4 - Internationalist

C O V E R S T O R Y
Lakish Hatalkar
Integrated Communications
Proctor & Gamble
(Central & Eastern Europe,
Middle East and Africe)
At Procter & Gamble, we put our consumers at
the heart of every decision we make. We are
committed to deeply understanding and
respecting the people who buy our brands. To
that end, we know that consumers have many
more choices today for when and how they
interact with media and marketing. We are
constantly looking at the full range of marketing
vehicles that will reach consumers with our
brand messages when they are most open to
hearing them. As a result, we are using a mix
of traditional and new media to best reach our
consumers.
P&G’s mission is to improve the lives of the
world’s consumers. In order to do that, we must
understand people on a personal level. We must
understand their habits, their culture and their
needs. We have many big, global brands that have
overarching global appeal. But we do tailor the
marketing messages and media depending on
what is most appropriate for the local consumer.
We have a whole suite of market mix
measurement tools that help us evaluate the
ROI we get from our marketing efforts. We
consider these tools to be proprietary, so I really
cannot elaborate.
We really can’t generalize what works for P&G
as a whole, because we have more than 300 global
brands. It really does depend on the individual
brand as each of them have specific consumers
they are trying to reach. I can tell you that each
brand has a distinct equity and voice. We take this
into account when creating marketing messages
for each brand.
As I mentioned earlier, we know that
consumers have a great deal of choices, as a
result of the explosion in new media. We are
using interactive marketing to enable a more
personal dialog between us and our consumers,
allowing us to engage with them on their terms.
Use of interactive marketing is no longer an
experiment, but rather, an integral part of the
overall marketing mix. We think it’s extremely
important to continue to experiment with
emerging media so that we can reach
consumers where they are and when they are
most receptive to hearing our brand messages.
We certainly have a responsibility to both
our consumers and our shareholders. By
deeply understanding consumers, we’re able
to build trust in our brands. And we have
done studies that show that the more trusted
your brand is, the higher the market share.
So, in effect, by delighting our consumers,
we’re building the business and pleasing
shareholders at the same time.
For more information go to:
www.pg.com
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