Unilever shakes up its product portfolio

Unilever recently sold off its spreads and margarine brands to concentrate on other, higher-potential products in its portfolio. The company's CEO explained: 'The announcement today marks a further step in reshaping and sharpening our portfolio for long term growth'.

Brands sold to KKR, a private equity firm, include Flora, ProActiv, Becel, Country Crock, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and and Blueband.

Although the spreads business was profitable for Unilever, with margins of about 20%, the firm wants to concentrate its marketing resources on products that closely fit its vision.

In particular, Unilever has been growing formerly niche brands like Pukka Herbs tea into mainstream brands to accelerate growth. It's also investing in personal care brands that are growing quickly and launching a number of new products for highly targeted customer segments within specific geographic markets.

This updates the Unilever examples in Essential Guide to Marketing Planning 4th edn.

What's New at Cadbury Dairy Milk?

After a period of outsourcing production of Dairy Milk beyond the UK borders, Cadbury has announced that the popular chocolate will once again be "made in Britain" at the Bournville production plant.

Cadbury is also bringing back a product that twice was deleted from the range due to low sales. The Dairy Milk Tiffin chocolate bar, originally launched 80 years ago, is returning to store shelves permanently following a highly successful limited-edition version in 2016.

Not new: the company still offers personalised Dairy Milk bars. Increasingly important: Cadbury UK's popular Facebook page (more than 700k followers), active Twitter account (more than 300k followers) and Instagram account (146k followers). That's how Cadbury's social media marketing strategy keeps its brand and products in front of Millennials who enjoy chocolate.

350 million Creme Eggs in Cadbury's Easter Basket

Cadbury (now owned by Mondelez) is 190 years old, and still creating new products for Easter and every other occasion. During the period before Easter, Cadbury produces 350 million Creme Eggs at its Bournville factory, ready for Easter baskets and chocolate lovers. The Bournville plant is to be modernised soon, to increase efficiency and competitiveness. The plant also developed and now manufactures the Marvellous Creations chocolate bar, which accounted for £50 million of sales during 2013.

Egg 'n' Spoon is another recent choco egg creation. The package includes purple spoons to scoop out the mousse filling from each egg. Research and development for this product at Bournville was supported by testing and analysis at Reading University.

New products are vitally important to the growth of Cadbury and its parent company: "In 2012, sales of products developed in the previous three years accounted for 12% of Mondelez Europe's revenue and 13% for the company worldwide," according to an executive. Variations of popular Cadbury products are contributing to growth by appealing to new customers and also encouraging loyal brand fans to try different Cadbury items.

Cadbury is, of course, highly social, with more than 500,000 Facebook likes and 198,000 Twitter followers.