IQ News: P&G Brand Gets Extranet Support

As Procter & Gamble plots a major corporate-wide strategy to bring products to market more quickly, it’s evident the Cincinnati-based packaged goods titan sees the Web as a key component in this goal. P&G earlier this summer hired San Francisco-based Winkler Advertising’s TeamToolz division–both are owned by P&G agency Grey Advertising–to build an extranet, akin to a secure Web-based work station, for its various agencies.
The aim of the extranet, according to people familiar with the program, is for P&G marketing vendors ranging from ad agencies to promotion and public relations firms to collaborate on new, unified marketing messages for P&G products. A P&G spokeswoman confirmed TeamToolz is working with one of its hair care brands. P&G makes shampoo brands including Pert Plus, Pantene and Vidal Sassoon.
Neither officials from P&G nor TeamToolz would comment on the specifics of the program. Denis Beausejour, vice president of advertising for Procter & Gamble Worldwide, has pushed for further agency collaboration as the company pursues a greater use of digital media to develop and promote its brands. At its Future of Advertising Stakeholders Summit last month, P&G stated that it can envision shifting as much as 80 percent of its advertising budget to “interactive digital media,” a catch-all phrase that includes the Internet and digital television, over the next five years.
The extranet software, TeamTool.MC, was used in 1996 by Hewlett-Packard to craft a cohesive marketing message for products in its LaserJet Supplies units. Jim Stratton, director of sales and marketing at TeamToolz, said clients they’ve pitched include top 200 advertisers. –Bernhard Warne