In March, Procter & Gamble released “Widen the Screen.” It was a campaign that would aim to broaden the perspectives of society when it comes to how it perceives Black citizens through a hero spot and a series of one-minute YouTube films outlining the misrepresentation they continue to face.
The two-minute spot shows different genders and ages of Black men and women doing everyday things such as walking into a store, knocking on a front door or waiting at a roadside while testing the expectations of the viewer before showing them a simple truth that is neither violent nor nefarious.
That these perceptions continue to need dispelling perhaps outlines how far society still has to shift when it comes to equality, despite the work being done to improve representation and change how minorities are viewed through the eye of a camera lens.
But making such campaigns must also come with a business benefit, which P&G’s chief marketer Marc Pritchard, who spoke on the topic at Cannes Lions, outlines while talking to Adweek about the continued work he and his team are focused on while promoting the company’s various product brands.
Business value for accurate representation
The initiative was created to increase the images of the Black community used in media outside of the still apparent ones of “struggle” or “extreme excellence” with a more accurate view and offers “a fairly substantial opportunity” to build P&G within that community, Pritchard explained.
“‘Widen the Screen’ came from the idea that we really wanted to build equality into our creativity because there’s benefit to that,” Pritchard said. “When you drive equality and inclusion into creativity, if you do it well and you give Black creators more of an opportunity to create and Black-owned media companies more of an opportunity to run media, it also creates not only opportunity but economic value.”
In presenting a more accurate view, the company has discovered that trust in both P&G’s brands and their content has increased, he claimed. And representation has not just been in front of the camera, but has also included Black production crew members as well as deliberately spending more with Black-owned media companies.
“We wanted to use our voice and our reach to create new opportunity,” he continues, explaining that the films were helmed by Black directors and a predominantly Black film crew, which will also be available for P&G brands such as Pampers, Olay and Venus on future campaigns.
Pritchard explained that investing in minority-owned media will help not just move the needle on representation around gender, race and ethnicity around its brands—an objective that is also expected of the P&G agency roster, with accurate representation now mandatory, too.
“We firmly believe that if a brand is going to do good for society, you need to do good for society, and you need to do good for your business, otherwise it’s not sustainable. … It’s interesting when you have the accurate portrayal of people, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, religion, body type [and] age, people trust the brand more because they can see themselves and they can see that that brand understands them … it actually drives business growth.”
Advertising’s response to representation
Pritchard said the expectations of agency partners has seen them “step up,” citing the likes of Wieden+Kennedy, Publicis, Grey and Cartwright as offering a visible difference in the composition of their teams and work, but caveats “they’re not there yet but they’re definitely responding.”
The need to continue to grow representation is clear to Pritchard to having already concentrated on gender and race, and has begun to extend that to LGBTQ+ with Pantene’s “Going Home for the Holidays” spot as well as “Can’t Cancel Pride.”
He added that people with disabilities will also grow in focus, not least through its forthcoming sponsorship activation around the Olympics and the Paralympics in the coming weeks, while also introducing audio-enabled adverts to allow those with sight impairments to engage with the content, too.
Pritchard’s pandemic lesson
Since the beginning of 2020, marketers around the world have had to adapt to a world impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, a period in which Pritchard has learned the importance for companies to focus on what they do best and understanding what its consumer base needs. In the case of P&G, that is its core products in the health, hygiene and cleaning sector.
“We spent a lot of time educating people on how they could get the best cleaning performance, especially as people were facing this pandemic. And by doing that, it brought us back to what our company is fundamentally about,” Pritchard said.
“We have a statement of purpose to provide the world’s consumers with products of superior performance and value. That makes their life just a little bit better every day,” he continued. “What we found is we got really back to those fundamentals, and stepping up it was good for the people in the world, and it was actually very good for our business.”
