Harvard Business School Case

4. • William Procter, a candle maker, and James
Gamble, a soap maker are the founding
members of P&G. Procter & Gamble was born
on 31st October 1837.
• Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• In 1859, sales hit $1M.
• Since then, it has been a company based on
innovation
• Today it is a multinational consumer goods
company.

5. • Has pursued international expansion as early
as the 1930s, and from 1945 to 1980 it began
to enter markets in Latin America, Western
Europe, and Japan.
• In the 1980s, P&G ramped up its global
expansion and developed its first global
brands, including Always/Whisper, Pringles,
and Pantene.

6. • Constantly looks out for opportunities to
acquire brands in order to boost their
hold on that market.
• The $57 billion acquisition of Gillette in
2005 made P&G the top consumer goods
company.
• Usually believes in introducing multiple
brands in the same market.

12. • In 1887, a nephew of one of P&G’s founders,
set up an analytical lab for the company,
laying the foundation for a professional R&D
division.
• P&G took a scientific approach and connected
R&D with the company’s sales and marketing.
• First-time products included Crest toothpaste
(1955), the first toothpaste with fluoride;
Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo; and
Pampers disposable diapers (1961).

15. • Lafley decided to make P&G the top product-
design company in the world.
• Named Claudia Kotchka as vice president for
design innovation and strategy.
• Named Jim Stengel as chief marketing officer
(CMO).
• The new emphasis shifted the company
toward a more consumer-centric marketing
approach.
• Shifted from TV and print to digital and direct
marketing.

16. • Stengel, with urging from Lafley, also brought
a sharper focus to return on marketing
investment.
• Project Apollo, a joint venture between media
and marketing research firm Arbitron Inc. and
VNU, the Dutch media company that owned
Nielsen, tracked the media habits of 30,000
households representing 70,000 consumers.

17. • Multibranding, or leveraging the P&G brand to
drive sales to its sub-brands, was a strategy
that P&G tried to pursue.
• One of the first examples was P&G’s successful
advertising campaign for the 2010 Winter
Olympics, which combined 18 P&G brands
under a common message and featured a
commercial that thanked moms around the
globe for their efforts

18. COMMITMENT TO
CONSUMERS

19. • P&G invested more in market research than any
company in the world, interacting with more
than 5 million consumers in almost 100
countries.
• Qualitatively, it ran focus group discussions,
interviewed consumers at home, and performed
in-context visits and in- store reviews.
• Quantitatively, the firm gathered data on
consumers utilizing blind tests, concept and use
tests, and quality monitoring, and doing large-
scale studies of the habits and practices of
consumers who purchased P&G products.

20. • In June 2010, P&G announced a partnership
with Tobii, a leader in eye tracking, which
objectively identified visibility and attention
that consumers gave to packaging, displays,
and advertising.
• In 2008, P&G took a stake in Ocado, a U.K.-
based online grocer.
• 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.

25. CELEBRITY
ENDORSMENT
S

30. • 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.”
• 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.”

33. • YouTube’s Old Spice channel was the most
viewed channel that week and became the
third-most subscribed channel ever in the site’s
“sponsor” category.
• By the response campaign’s third day
(Wednesday), Old Spice’s official Twitter account
had 32,000 followers. By the following Monday,
it had 94,000 followers, and the account was
featured on over 2,300 Twitter lists.
• The campaign was seen as a milestone in P&G’s
transition from a mass marketer to a one-on-one
digitized marketer.

34. • 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
• Featured household advice for men, including
tips on grilling burgers, cleaning toilets, and
disciplining children.
• In contrast to other similar sites focused on single
men and heavy on sex advice,
Manofthehouse.com aimed to “speak to the
whole man.”

35. INTERACTIVE
COMMUNITY
PROMOTION

39. • 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.

40. DISCLAIMER
Created by Mihir Parikh, IIT Bombay,
during a marketing internship by Prof.
Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.