"If i recall today's marketing model is broken. We're applying antiquated thinking and work systems to a new world of possibilities...The normal marketing model is obsolete."- Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, P & G, Association of National Advertisers, Oct 2004.
The notion that marketing and advertising attitudes need to change is no more a theory just banded about by Web entrepreneurs. Even the big boys along with the major world players are now accepting which the mass marketing techniques, of many last fifty years, typically are not penetrating audiences like they used to. There is about to need to be a shift throughout whole approach of advertising whether it is planning to maintain any relevancy who has an increasingly cynical consumer.
When discussing marketing it doesn't necessarily get any bigger and better than Proctor & Gamble, one of the largest suppliers of household products on earth, and positively among the many biggest advertisers. With brands like Ariel, Head and Shoulders, Pampers and Crest, to position them leading the way in utilising new methods to get some into people's homes. With all the mega brand not revered as some style of deity, P & G are going to ought to understand how to communicate with the influential consumer networks, and also to persuade each of them talk positively about some.
P & G features a long tradition of innovation and groundbreaking in how they include broadcast their messages. They were the first to start advertising nationally, during the past in 1880, and have taken the idea of product placement to another level using their Soap Opera productions created to hook female viewers onto their shows and shampoos.
Recently, P & G enlisted swiss of 600,000 'connectors' to spread the content throughout their 'Vocalpoint' campaign (an extension of their earlier 'Tremor' scheme amongst teenagers). Their 'connectors' were provided with coupons to distribute on their colleagues, and free samples to provoke conversations about P & G products. As Steve Knox, Vocalpoint CEO, recognised, "we all know which the most essential type of marketing is undoubtedly an advocacy message by a trusted friend." With Vocalpoint, P & G are utilising the influence and relevancy of fb to advertise their products through interaction and trust. People might no more listen to brands, but nonetheless they every time listen to recommendation of friends.
The perception that change was at the horizon had already been identified by their former global marketing officer, Bob Weiliing. Inside of a 2002 interview, Bob's view was that the Internet would possibly not replace the mass 'push' medium of TV, but instead could possibly be tailored to your individual. An online environment may be used for when there is a personal passion to learn in regards to a product or service. Gaining advice, direction as well as the latest product news are services not readile free on just a 'push' medium. TV is focused on the mass market message, whereas the internet is perfect for individual relationship building.
Bob's conclusion, at the way forward for P & G's marketing success, lay in understanding the best way to combine them. That they had to maintain the relevancy of the 30 second TV ad, whilst also utilising the extended attention and interaction available online. Also this meant persuading each warring marketing factions to perform together to locate a solution - to achieve the technophobes speaking with the web evangelists. It was obviously been obvious in recent years that Bob's successor, Jim Stengel, subscribes firmly into the latter camp.
In 2005, P & G cut their TV ad spend by 8% into a mere $677.3 million, a bold move plus a definitive shift onto non-traditional media. Only recently, they contacted digital and interactive agencies in britain that will put together its first digital agency roster for Western Europe, and to find innovative new ways of populating their brands online.
We're now having the rise of interactive websites designed to keep hold of attention and encourage return visits. A while back a music themed site for Old Spice was launched with free downloads and song samples to appeal to the 16-24 iTunes generation. Another notable example was the campaign for Pringles crisps during the FIFA World Cup. A site created where people could upload videos of themselves imitating your television ad, mirroring the appeal of YouTube for a young internet savvy audience. Both content driven sites devised to develop the brand through interaction, relevancy and value.
P & G have even learnt the training sessions preached by legions of venture bloggers. By giving information valued at you develop trust and confidence; consequently, people will need a relationship with the brand and become customers. Their Pampers website builds an affinity along with its audience from the provision of suggestion and help. As a valuable supply of young mums, it enriches their association with the model which enables you to provoke a desirable response on the next occasion they go buying for nappies.
P & G's Home Made Simple website is a flagship in online marketing, with its own Tv program and guides on good housekeeping. Compared to being blasted with product placement, web site simply develops relationships with its audience through its news and articles. Once your trust is gained you will inevitably sign up for the newsletter, with further promises of free samples, coupons, good deals and sweepstakes all pulling you into their trap of growing to be a convert to their products. 'Home Made Simple' gives the perfect buying environment by developing trust, along with the desire to possess a relationship with your brand, just what the new kind of website marketing will be about.
Along at the Association of National Advertisers Conference, earlier this month, Jim Stengal and P & G's CEO, A.G. Lafley, outlined their mission to carry their brands directly into 'pull' age of relationship marketing.
Lafley reinforced the views of Bob Weiling, that they had to educate yourself on learn how to make connections with their audience in the various 'touch points'. Them for years to come lay in learning the best way to integrate their strategy across every one of the mediums available, in lieu of relying on the unique a method 'push' bombardment of promoting messages. His crucial point was they will had to master how to "yield" as "the more on top of things we are most certainly the longer away from touch we become." P & G were required to move beyond thinking in terms of merely transactions, and instead concentrate on building relationships when you're more responsive and receptive to what their audience, the 'boss', wanted.
Jim Stengal opened his speech with a plea to his fellow marketers to "stop pondering consumers and start pondering people." He was suggesting a paradigm shift in how they approached marketing and advertising. Their potential customers were no longer just demographics, but individuals to be empathised and engaged with. They had in order to hear what users wanted from the brand instead of letting them know what the brand should mean an internet. A fresh stage understanding were required to be created on why people should place trust in a relationship P & G's brands rather than simply superficially appealing to their desires (a tactic which has served copywriters for many years).
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Many proctor and gamble Online marketers are eager to hammer the nails into TV's coffin, whilst traditional advertising execs sit on their hands awaiting the 'web 2.0' bubble to burst. P & G have, because the start of the last decade, been steadily moving from a monolithic, lumbering marketing dinosaur into a web savvy, feedback focused livewire. When you're an early adopter of many new 'trust' focused marketing philosophy, P & G really should be correctly to solving the puzzle of marketing online and maturing their brand's message for the proctor and gamble coupons sceptical consumer.