Procter & Gamble (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods company founded in 1837. It has pursued growth through acquisitions, international expansion, and innovation in product development and marketing. P&G pioneered approaches like celebrity endorsements, television and radio sponsorships, and digital/social media marketing. It focuses on rigorous research and testing of products and marketing strategies. P&G's continued success stems from adapting to new technologies and consumer preferences while building on its strengths in brand portfolio management and marketing capabilities.

2.  Procter & Gamble Co., also known as P&G,
is an American multinational consumer
goods company headquartered in downtown
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, founded by
William Procter and James Gamble.

3.  The important marketing strategists in P&G
during the evolution period are –
 Durk Jager
 AG Lafley
 Bob McDonald
 Jim Stengel
 Claudia Kotchka
 Marc Pritchard

4.  Proctor and Gamble began in 1837 when
brothers-in-law William Proctor and James
Gamble formed a small candle and soap
company. Over the next 150 years, P&G
innovated and launched scores of
revolutionary products with superior quality
and value.

5.  Today P&G is one of the most skilful marketers of consumer
packaged goods in the world and holds one of the most powerful
portfolios of trusted brands.
 Procter & Gamble (P&G) is a global leader in branded consumer
goods, known for iconic category-defining products such as Ivory
soap, Crisco shortening, and Tide laundry detergent.
 The company managed two dozen $1 billion brands known
worldwide, including Bounty, Crest, Downy/Lenor, Febreze, Gillette,
Iams, and Pampers.

6.  Procter & Gamble had pioneered marketing strategies
that were considered standard industry practice. They
have adopted, from time to time, the integrative
processes designed to apply collective knowledge,
research, skills and resources of the firm to market-
related needs of the business, enabling the business to
add value to its goods and services, adapt
to market conditions, take advantage
of market opportunities.
 Procter & Gamble was a seasoned marketer with strong
consumer research, a powerful innovation network, an
evolving marketing strategy, strong marketing talent,
and the world’s largest financial commitment to
advertising.

7.  Aimed at large scale global expansion and to
reach out to 5 billion consumers served
worldwide with its marketing strategies.

8.  To evaluate, study and analyze the
successful marketing strategies adopted by
Procter & Gamble from time to time while
giving continuous importance to R&D and
innovation.

9.  1880s - It was the first company to advertise
directly to consumers.
 1887 - Set up an analytical lab for the company
and a professional R&D division and
establishing one of the first corporate labs in the
field of consumer goods.
 1930s – Started international expansion.
 1945 to 1980 - it began to enter markets in Latin
America, Western Europe, and Japan.

10.  1957 – Expansion into new lines of business
through acquisitions, such as Charmin Paper
Mill, which opened up the household paper
products market (toilet paper, paper towels) for
the company.
 Early 1960s – introduced disposable diapers
(Pampers), first market-tested.
 1980s - P&G ramped up its global expansion
and developed its first global brands viz.
Always/Whisper, Pringles, and Pantene etc.

11.  1980s - Continued to acquire brands such as
soft drink producer Crush International Limited;
the citrus processing company Frostproof
(1981); an over-the-counter and prescription
drug business, Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals
(1981); and Richardson-Vicks (NyQuil and
Vicks) and G.D. Searle’s non-prescription drug
division (Metamucil) in 1985.
 2005 - The $57 billion acquisition of Gillette
made P&G the top consumer goods company

12.  Set up an analytical lab for the company and a
professional R&D division and establishing one
of the first corporate labs in the field of
consumer goods (1857).
 Replacing the trial-and-error methods with a
scientific approach and connected R&D with the
company’s sales and marketing.

13.  . First-time products included Crest
toothpaste (1955), the first toothpaste with
fluoride; Head & Shoulders dandruff
shampoo; and Pampers disposable diapers
(1961).
 In 2010, P&G’s stated that its corporate
mission was to build on its company purpose
to improve the lives of its customers through
continued innovation to reach “More
Consumers, In More Parts of the World,
More Completely.”

