Keith Weed

Keith Charles Frederick Weed CBE (born 1961) is Unilever's former CMCO, a role he held from 2010 to 2019.^[1] In 2020, Weed was appointed President and Chairman of the Royal Horticultural Society. In addition to this, he currently holds various trustee and non-executive director roles.

Keith Weed CBE
Born	United Kingdom
Nationality	English
Alma mater	Liverpool University
Occupation	CMCO of Unilever
Title	Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
Term	2010–2019

Education

Weed obtained a Bachelor of Engineering with First Class Honours from Liverpool University in 1983.^[2] In 2012 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Southampton Solent University for his contributions to business.^[3]

Career

Weed worked as an engineer after graduating university before joining Unilever in 1983 as a marketer. During his career at Unilever, he has been chairman of Lever Fabergé and chairman of Unilever Export.^[4] He has worked for Unilever in the UK, France, the United States, both in global and regional roles across general management and marketing.^[5] In 2012 he was global head of Home Care & Hygiene.^[6] As Unilever's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Weed sat on Unilever's executive board with the Marketing, Communications and Sustainable Business teams reporting to him.^{[citation needed]}

As CMCO, Weed pioneered new ways of integrating sustainability in business and led the creation of a "sustainable living plan".^[7] This plan sought to grow Unilever, reduce its environmental footprint, and increase its social impact.^[8] He also dissolved Unilever's corporate social responsibility department^[9] and integrated sustainable growth throughout Unilever's business. In 2014, Weed gave a TED Talk about the global issue of climate change and argued that sustainability and economic growth can go hand-in-hand.^[10]

Weed also directed advances in digital^[11] and influencer marketing^[12] and technologies within Unilever. He championed the 3Vs of Viewability, Verification and Value across the industry. He is committed to tackling stereotypes – gender and beyond – in advertising through Unilever's #Unstereotype initiative.^[13] As a part of this initiative, he architected the Unstereotype Alliance.^[14] Weed co-created this alliance with the help of UN Women, and united 24 companies in an effort to remove the portrayal of unhelpful stereotypes from their advertising by 2020.

In 2016, Weed was named LinkedIn's second most influential writer on the platform in the UK.^[15] In 2017, he was voted as the Marketers' Marketer of the Year by Campaign readers.^[16] He was also voted Global Marketer of the Year 2017 by the World Federation of Advertisers.^[17] Additionally, Weed was named the World's Most Influential CMO in 2017 and 2018 by Forbes.^[18][19] In 2018, Weed also received The Drum's Lifetime Achievement Award^[20] and featured in the Top 50 Financial Times HERoes list as a Champion of Women in Business.^[21]

Outside Unilever, Weed worked as the president of the Advertising Association,^[22] a fellow of The Marketing Society, of which he was president from 2003 to 2006. He was a non-executive director of Sun Products Corporation from 2008 to 2016.^[23]

Current positions

In 2019, Weed took up a non-executive director role at WPP plc.^[24]

In 2020, he was named President and Chairman of the Royal Horticultural Society ^[25] and joined the board of Sainsbury's as a non-executive director. ^[26]

Weed was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours list for services to the advertising and marketing industry.^[27]

In 2021 he became a trustee of the Leverhulme Trust.^[28]

In 2022 he was appointed Chair of the UK Chapter of the Unstereotype Alliance. ^[29]

He is also currently chairman of Business in the Community International, a board of trustees director for Business in the Community,^[30] a board director of the Effies.^[31], a trustee of Grange Park Opera^[32] and is a fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

References

1. Swant, Marty. "Unilever Promotes Veteran Marketer Conny Braams To Chief Digital And Marketing Officer". Forbes.
2. "Market Leader Interview – Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer, Unilever".
3. "Honorary graduates".
4. "Unilever creates Lever Faberge in UK consolidation".
5. "Keith Weed - World Economic Forum".
6. "CMO Profile: Keith Weed Managing Marketing Strategy for Unilever". 24 March 2012.
7. "Harvard Business Review - Reinventing the Chief Marketing Officer".
8. "Our strategy for sustainable growth". Unilever global company website.
9. "A new type of CSR: Why I disbanded Unilever's CSR department, in a nutshell". www.linkedin.com.
10. Weed, Keith. "The power of transformative collaboration" – via www.ted.com.
11. "Unilever's Keith Weed to put price on trust for tech giants". www.campaignlive.co.uk. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
12. "Influencer marketing fraud – how big a problem is it?". The Drum. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
13. Sweney, Mark (22 June 2016). "Unilever vows to drop sexist stereotypes from its ads". Retrieved 9 May 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
14. "Unstereotype Alliance celebrates its first anniversary and launches new report 'Unstereotype: Beyond Gender. The Invisible Stereotypes'". UN Women. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
15. "LinkedIn Top Voices 2016: The 15 must-know writers in the U.K." www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
16. Garland Worthington, Sue (9 March 2007). "Liveryman Keith Weed honoured as Marketers' Marketer in Campaign's Power 100". www.Marketors.org. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
17. "Global Marketer of the Year 2018". WFA. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
18. Rooney, Jennifer. "The World's Most Influential CMOs 2017". Forbes. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
19. Rooney, Jenny. "The World's Most Influential CMOs 2018". Forbes. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
20. "Unilever's chief marketing & comms officer, Keith Weed to receive The Drum's Lifetime Achievement Award". The Drum. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
21. "HERoes: champions of women in business". Financial Times. 20 September 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
22. "Advertising Association names Unilever chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed as President".
23. "Keith Weed, Unilever NV: Profile & Biography". Bloomberg News.
24. Capes, Marie (18 September 2019). "WWP - WWP appoints Keith Weed to the board". WPP company website. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
25. "RHS Council". RHS.
26. "Our management". www.about.sainsburys.co.uk. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
27. "No. 63218". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2020. p. N9.
28. "The Trust Board | The Leverhulme Trust". www.leverhulme.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
29. "Keith Weed urges marketers to stick by diverse ads but 65% fear they're getting it 'wrong'". The Drum. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
30. . Archived from the original on 22 May 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
31. "Effie". www.effie.org. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
32. "Staff". Grange Park Opera.