Marc Pritchard Explains P&G’s Strategy on Promoting Diversity and Navigating Consumer Data

That mentality drove its recent campaign for Tide, which featured integrations with Sunday Night Football, The Voice and other NBC properties. Bud Light even created an ad playing off the “Laundry Night” theme without mentioning Tide.

P&G chief brand officer Marc Pritchard used that four-week Tide campaign to kick off a session at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Fla., about brand building and disrupting the market before it disrupts you.

“Mass marketing is being disrupted, but we’re doing whatever we can to lead constructive disruption by reinventing brand building to drive growth,” Pritchard said.

Following Pritchard’s talk, Adweek caught up with the CPG giant’s chief marketer to talk about some issues that are top of mind for many marketers at the moment.

Promoting diversity

Earlier this year, Pritchard was named co-chair of the ANA’s #SeeHer movement, which was founded three years ago to eliminate gender bias in advertising and media.

Pritchard said that a recent analysis found that 80% of its ads score greater than 100 on #SeeHer’s Gender Equality Measure (GEM), a methodology that identifies unconscious gender bias. According to P&G, a score of 100 or better indicates the accurate portrayal of women and girls in ads.

He said this score has been steadily improving over the past three years since the company first started testing ads with GEM.

“Our brands that have the most gender equal campaigns tend to do the best,” he said. According to #SeeHer, high GEM scores correlate to improved ROI.

He also said that the scoring system has helped P&G look at ads differently.

“By just doing that, in addition to all our work on gender equality and using our voice in advertising to eliminate bias, it’s just heightened our awareness,” he said. “Now [we] look at an ad a lot differently than before to make sure it’s truly an accurate portrayal.”

Retail technology

When shoppers are in the grocery aisle choosing among Tide, a competitor or a private label, what’s the last bit of marketing that can get a brand off the shelf and into a grocery cart? Now, it might be a coupon dispenser. In the near future, it might be a QR code that brings up an AR experience explaining the product, displaying a coupon or even playing a video to entertain an antsy child at the store.

Pritchard said P&G is looking at various iterations of these in-store experiences that can help build brands. Much of what Pritchard said P&G is doing across its portfolio is using tech to personalize the consumer experience. At the first smart store for SK-II, shoppers can go through a range of activations that measure their approximate “skin age” and color complexion. The results allow SK-II to recommend personalized products to improve a shoppers’ skincare routine.

Pritchard said P&G is also taking technology a step further by embedding it into products, which can engage consumers on a daily basis and could eliminate the need for advertising. He used the Oral-B Genius toothbrush as example. It tracks where you brushed your teeth and how hard, relaying that info to a smartphone. It provides users with instant feedback they can use to shape their brushing habits or show their dentists.

Going in-house

P&G recently made the decision to take its Secret deodorant brand’s creative capabilities in-house after working with agencies including Wieden + Kennedy and Berlin Cameron. Pritchard said this has helped the brand cut costs and be more efficient.

Continue Reading