Pritchard on building brands in a digital world

UK - P&G's chief marketing and global brand building officer Marc Pritchard (pictured) said a ‘do and learn' approach works best when working out how to build brands in a digital world, in a speech to the Women in Advertising and Communications London (WACL) club recently.

Pritchard explained that P&G's vision is to build brands through one-to-one relationships in real-time with every person in the world, which requires fundamental shifts in how they operate.

"It requires shifting our mindset to think of who we serve as people, not just consumers in order to make their whole lives better," he said.

Static marketing campaigns for the global brand owner will give way to ‘always on' brand building to constantly engage people to participate in brands.

Pritchard also implored marketers to put purpose at the centre of their activities, both when brand building and in their own everyday lives.

"Differentiate yourselves by homing in on what unique contribution you make in people's lives," Pritchard, said. 

"The rewards can be best in class brand building, market share growth and even better, a powerful impact on people."

"I think of my simple purpose in life as ‘to be useful'. To be useful in every meeting, every pitch, planning session or business review," he added.

Pritchard used P&G's Proud Sponsors of Mums' campaign that it ran during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games as an example of getting to the route of what brands mean to people.

"At first glance, we thought P&G and its brands have little to do with the Olympics, until we thought of this simple truth: behind every amazing Olympic athlete is an even more amazing mom," he said.

"While we are not in the business of making athletic equipment or sports apparel P&G is in the business of helping mums."

The ‘Proud Sponsors of Mums' campaign that ran during the 2010 Winter Olympics generated more than 6 billion media impressions and resulted in more than $100m in extra sales over the period.

"We made a lot of friends along the way too," Pritchard added.

P&G is currently running a similar campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

M&M Global