P&G boss wants to improve the ‘quality’ of its advertising

P&G is looking to up its marketing investment in 2017 as it aims to increase the reach and effectiveness of its advertising campaigns.

P&G’s CEO David Taylor says it is planning to further increase its media investment after increasing it by $200m (£163m) in 2015, as it looks to increase cut-through and make its products “more relevant” in customer’s lives.

Speaking at Procter & Gamble’s annual shareholder meeting today (11 October), Taylor said that even though organic sales are up 1%, the FMCG giant “still has to do better”.

He said P&G is looking to invest more heavily in marketing to increase the reach, consistency and effectiveness of its campaigns.

“In the fourth quarter of last year our media investment increased by $200m, and there are plans to further increase this in 2017. We want to improve the quality of our advertising, and make our brands more relevant to consumers,” he said.

During the meeting he also shared two examples of marketing campaigns, including Pantene’s ‘Strong Is Beautiful’ and Always’ ‘Like A Girl’ campaign, that proved to be profitable while promoting a social purpose. According to Taylor, the Like A Girl campaign has resulted in 1.5 billion global impressions so far.

“The aforementioned campaigns are examples of our brands using their voice to make a positive difference on relevant social topics,” he commented.

“Before the campaign, 19% of women viewed ‘Like A Girl’ to be a positive expression, this has now increased to 76%. It has also led to increased market share, more users, sales and profit.”

Taylor also mentioned the sale of some of its brands in a bid to cut costs. So far, it has offloaded around 100 brands, including selling battery brand Duracell to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and a huge chunk of its beauty brand business, including Max Factor, Covergirl and Wella, to Coty as part of a $12.5bn (£9.4bn) deal.

P&G’s business is now focused around 10 core categories, including family, fabric, skin and personal, grooming and oral care.

READ MORE: One year on: Has P&G CEO David Taylor been a success?

The company is also hoping to make a further $10bn (£8bn) in savings over the next five years, which it will look to achieve through cutting its non-consumer marketing spend.

Taylor concluded: “We want to make P&G a far simpler, faster growing and even more profitable company. Since we began our portfolio overhaul, with the Coty deal now finished, we’ve kept 86% of our sales and 94% of our profits. Hopefully this illustrates the opportunity ahead for a new P&G to deliver stronger results.”

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