P&G is Coming Out of the "Ivory" Tower

Having spent 7 years at P&G, I can tell you first hand that being in brand management, we lived in fear of talking to the media or key stakeholders. I remember one brand manager in particular went feverisihly around our head office collecting copies of our Canadian marketing trade magazine after he had apparently been misquoted. It didn't work, he was found out, slapped on the wrist and when I inherited his offcie, I found about 150 copies of that magazine wedged behind my desk .

At some point, despite the obvious benefits to the brand, it just became easier to devolve that respopnsibility to a PR spokesperson. The PR content would be generic, scripted and vanilla, personal branding suffered, genuine fan and stakeholder outreach impeded and not surprisingly, not a lot was written about what was going on within our four walls (some of it was very cool).

PR expert and scoial media cognoscenti David Jones (see next post too) sent me a post from the always interesting KD Paine on P&G 's attempt to build a "Let Go" world. Usually these message missiles come from CMO James Stengel or President A.G. Lafley - this time it's P&G's VP Communication - Charlotte Otto (perhaps another sign that transparency is being pushed down in the company). Here are 6 of the 10 most progressive points about P&G's new face from KD's post :

1. Transparency trumps trust
   1. While it’s not “normal” for P&G to talk about lack of availability, they did so after Katrina and won the support of both employees and customers.
   2. One of the let go rules is don't hide the PG connection
2. Stop focusing energy on how to control or coopt the message
   1. Focus on contol is misplaced
   2. We have learned to engage without  control
3. Experimentation trumps expected
   1. My space page for P&G brought in 4 million views and twice the clickthrus of traditional banner ads
   2. Need to learn how to be safe and authentic
4. Cocreation trumps control
   1. Consumer generated content – all new marketing is “cocreated” with customers
   2. Trends toward greater self expression
   3. In two weeks 320 million downloads if Mr. Pringles video – and they had nothing to do with it
   4. If you can personalize m and m’s you can personalize anything
   5. We have to be personal
   6. Have to make customers say that is “MY”  brand, not P&G’s brand
   7. Consumers' have more control than we do. We have to get out of our comfort zone
   8. have to create Word of mouth that is scalable
5. They have two panels: Tremor for “tweens”  and Vocalpoint moms – they’re very open about the P&G connection. 100 %  transparent,we are 'not creating' messages and selling them to consumers, we are letting them create and letting go in control while letting go mindset
6. Demands that we lead at a new level, must cultivate a “ let go”  mindset, need to be in
        synch our leadership blogs is the best read

All habits still die hard - the P&G ecosystem  of command and control,  fastidious brand management and dependence on traditional advertising   mediums will continue into the future but it's impressive that one of the hallmark companies of great brand management has turned the corner on "letting go". A message to other CMOs and VPs, isn't it about time you do too?

As you'll see my my next post...a lot of marketing organizations are paying lip service to "letting go" and holding back marketing's deserved role as the engine for company growth.