P&G: ‘Marketers must have the courage to say yes’

Cannes 2012: Marketers must have the courage to say ‘yes’ to big ideas if they want to achieve creative excellence, according to Procter & Gamble’s CMO Marc Pritchard.

Procter Gamble

The tip was one of three Pritchard offered brands and their agencies to improve creativity, outlined at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

He told the audience that marketers should aim to inspire creative ideas “so brilliant that you’re willing to bet your career on it”, modestly citing P&G’s Thank You Mum Olympic campaign as a good example.

“The Thank you mum campaign has reinvented people’s relationship with P&G and caused an explosion of creativity across a 175 year old company and it was driven by having the courage to say yes,” he says.

Providing agencies with the freedom to create is another of Pritchard’s tips for marketers, adding that the traditional creative brief from client to agency lacks inspiration.

He says: “You have to fight for the freedom to create and escape the dreaded creative brief. Set your people free [from creative briefs] and be wowed by what they create.”

Pritchard’s final insight for marketers is to “find the fruit in the root” of brands, encouraging marketers to look closely at the root of a brand for inspiration for campaigns and creative work.

Read Marketing Week’s profile of Pritchard here.

Recommended

CocaCola

Coke: ‘Take a leap of faith on social’

Rosie Baker

Cannes 2012: Coca-Cola’s most senior marketer has called on marketers to take a “leap of faith” and embrace social media despite the lack of measurement tools as part of a passionate defence of the channel in the wake of recent criticism of Facebook in particular.