Partnership programs “are going to create a whole new genre of advertising”, according to Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard.
Under his stewardship, the FMCG giant’s full house of brands has become more purposeful and, in tandem with that approach, is seeking to attract engagement with powerful values-driven partnerships.
“What that does,” Pritchard argues, “is to create a whole new way of being able to talk about your brands. And that’s cutting through.”
He was speaking at the recent at New York Advertising Week 2019, reported in the current issue of Admap (topic: Partnering for growth), where he offered up P&G’s partnership with The Queen Collective with Queen Latifah as an example of how such activity enables the businesses to further its mission of accelerating gender and racial equality behind the camera, with embedded messages for its Olay and Black is Beautiful brands.
In one sense, P&G is simply doing what powerful brands have done for decades – find celebrity partners whose credibility, popularity, and audience are so strong that they can extend to a product or service – but it is now aligning those efforts with particular social and environmental issues the business’s various brands are focused on.
These include poverty, pollution, gender, justice, bias, diversity, inclusion, male identity, female empowerment and behavioural health. (For more details, read the full article: How partnerships unleash Procter & Gamble creativity.)
“Our businesses can be the greatest force for good in the future, because we touch everyone,” said Pritchard. Every day, P&G, alone, reaches five billion people all over the world with its advertising.
“That’s one of the reasons why we use our voice in advertising,” he said. “To eliminate bias, we start with the accurate representation of people. And that’s a good start. Because if you don’t have an accurate representation, you will create bias, because advertising creates memories.”
The lasting power of a message was an important driver for the world’s largest marketer to move beyond product to what Pritchard identified as “areas of citizenship” – things like gender equality, racial equality, diversity, inclusion and environmental sustainability.
“These are important issues. They can do good for the world. And they can be good for economics as well.”
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This article first appeared in www.warc.com
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