30 Years of Unilever in Vietnam

Corporate anniversary publications occupy a difficult middle ground. When they are written as marketing documents, they feel hollow to the people inside the organisation who know the real story. When they are written as internal records, they lose the narrative energy that would make them worth reading by anyone else. The challenge Metro Writers was asked to meet for Unilever Vietnam’s 30th anniversary was to do something harder: produce a volume that was both genuinely celebratory and genuinely true.

The approach was to write history through the people who made it. Rather than summarising Unilever’s milestones in the abstract, the book frames each era through those who lived it – the first foreign Chairmen who had to understand Vietnam from scratch, the Vietnamese leaders who eventually took over the organisation and shaped it in their own image, the factory director who spent a decade turning sustainability from aspiration into operational practice, and the communities whose daily lives were changed by Lifebuoy, OMO, Clear, and the other brands that became household names in the process. Personal interviews anchor each chapter, giving the institution a human face across five periods of the country’s development.

Metro Writers had worked with VCCorp on Pioneers in Ethics, the book produced to accompany the Human Act Prize. That collaboration demonstrated to both parties that the same approach – rigorous research, strong narrative, personal testimony at the centre – could be applied to institutional stories as readily as to individual ones. The Unilever project extended that model: same team of specialist writers, same editorial standard, same commitment to making a story that feels real.

The book was published by the Ministry of Industry and Trade Publishing House and distributed internally at Unilever Vietnam as an anniversary gift and institutional record.

30 years of a company’s presence in a country is long enough for the country to have changed it as much as it changed the country. This book is the record of that exchange.

In 1995, Unilever entered Vietnam with a team of modest size and an ambition that was anything but. Over the three decades that followed, the company’s story became inseparable from Vietnam’s own: the opening of the economy, the improvement of public health and hygiene, the development of rural communities, the integration into global trade, the response to a global pandemic, and the deepening commitment to a sustainable future.

30 Years of Unilever in Vietnam is the official commemorative publication marking this anniversary. It tells the story not through statistics and headlines, but through the people – the first Chairmen and Presidents who laid the foundations, the Vietnamese leaders who eventually took the helm, the factory managers, community partners, and ordinary families whose lives were shaped by this presence. Five chapters trace the arc from arrival to aspiration, from a company learning to understand Vietnam to one that calls it home.

Produced by Metro Writers in collaboration with VCCorp for the 30th anniversary celebrations, the book was written in English and Vietnamese and published by the Ministry of Industry and Trade Publishing House.

“In 1995, Unilever began its journey in Vietnam with a clear vision. A business can be a driving force for good by growing alongside the nation, serving consumers wholeheartedly, and contributing positive impact. Marking our thirtieth year, I recognise that beyond the achievements we have reached, another feeling has steadily grown – that Vietnam is Home.”

— From the Foreword, 30 Years of Unilever in Vietnam