Paul Polman
Chief Executive Officer
Yes, David, 2 things on the A&P. First of all, it's up EUR 150 million again, once more, as Jean-Marc showed. So it's up. But it's up on top of the efficiencies we've driven. A tremendous effort has gone into the year on return on investment behind marketing spend, more productive spend, and then increasingly to move to digital. So we feel that we are competitive. In fact, if I may privately say, I was actually worried that in the last quarter of 2011, we would have the same behavior of 2010 last quarter that the markets would hold back A&P for making the 10 basis points because it affects everybody's bonus. Instead, that's not been the case. We actually spent more A&P in the quarter to be competitive, which gives us a strong start for 2012, which also shows you the culture change. People are willing to compromise the short term for the benefit of the long term. I'm particularly proud of that, and that's very important. Secondly, the cholesterol is better because it's more A than P, so we're very pleased with that. In 2012, we expect again to have a further increase in A&P behind some of the big expansions and the support on our brands, as we've talked about. So in that area, we're getting better, and we will continue to look at opportunities of investing there to strengthen our brand equities, as I mentioned in my talk. On the emerging markets, it is indeed right that you say that we had a tremendous growth of 11.5%. Some of you naysayers out there were always worried about the emerging markets. I remember when I came in 2008, "Oh, you guys are so exposed to emerging markets." Then in 2009, "Oh, competition is coming in to the emerging markets." Then in 2010 or '11, "Oh, you got all the input cost in the emerging markets." Then I made a statement trying to be honest and say emerging markets are slowing down, "Oh, he's giving a warning about the emerging markets." I don't know what you guys do in your private time, but you're making your life incredibly miserable. We see 11.5% as good growth, and the organization should be complimented on that. And we will continue to look for opportunities as 2 billion people come into this world and improve their standards of living to get more than a fair share of that. And that is a lot of effort by a lot of people. So whilst these markets slow down a little bit, I don't think that has to be an excuse for us to do less in any form or other. Now 11.5% is an exceptional growth, I do agree with that, but we are certainly setting our ambitions high there.