14.  P&G had pursued a multiband strategy, and it
managed brands across a category carefully,
with each getting individual support and
satisfying a segment of the market.
 Design, innovation and strategy were given high
importance.

15.  In fact, at one stage, P&G had given high importance to
design. Planned to bring design to every step of product
development and introduce a culture of design to P&G
helping consumers recognize, understand, and in some
cases even imagine the functions of a given product.
 Adopted consumer-centric marketing approach. The
strategy for adopting consumer-centric marketing
approach is because of deep understanding of the
consumers who offer the potential for growth.

16.  A shift in the strategy from TV and print to
digital and direct marketing.
 During the year 2008, P&G adopted ‘store
back’ approach and wooed recession-wary
consumers with more focused attention to in-
store promotions such as coupons, displays,
special offers, and other promotional
materials.

17.  P&G had a long history of rigorous product and market
testing; the firm was well known as especially process-
oriented.
 Innovative approaches to consumer engagement led to
new marketing and promotional opportunities: one
example was VocalPoint, P&G’s word-of-mouth
program that enrolled more than 600,000 women to
pitch its products.41 The program crafted product
messages that mothers and other women shared with
peers; P&G also gave them samples, coupons, and
opportunities to share their opinions with P&G.

18.  New technologies also continued to provide
P&G with ways to engage and measure
consumer interests, habits, and satisfaction.
 P&G employed psychological surveys to
measure mood and electroencephalography
(EEG) technology to measure electrical
activity in the brain as subjects were
exposed to commercials.

19.  Ivory, the first product from P&G to be
advertised directly to consumers, subverted a
traditional reliance on an established network of
wholesalers, distributors, and retailers and sold
directly to consumers instead.
 Early innovations included sponsorship of
daytime radio dramas (1932) and television
commercials (first aired in 1939).

20.  The daytime drama As the World Turns was launched in
1956 to specifically target women in their homes.
Another World, The Young and the Restless, and
Guiding Light were other long-time P&G-sponsored
daytime dramas.
 P&G began by first developing a “media neutral” idea
that could be translated across a range of media. With
Tide, for example, the idea was that the detergent
“works wonders on the fabrics that touch your life.” The
story could then be translated into locally relevant
messages.
 Lafley, Stengel, and Kotchka (senior executives of P&G)
aimed to shift P&G toward more design- and emotion-
driven advertising.

21.  A range of sponsorship opportunities were leveraged
across P&G’s portfolio.
 For example, U.S. Olympic team sponsor for the 2010
Games, became a worldwide sponsor, specifically to
raise its visibility in emerging markets, for the 2012
winter games to be held in Russia and the 2016
summer games in Brazil. A National Football League
(NFL) sponsorship gave consumers opportunities to
engage with the NFL, “just for choosing P&G brands,”
and tied in with the NFL’s Play 60 initiative, a national
youth health and fitness campaign focused on fighting
childhood obesity and increasing wellness by
encouraging youths to be active an hour a day.

22.  P&G’s acquisitions of several beauty companies
in the 1990s had brought a number of celebrity
endorsers into the P&G stable, including
CoverGirl spokespersons Christie Brinkley,
Drew Barrymore, Ellen DeGeneres, and Queen
Latifah. P&G also developed numerous
celebrity endorsements. Most recently,
television show Modern Family actress Sofia
Vergara was named spokesmodel for CoverGirl
cosmetics in May 2011 for an ad campaign
launching in January 2012.

23.  Tennis star Roger Federer was featured in
Gillette Fusion Products ads, NHL player Alex
Ovechkin was named a Gillette Brand
Ambassador and starred in TV commercials in
Russia and Eastern Europe promoting Gillette’s
Fusion razors and other new products.
Sebastian Vettel, the “youngest ever”61
Formula One champion, secured a long-term
sponsorship with P&G to promote Head &
Shoulders shampoo.

24.  P&G always maintained its marketing
budget. In early 2009, as the recession took
hold, the firm’s marketing budget was not
directly cut, P&G shifted to coupons and in-
store promotional activities to maintain the
same media presence, while shifting ad
costs.

