P&G Advertising Strategy Essay

For grocerying students at IIM Ahmedabad, 9th of January, 2011, is eitherthing but a veritable(prenominal) Sunday. They stomach resisted the temptation to join their batchmates in a lazy basketball coarse-grained and appear oblivious to the cheerful prodigal frenzy of the kite festival on the banks of the Sabarmati. Instead they slang been pitted against distributively early(a) all morning in a fall guy exercise organised and masterminded by P&G. The prize? A dinner date for the teams with a existence responsible for running the marketing dish out of 1 of the about powerful FMCG companies on the planet, Marc Pritc unenviable , global marketing and brand build officer, P&G. withal, yet students who do non make the cut fix a chance to experience Pritchard firsthand when he addresses a respectably packed house that evening. Soon after hes done, the questions fly thick and fast. These include nigh potentially embarrassing posers. How does P&G feel, one student wants to know, somewhat its campaigns organism ambushed by its archrival HUL? Few people have forgotten the teaser campaign about a mystery shampoo function year (that was revealed to be P&Gs Pantene) being hijacked by peacenik from the HUL stable.Pritchard opts to ask the high road on this one We cant rule out any competitor from ambush (surprise attack). plainly if you focus on the consumer, what your brand is doing to aid the consumer and if you have a monolithic idea, you pull up stakes win most of the meter. And thats a running theme through with(predicate) attractive ofttimes 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 whizz of brands serving consumers or office driven branding. P&G spent most of the 1990s establishing a global footprint. Now, accord to Pritchard, it finally has the chance to live up to its design. The first measuring rod was arrive atting sr. management to define a pop the question for each of the brands in the P&G stable a blueprint on how the company could touch and improve lives. Pritchard explains, We good-tempered have a core clear but are thinking to a greater extent broadly on how we can salve it. We are very focussed on sharpening what the brands stand for, identifying human insights that can say into expectant ideas. Bold Gamble However those prepared for a lofty bill of CSR and corporate do-gooding are equally to step back, a little disap signed. Pritchards showreel of innovation driven work from P&G includes pretty much every big campaign the FMCG has come up with recently. This includes the super awarded work on Old alter with its cocky The man your man could aspect worry tagline. Pritchard says, mapping is much more(prenominal) than a cause or a corporate responsibility. We deliberately foc employ on making people define purpose as how brands improve everyday lives.A cause is just a pi ece 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 consumers in developed markets, fed up with hard sell, looking for corporates to do something more. Instead it could even be used as an impelling go to market strategy. Which is pretty much the case with Pampers. Pritchard defines the brands purpose as to improve a despoils healthy, happy using. Its benefit is dispassion and comfort that allows babies to repose, play and explore more. When they do that, they develop come apart.By the way, its in addition making their moms lives a rotary 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 using this port as a sampling opportunity. The one pack = one vaccine curriculum run in association with the UNICEF is fasten into this larger purpose too. It helps bring th e conjunction of moms together since they like to help former(a) moms, says Pritchard.Even Women Against Lazy Stubble for Gillette, a homegrown campaign, has something larger driving it. Purpose takes on a more important role in developing markets, he explains. The vans that propagate the program overturn offspring men tips on shaving, how to dress, handle an interview and talk to women. Purpose coincides well with P&G making a concert push into non-city markets not just in India but in other countries like Brazil and China that have a yawning urban- sylvan divide. P&G is think on stores because its the first aftermath 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. apply the store as the starting point a lso helps make the entire attend to less sporadic. Pritchard states, It means you are incessantly on. We have consolidated the number of distributors 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 new wave of P&Gs rural drive. One of the things pioneered in India was generating more rest home trial.Pritchard admits, It was Sumeet Vohra (chief marketing officer Asia, P&G) who created this instrument 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 practice. 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 plaza on. But P&G incessantly unearths l ittle jewels with every acquisition, he says. wish well 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 Mexico, atomic number 63 and are now launching in India. Pritchard goes win back for his next example Richardson Vicks in 1985 had a very circumstantial brand called Pantene that accounted for $70 million in sales. He says, We put the new engine room in, and launched it in Taiwan 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. deal Max Factors SK2 which was make 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 various 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 but any aggressive countermoves towards competition. But, combining brand awareness with social programmes, driving its brands further into the hinterland and acquiring a expertness of creating billion dollar brands, Pritchard knows that the company is displace the right levers.