So we must never lose it. But I don’t think we advance the cause of purpose by force fitting it across every brand. These are the realities. And it is important to confront them early on and head on, not least because they are not only resolvable, but actually represent our biggest opportunity. And that brings me neatly to the crux of what I want to cover today. The actions we proposed to take over the months ahead to unlock those opportunities. And these actions are the output of an intense program of work undertaken over the last few months and they’re all predicated on the idea of growth acceleration, where can we accelerate in order to better exploit what is working well. And where do we need to accelerate to close gaps and swiftly improve our trajectory.
And taken together, they add up to three significant shifts in the way we think about the priorities of the business. Shifts, we are capturing under the headings, faster growth productivity and simplicity, performance culture. Underpinning all of them is the need to focus on fewer things done better with greater impact. Let me take them in turn, highlighting some of the principal actions we will take under each, and I’m starting with faster growth. This is built around five levers. First and foremost, an unrelenting initial focus on our top 30 power brands, then driving unmissable brand superiority, scaling multiyear innovations and increasing brand investments and returns and selectively optimizing the portfolio. Let me start with prioritizing our power brands.
Now what do I mean by a power brand. These include our biggest brands by turnover. The 14 in the €1 billion club, like Dove, Magnum and Hellmann, whose growth has been accretive to Unilever, delivering higher volume and price, there are then 16 other brands which have the most potential to join them, like Cif, Vaseline, Nutrafol and Liquid I.V. prioritizing these 30 brands which represent more than 70% of our turnover, gives us a real opportunity to improve Unilever’s growth profile. Hence, these brands will have the first call on capital and resources. They represent our biggest value creation opportunity which means they need to be brilliantly executed and consistently supported before anything else. And this doesn’t mean other brands are not important or will be sold or under invested, but it does mean we can address the issue I referred to earlier to many projects competing for in-market execution and brand support.
Let me come now to the growth levers, all designed to give these top brands the best chance of success starting with what we are calling driving unmissable brand superiority. Consumers today view our products in an increasingly rounded and sophisticated way. We have to be ready to respond. It starts with product superiority. And we’ve made good progress here with 70% of measure turnover now superior to competitors. However, winning the hearts, minds and pockets of consumers requires us to broaden the way we measure and deliver superiority. We already have a proven concept on how to do this as well as some great examples of where it is working well in practice, including the Master’s Power Foam and Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash. In both cases, the focus on product superiority has been expanded to a quantitatively measured composite score of how brands perform against each of their key attributes.
And that is unmissable superiority. And by including the other key attributes alongside product and price we can give proper weight to increasingly important determinants like desirable packaging and to sustainability, which is key now for many consumers. That’s why we’ll continue to convert our strong know-how in this area into products that mitigate or even better, eliminate environmental impact. We know that consumers are increasingly prepared to pay a premium for this. And this revised way of thinking about superiority will allow us to identify the distinct drivers of superiority for different brands with real precision, enabling our business leaders to improve overall performance by addressing those attributes that make the difference.
Our next step is to embed the approach across all business groups in a rigorous and systematic way using clear and measurable KPIs and I’m excited about these fundamentals of consumer products. Details matter. It all needs to come together. The next growth acceleration lever relates to innovation, the lifeblood of a company like Unilever and again, I see good progress of late. The average project size is 2x to 3x larger than it was in 2020, boosting our in-market incremental turnover from innovation by the same factor. However, as mentioned before, we are still spread thinly, prohibiting consistent execution. We’re also behind our best peers when it comes both to the size and time horizon of our innovation programs. Our acceleration plan will, therefore, be built around the following objectives: prioritizing multiyear scalable programs that drive category growth; extending the time horizon and focusing more on new benefits and formats as opposed to relaunches; making better use of strong science and technology platforms.
The aim will be another doubling of the average project size to over 5x the 2020 figure. And as category leaders, we will give increased priority to ensuring our innovation is driving market development. This is a capability, frankly, that has not been used to its full potential in recent years. This is especially true in the Super Premium segment in which we under index in four out of five business groups. I have gone particularly deep into this area of the business over the last few months. In fact, some of my first visits around Unilever were to our key global R&D labs around the world. And from all this, I am convinced we can leverage our science and technology capabilities and platforms even more effectively and across brands. We actually do have good examples of this, such as the use of micro technology in deos, applied across the Rexona, Dove and brands or eco design technology for outstanding cleaning in both laundry and dishwash.
But in keeping with the other elements of this plan, the time is right to commit to a smaller number of bigger opportunities to maximize impact. This will also mean leveraging our strength in key relevant cross-category platforms such as biotechnology and specific relevant spaces within microbiome science. These are examples of science and technology platforms with direct relevance to our business and where we already have advanced capabilities. Now we need to get the maximum benefit. And done well, this will help us to drive category growth and will be the most effective and sustainable way through which to deliver increased competitiveness. We will support this part of the plan with consistently growing our R&D investment. Turning to the next growth lever, increased brand and marketing investment and return, in short, we will increase the absolute level of brand and marketing investment, just as we did in 2022 and are on course to do in 2023.