25.  P&G’s expanded its digital content offering in 1999 with
the launch of pampers.com. The website contained
product information, similar to the other brand websites
under P&G, but also provided information for new and
expectant mothers and served as an interactive forum.
By 2007, the site was translated for 49 countries.
 BeingGirl.com, launched in 2000, provided information
and expert advice on “issues that teenage girls might be
too embarrassed to ask a parent or doctor about, such
as menstruation, eating disorders, acne and dating.”

26.  P&G launched its first mobile marketing ad
campaign in 2006 to promote Crest Whitening Plus
Scope toothpaste. The campaign advertised on bar
napkins and club bathroom mirrors to encourage
customers to text the words “IQ” or “Extreme” to
27378 (C-R-E-S-T) and take an “Irresistibility IQ
quiz.” Participants were offered the chance to win
iPods or other prizes. The campaign also released
TV commercials and print advertisements, and had
an online presence.

27.  P&G’s line of “My Black is Beautiful”
products, targeting African American women,
introduced two web series in 2010 to
showcase its products.
 P&G’s Old Spice television commercial and
YouTube sensation, “The Man Your Man
Could Smell Like,” gave P&G its greatest
exposure in the online community in 2010,
and bridged the power of digital and social
media.

28.  P&G launched two social media sites: Capessa
for women on Yahoo! Health and the People’s
Choice Community, associated with the
People’s Choice awards.
In 2010, P&G began using Facebook as a
marketing tool and, by 2011, had 15 brands with
“friends” in the six-figure range. Pringles and
Old Spice had 9 million and 1.3 million fans,
respectively. P&G used Facebook as a
marketing supplement, not a replacement.

29.  In 2011, when company research showed
that men were going to women’s sites for
information on recipes, cleaning the house,
or getting a stain out of a shirt, P&G rounded
out its earlier social media efforts with
Manofthehouse.com, which featured
household advice for men, including tips on
grilling burgers, cleaning toilets, and
disciplining children.

30.  In 2005, Tide laundry detergent had its best
sales in over a decade after a highly
successful post-Katrina campaign, “Loads of
Hope.” Tide opened a Laundromat in New
Orleans to wash survivors’ clothes and sold
T-shirts with various slogans such as, “Be
seen, not spotted,” worn by celebrities to
promote Tide with Febreze.

32.  Behind the success of connect-and-develop lay a
careful process that clearly articulated the
characteristics P&G considered in selecting potential
partnership products. Candidates had to exhibit some
degree of success (working prototype, evidence of
consumer interest) and had to represent ideas and
products that could benefit from existing P&G
technologies, marketing, distribution, or other firm
capabilities.
 The firm instituted a top-ten needs list, one for each
business and one for the company overall, that drove
the growth of P&G’s brands

33.  To round out its innovation methodology,
P&G used technology game boards—
planning tools that resembled a multilevel
game of chess—to “evaluate how technology
acquisition moves in one area might affect
products in other categories.”

34.  Connect-and-develop had to combat P&G’s
long-standing centralization and internal
focus, which only started to shift in 2006.
 Rewards were structured to ensure that the
“best ideas, wherever they came from, rise
to the surface,” and to “exert steady pressure
on the culture, to continue to shift mind-sets
away from resistance to “not invented here.”

36.  As P&G continued to push toward reaching 5 billion
consumers served worldwide, its evolving marketing
capabilities took center stage. The firm had proven its
ability to navigate the digital environment with efforts
like “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and
Manofthehouse.com, had incorporated a sense of
design into its culture, and aimed to complement its
strong function-driven marketing background by adding
emotional efforts such as the “Thank you, Mom” and
“Loads of Hope” campaigns. Building on its strengths in
R&D, consumer research, and product performance,
P&G continued to evolve and innovate as the world’s
largest marketer.

37.  Created by Siddartha Mashetty, IIT
Kharagpur, during a marketing internship, by
Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.