A WALK IN THE PARK WITH ALINE SANTOS FARHAT( Senior Global Vice President OMO at Unilever)

We leave our pousada just after breakfast and hail a taxi at the street corner. “To the Parque da Luz nextto the Pinacoteca,” I say in my best Portuguese. The taxi turns left, then right, then left again, windingthrough the streets of Jardim Paulista. “I love this part of town,” Maarten says as he looks out of thewindow. “It doesn’t feel like we’re in a metropolis of 20 million inhabitants.”

Twenty minutes later, we arrive at the Pinacoteca, Brazil’s oldest and perhaps most important museum,which is housed in an impressive classical building. This is where we are meeting Aline Santos Farhat, thesenior global brand vice-president for OMO detergents. We find Aline in the museum café, sitting on theterrace overlooking the park. “Instead of meeting in my office, I wanted to bring you here, to tell you mystory in the right setting,” Aline says, pointing at the large trees in the park. We look at the trees andback at Aline. “Is Omo into tree washing these days?” Anouk asks.Aline laughs. “No, not the trees, it’s about the children playing behind the trees,” she says, and indeed,in the distance we see kids running around in the shade of the trees.

“A few years ago, we were sending out more or less the same message as all the otherdetergent brands: ‘Dirt is bad, stains are bad’. We were using the same language and the sameimages as everyone else. We realised this was dangerous: there was a threat ofcommoditization – OMO was becoming ‘just’ another brand. Besides, we didn’t want to just betalking about ketchup stains anymore; we needed a message that mothers would remembereven after the laundry was folded away in the cupboard. We realised that brands without agreater purpose have no future in today’s competitive market.”

“So Unilever came up with the ‘Dirt is Good’ concept, which was a revolution in detergent land.Dirt is usually the enemy. We started encouraging parents to let their children play outsidemore and discover the world. ‘Let them get dirty,’ we told them, ‘OMO will take care of it.’”

Aline points at the trees – or rather at the children behind the trees. “I remember my ownchildhood: I played outside with my brothers all the time, climbing trees, building tree houses,running around, feeling free and getting the opportunity to explore the world around me. Thisis not only important for kids, but also for the adults they will become.”

The São Paulo sun is shining as we leave the café and stroll into the park. I watch the kidsrunning around and ask Aline: “So ‘Dirt is Good’ has become a philosophy?”

She pauses for a few seconds. “You could say that it has outgrown OMO as a product and hasbecome a wake-up call for mothers.”

“Using OMO as a vehicle, we started spreading the message about the importance of playingand exploring – the physical and emotional development that go with it. Children have the rightto play, to be children,” says Aline. “Of course, in the end, we are a detergent brand and I haveto make sure we grow our business, but we also want to make sure that we have a purpose insociety.”

We walk back towards the Pinacoteca and I turn to Aline. “It is a most interesting challenge youhave, creating a higher purpose for a detergent,” I say. “It probably isn’t a walk in the park atall.”