P&G Advertising Strategy Essay Example for Free

PG Advertising Strategy EssayFor merchandiseing 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 game and turn out oblivious to the cheerful riotous frenzy of the kite festival on the banks of the Sabarmati. Instead they have been face against each other all morning in a snitch exercise organised and masterminded by PG. The prize? A dinner date for the teams with a military personnel responsible for racecourse the marketing intimacy of champion of the most powerful FMCG companies on the planet, Marc Pritchard , global marketing and pit building officer, PG. However, even students who do not make the cut irritate a chance to experience Pritchard first offhand when he addresses a respectably packed hall that evening. Soon after hes done, the questions fly thick and fast. These ac intimacy some potentially embarrassing posers. How does PG feel, one student wan ts to k instantly, about its motions being ambushed by its archrival HUL? Few mountain have forgotten the teaser campaign about a mystery shampoo last twelvemonth (that was revealed to be PGs Pantene) being hijacked by Dove from the HUL persistent.Pritchard opts to take the high road on this one We cant prevent any competitor from ambush (surprise attack). But if you focus on the consumer, what your brand is doing to serve the consumer and if you have a outsize idea, you will win most of the time. And thats a running gamening theme through pretty much 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 point driven branding. PG pass most of the 1990s establishing a global footprint. Now, according to Pritchard, it finally has the chance to live up to its purpose. The first step was getting senior management to define a purpose for each of the brands in the PG stable a blueprint on how the company could touch and improve lives. Pritchard explains, We still have a snapper benefit but ar thinking more broadly on how we can deliver it. We be very focussed on sharpening what the brands stand for, identifying human insights that can translate into big ideas. Bold run a risk However those prepared for a lofty chronicle of CSR and bodied do-gooding are likely to step back, a little disappointed. Pritchards showreel of purpose driven work from PG includes pretty much every big campaign the FMCG has come up with lately. 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 focused on making people define purpose as how brands improve terrestrial lives.A cause is just a piece of it as opposed to the whole thing. This aids take purpose out of an ivory tower. Its no longe r something that resonates only with consumers in geted 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 stop, 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, PG 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 Gillett e, a homegrown campaign, has something larger driving it. Purpose takes on a more meaningful role in developing markets, he explains. The vans that propagate the program stage young men tips on shaving, how to dress, handle an interview and talk to women. Purpose coincides well with PG making a concerted push into non-city markets not just in India but in other countries like brazil-nut tree and China that have a yawning urban-rural divide. PG is focusing on memorys because its the first moment of fair play for the rural consumer. Pritchard says, We market back from there to create awareness to get them to that point. There are close to 7 million high frequency shops in India and PG has covered 4 million of these so far. A fair amount of product and package development is being done to cater to this segment. Using 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 number of dist ributors into a core highly capable, powerful group. We give them the material, knowledge and know how on display. India is in some ways at the vanguard of PGs rural drive. genius of the things pioneered in India was generating more household trial.Pritchard admits, It was Sumeet Vohra (chief marketing officer Asia, PG) 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 diplomatical answer when asked if there are any local heroes that hes got an eye on. But PG ever unearths little jewels with every acquisition, he says.Like Koleston which was not very big globally but ardent in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, around the tim e Wella was acquired. PG took the brand to Mexico, Europe and are now launching in India. Pritchard goes further back for his next example Richardson Vicks in 1985 had a very picayune brand called Pantene that accounted for $70 million in sales. He says, We put the new technology in, and launched it in mainland China and came up with Pantene Pro 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 computes SK2 which was made with Pitera, a yeast extract used by monks in Japan which unbroken their skin in a better condition. We built from that story, tested it in different markets and now its more than half a billion sawhorses and growing like crazy, says Pritchard. In a classical FMCG battle, market observers may be tempted to brand PG as a pacifist, with hardly any aggressive countermoves towards competition. But, combining brand awareness with social programmes, driving its brands furthe r into the hinterland and acquiring a knack of creating billion dollar brands, Pritchard knows that the company is pushing the right levers.