P&G Advertising Strategy Essay

For marketing students at IIM Ahmedabad, 9th of January, 2011, is anything but a typical Sunday. They have resisted the temptation to join their batchmates in a lazy basketball p roach and appear oblivious to the cheerful riotous frenzy of the kite festival on the banks of the Sabarmati. Instead they have been pitted against each another(prenominal) all sunup in a fault exercise organised and masterminded by P&G. The prize? A dinner date for the teams with a man responsible for discharge the marketing function of one of the most powerful FMCG companies on the planet, Marc Pritchard , global marketing and brand building officer, P&G.However, even students who do not hold the cut get a chance to experience Pritchard firsthand when he addresses a respectably packed hall that evening. Soon after hes done, the questions fly thick and fast. These include some potentially embarrassing posers. How does P&G feel, one student wants to know, about its campaigns being ambushed by its arch rival HUL? Few throng have forgotten the teaser campaign about a mystery shampoo last year (that was revealed to be P&Gs Pantene) being hijacked by Dove from the HUL stable.Pritchard opts to take the high road on this one We cant prevent any competitor from ambush (surprise attack). But if you center on the consumer, what your brand is doing to serve the consumer and if you have a big idea, you will win most of the time. And thats a running theme through graceful oft everything that Pritchard has to say. Whether hes addressing students at IIM-A, the media or an audience at the Cannes Lions Festival, hes a tireless champion of brands serving consumers or economic consumption driven branding. P&G spent most of the 1990s establishing a global footprint. Now, according to Pritchard, it finally has the chance to live up to its shoot for. The first measuring rod was getting senior management to define a office for each of the brands in the P&G stable a blueprint on how the high society could touch and improve lives. Pritchard explains, We still have a core benefit but are thinking more broadly on how we can abandon it. We are very focussed on sharpening what the brands stand for, identifying human insights that can translate into big ideas. Bold Gamble However those prepared for a olympian chronicle of CSR and corporate do-gooding are alike(p)ly to step back, a little disappointed. Pritchards showreel of purpose driven work from P&G includes pretty much every big campaign the FMCG has come up with recently. This includes the highly awarded work on Old Spice with its cocky The man your man could smell like tagline. Pritchard says, Purpose is much more than a cause or a corporate responsibility. We deliberately foc utilise on making people define purpose as how brands improve everyday lives.A cause is just a piece of it as opposed to the whole thing. This helps take purpose out of an ivory tower. Its no longer something that resonates only with consumer s in developed markets, fed up with hard sell, looking for corporates to do something more. Instead it could even be used as an effective go to market strategy. Which is pretty much the case with Pampers. Pritchard defines the brands purpose as to improve a babys healthy, happy development. Its benefit is dryness and comfort that allows babies to sleep, play and explore more. When they do that, they develop better.By the way, its also making their moms lives a lot better if they sleep through the night. To bring this purpose to life, P&G sends pediatricians to villages with tips on how to help the baby sleep and advice on immunization, besides development this interface as a sampling opportunity. The one pack = one vaccine program run in association with the UNICEF is tied into this larger purpose too. It helps bring the community of moms together since they like to help other moms, says Pritchard.Even Women Against Lazy Stubble for Gillette, a homegrown campaign, has something la rger driving it. Purpose takes on a more meaningful role in developing markets, he explains. The vans that propagate the program give young men tips on shaving, how to dress, handle an interrogate and talk to women. Purpose coincides well with P&G making a concerted push into non-city markets not just in India but in other countries like Brazil and China that have a yawning urban- folksy divide. P&G is focusing on stores because its the first moment of truth for the rural consumer. Pritchard says, We market back from there to create awareness to get them to that point. There are approximately 7 million high frequency shops in India and P&G has covered 4 million of these so far. A fair amount of product and package development is being done to cater to this segment. use the store as the starting point also helps make the entire process less sporadic. Pritchard states, It means you are always on. We have consolidated the payoff of distributors into a core highly capable, powerful g roup. We give them the material, knowledge and know how on display. India is in some ways at the vanguard of P&Gs rural drive. One of the things pioneered in India was generating more household trial.Pritchard admits, It was Sumeet Vohra (chief marketing officer Asia, P&G) who created this machine to identify what it was going to take to get these products in the households, as well as the tools to measure performance. Much of what we learnt in India has been exported to other markets like Africa for example. The recent acquisition of Paras by Reckitt Benckiser proves that multinational giants look to India for a lot more than its large consumer base. Pritchard gives a diplomatic answer when asked if there are any local heroes that hes got an eye on. But P&G invariably unearths little jewels with every acquisition, he says.Like Koleston which was not very big globally but strong in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, around the time Wella was acquired. P&G took the brand to Me xico, Europe and are now launching in India. Pritchard goes further back for his next example Richardson Vicks in 1985 had a very tiny brand called Pantene that accounted for $70 million in sales. He says, We put the new technology in, and launched it in Taiwan and came up with Pantene professional V. Now it is over a $3 billion brand. To be chosen for the big push, the brand needs equity and it helps to have some sort of a story.Like Max Factors SK2 which was made with Pitera, a yeast extract used by monks in Japan which kept their skin in a better condition. We built from that story, tested it in different markets and now its more than half a billion dollars and growing like crazy, says Pritchard. In a classical FMCG battle, market observers may be tempted to brand P&G as a pacifist, with hardly any aggressive countermoves towards competition. But, combining brand awareness with social programmes, driving its brands further into the hinterland and acquiring a knack of creating b illion dollar brands, Pritchard knows that the company is pushing the right levers.