well-documented and publicised.

Mr Bloomberg, a man of rare substance and influence, just bounced off the machine like a well-intentioned rag doll.

So, this is not a matter of simple logic, or plain justice. The debate lands, again and again, among some of the most powerful vested commercial and political interests on the planet.

In the meantime, Unilever's declared schedule of replacing aspartame with stevia in an increasing range of its products seems to me a strong and honest response from one of the world's leading manufacturers, and hats off to that.

Consumers, for now, can do little more than look very closely at ingredients, and perhaps more fundamentally, get real about their relationship with sugar, a substance that, for its goodness and pleasure, is very much a drug.

"No country for old men?"

There has been a rash of heated discussion in my Linked In feed this week debating whether 50+ thinkers and executives have the right or indeed the ability to write and speak about the current business and technology environment with authority.

Is an old thought leader still a thought leader, or should he or she stand back and let the younger folks hold the stage?

On the negative side - and this is where the weight of argument has seemed to lie, certainly in terms of strength of opinion and number of comments - the sentiment is that age does not in itself confer wisdom, and more specifically that the perspective of commentators who may not entirely grasp the nature and impact of, for example, disruptive technologies on the current and future landscape is suspect.

There isn't much to say on the positive side really, except to point out that many of our wisest, most sophisticated and, I should add, witty and humane thinkers are well into middle age.

There is a real issue here, and reasons for concern. But the problem is not per se one of age, and to frame it in the dangerous language of ageism does nothing but damage to the cause of quality thinking and its availability.

Looking beyond the well-understood challenges facing professional men and women as they slip past whatever we might think of as their "prime", and also sidestepping the historic struggle between age and youth for primacy, the problem that is being discussed is not in fact about age at all.

It's to some extent about structure, in that the way societies and organisations have been set up has tended, depending on the usual variables, to favour beauty over age, or energy over insight and experience. 

The stranglehold that the old farts have held over "the way things are" in institutional environments is a source of justified frustration to anyone with a mind and a conscience, of course.

Equally, the youthism that has come to dominate so many of the more image-based sectors - music, television and of course media and advertising are all too familiar examples - while depriving many excellent minds and souls of gainful employment, has also led to a loss of depth, rigour and other important qualities that come only with passing years.

But this conundrum is, above all, about attitude. For a person of a certain age and profile to continue to insist, for example, that nothing's really changed as a result of the digital revolution and that the same old rules apply is deeply irritating, not least to those who dedicate their lives to clarifying and communicating the nature and meaning of such changes. This, by anyone's standards, is good old bullshit and should loudly be hailed as such.

However, there is - and I number many of these types amongst my closest friends and most valued colleagues - nothing more refreshing and valuable to any cause than an experienced mind that is open, curious, and emotionally robust enough to live in a state of "constant hypothesis".

Ready, in other words, to consider, accommodate and advocate the best of the new, while retaining a critical, even skeptical lens that ensures that we are not simply intellectual mutton dressed as lamb.

Not to say that these precious individuals are easy to find. Nor to say that any old fool - and by the way there are many more young ones - who cares to claim the increasingly vague title of Thought Leader should have it for the taking.

The thing about the activity of thought leadership - and it should be considered a practice, rather than as some sort of badge of honour - is that it demands a lot of thinking, and a lot of leading.

Old or young makes no difference at all, in the end. Humility without hubris wins the day.