Creative Partnership styles Unilever show

A broad range of material to promote this year’s Unilever Series exhibition at Tate Modern has been designed by Creative Partnership Marketing. The exhibition, featuring work by sculptor Anish Kapoor, opens next month .

The work includes an identity, posters, signage, invitations, promotional items and press advertising, with the logo being officially launched in a national newspaper campaign from 23 September.

CPM managing director Emmanuelle Cadji suggests the consultancy’s work amounts to a profile-raising, brand revamp of Unilever’s marketing approach.

‘The job involved a strategic repositioning [to make sure] it was known as The Unilever Series, as opposed to just another corporate sponsored exhibition. For Unilever, it’s about pushing creativity and showing how it uses creativity in running a successful business,’ she says.

CPM designer Dave Jenner says, ‘The idea behind the design was that all creative thought starts with a sketch, whether you’re Anish Kapoor or working for Unilever on new product development.’

CPM art director Maria Hipwell led the creative team, which included Jenner. The consultancy won the work in July after a three-way strategic and creative pitch.

The Unilever Series is now in the third year of a five-year, £1.25m sponsorship deal that commissions artists to create work to meet the dimensions of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Unilever uses its sponsorship for corporate entertaining and promotional activity targeted at the City, Government and other opinion-formers, as well as the company’s 15 000 UK employees.

Unilever UK marketing communications manager Clare Maynard says, ‘The [exhibitions are] a key part of Unilever’s corporate marketing effort, designed to communicate the company’s core values to its many stakeholder groups.’

The Unilever Series Anish Kapoor exhibition opens at Tate Modern on 9 October and runs until 6 April 2003.