From offering diapers to toilet paper, Kimberly-Clark has been in the business of providing essentials for the last 150 years.
Across its portfolio –which includes Kleenex, Huggies, Poise and Cottonelle – the company has products in roughly a quarter of the world’s households. As chief growth officer, Patricia Corsi is tasked with transforming the company culture from just offering commoditized household products to building brands that consumers love for life.
“The core of our strategy is powering care and really caring for our customers and our people,” says Corsi. “The stronger we build our brands, the stronger we can deliver our purpose of caring. Creativity is one of the best solutions to break through.”
The brand took home several Cannes Lions for the recent “Drops of Hope” campaign created for Poise. The brand, which offers pads for incontinence, identified American women living in health deserts –regions where healthcare is more than 100 miles away – to create a Poise pad that could test dried urine to identify health indicators. The campaign featured these women telling their stories.
“We are really opening up the issue of health deserts,” explains Corsi, “and how our products can support these marginalized women get tested. This gives access in terms of both availability and also price to get the care they need.”
Prior to joining Kimberly-Clark, Corsi held senior leadership roles at Bayer, The Heineken Company and Unilever. Brand Innovators caught up with Corsi from her office in Basel, Switzerland to talk about storytelling, showing up in cultures and how the organization is pushing to improve the health outcomes of women and girls. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What is your approach to brand storytelling?
Whenever people say, marketing is a trick. I say, no. Marketing is truth well told. If marketing is truth well told, then storytelling is truth beautifully dressed. When you’re talking about telling and then really expressing these stories in different channels through different mediums, this is the power of storytelling. For example, in a recent campaign we did for Huggies in Brazil, we focused on how babies have marks on their face when they wake up, from the bed or the pacifier. It’s very simple. We talk about other things that can leave marks. There is a story. Your diaper is not one of them. It’s truth well told.
If we are doing our job well, our innovation exists to improve people’s lives. We need to make sure that we connect those to our products, to help people be whatever they want to be and own their narratives and lives. Some categories are quite taboo. There is a lot of unconscious bias towards bladder leakage. It’s not a topic that people stand in front of the shelf and peruse. Whenever I’m traveling, I stand close to the shelf where Depend and Poise are sold and people pass through at light speed. The e-com channel is one of the biggest channels for this category. Yet, two out of three women will have it at some point in their life. You can either accept the stigma or de-stigmatize bladder leakage.
As a leader, we have the job of bringing these topics in a way that they continue to build the category, but they empower people to take care of their health and they live a better life. This is where really the power of storytelling needs to come to life.
Can you talk about your recent efforts to promote essential care for women and girls across the portfolio?
Recently we announced a very important partnership with NGOs in countries like Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and the U.S., where we are pledging to donate almost $30 million to support women in their motherhood journeys and girls going through puberty. With brands like Kotex, Poise and Depend, we have a lot of authority to talk to consumers about things like blood leakage, menstruation, motherhood. We can also help with the magic of brand building to educate consumers so they can live better lives. Our Poise campaign, “Drops of Hope” was widely recognized and awarded this year in Cannes.
Tell me how you’re using data and technology to help drive efficiency.
We are working very closely with our strategic partners – both in media and tech – to explore how to extract the most value out of the data. It starts by transforming data into insights. Data alone doesn’t give you that much. But when you start connecting the dots between the data, it’s very interesting. For example, when you were looking at our websites for Huggies in the U.S., there is a host of data that can allow us to be at the service of the consumer. We know that over 90% of pregnancies that pass the first three months will go to term. You can count on the time when there is going to be a baby. The biggest needs are in the first 1,000 days of birth.
Data can help give insights to the mom. The most efficient way to connect the consumer is when there is a need or there is about to be a need. We provide them with a solution and a service. We partner really well with our customers to make sure that we have the right assortment and the right portfolio on the channels. We have great partnerships with Amazon, Walmart and Target in the U.S.
Finally, we need to make sure that we are also using all the new agentic technology specific to insights and analytics. We are embarking on this new phase of pushing the boundaries of brand building and doing advertising that really grabs more attention. So we have to test how much we can stretch. Having always-on consumers, having artificial consumers that can almost mirror some behaviors to help you to move at speed, especially when you’re trying and you’re working on things that are globally relevant, have been really helpful from a speed point of view.
How are you looking at the retailers as partners?
We look at the consumer shopper journey. We look at all the moments where the consumer will benefit from our message. This is the moment you can influence, educate, help and support
them to make an informed choice. Having connections with our customers that are really founded on consumer intimacy, more than proximity, is the best way to go. It’s the best way to explain to the retailer why it is important to have shelf space for this new product in this category. The data shows that people that buy this category are also very inclined to look for innovation in this other category. Our customers are also looking for growth and opportunities for growth. Working together with retailers at the service of the consumer is the best way to improve our partnerships.
Kimberly-Clark has now acquired Kenvue – including the Tylenol brand – which has faced some stigma in the U.S. recently. What will your approach to brand be across the Kenvue portfolio?
We still have a number of steps to go – shareholder approval, all the legal parts. For now it’s business as usual for both companies. I am super excited about the brands at Kenvue. I actually was a trainee on the Johnson & Johnson medical area in Brazil in the 1990s. I have also had the chance to work on Tylenol and Imodium. They are amazing brands. The science behind them is incredible and the trust from the consumer is great proof. I’m looking forward to the next steps of the acquisition announcement. I’m really excited about the brands.
Can you talk about how some of your past experiences have helped shape your perspective in your current role?
I have had the opportunity to live on three different continents, working in different industries. I know not everyone gets this opportunity, and even when you get the opportunity, not everyone has the benefit to take the opportunity. I was very blessed that my husband said, let’s go, and he quit his job for us to move. It’s something that transforms your perspective of the world. For me, it pushes you to be more open and more vulnerable. It takes a village for things. When I first moved to London, I had a four-month-old baby. There were no grandmothers or aunties to help, so I had to be more resourceful. You learn the fact that you have to adapt and look at a problem with new eyes. You learn agility, flexibility and adaptability. This has helped me tremendously in my career, not just in this role, but in many other roles.
