Advertising strategy of Procter & Gamble Company

Procter & founded in1837; Gamble (P & This company is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world. 2001-In fiscal year 2002, the company's annual sales reached 40.2 billion dollars. 1 ranks 93rd among the 500 largest industrial and service enterprises in the world recently selected by Fortune magazine, and 35th in the United States, and is rated as the most respected company in the industry. The company has made brilliant achievements since its establishment 150 years ago. While relying on its high-quality products, the company's correct advertising strategy for its own products, American market and consumers is also an important factor that cannot be ignored. P&G determines the most effective advertising strategy through long-term research. After determining the correctness of this strategy, it will hardly change this successful strategy. The strategies of many of their products have gone through decades and have not changed.

Procter & Gamble generally pursues rational functions of commodities, which is related to its multi-brand strategy. For example, shampoo and hair care products, P&G owns Rejoice, Pan Ting, Head & Shoulders, Sassoon, Runyan and clairol series acquired by 200 1 from Squibb. Personal cleaning products also have three different brands: Shufujia, Olay and Double Base. P&G brand independently calculates expenses, encourages competition among brands, and implements brand management mode in management, adopting "one brand, one brand experience". Carry out different brand positioning for each brand, thus forming its own brand personality. When advertising, we should focus on the brand personality, that is, USP in advertising. For example, Head & Shoulders shampoo takes "dandruff removal" as its brand personality, which has also become USP in advertisements and has been repeatedly promoted. So that when people mention dandruff, they immediately think of Head & Shoulders, which is the success of this brand. In this way, other brands of P&G have effectively established their own brand personality and gained a certain market position. At the same time, the desperate struggle of many brands in the market will not only affect the sales of P&G products, but also help to increase the company's overall market share and reduce the risk of a single brand.

Positioning strategy

The decision of product positioning strategy is a key and core link. The rationality of product positioning is directly related to the final effect of advertising activities, and the content of product positioning determines the focus of advertising.

Procter & Gamble has always pursued the tenet of "producing and providing world-class products and services and beautifying consumers' lives" [2], advocated the principle of consumer first, paid attention to talents, put people first and made constant innovations. This is the enduring foundation of P&G 150 years. Their products can always guarantee the quality of consumers, make people feel satisfied during use, have a happy mood and are willing to buy again. Good products are the basis for making good advertisements, and also give advertisements a broad space to play. P&G's brand positioning is "winning with high quality", and its products have always been known for their high cost performance. Procter & gamble company. A senior consultant of G Company once said, "P & amp； G never wants to be the second brand, our goal is to strive for the first. "

The theory of "unique sales advice" (USP theory) is widely used. Rozel's USP strategy? USP theory was put forward by Reeves in 1950s, which emphasized the special effects and benefits of products. Reeves' proposition has strong sales power when competitors can't put forward it. Starting from the product itself, develop a functional "complaint point" as a connection point with consumers, so that consumers can really feel the benefits of the product. [3] As a follower of USP strategy, Procter & Gamble has effectively adhered to this strategy for a long time. Soft "shampoo and hair care in one"; Head & Shoulders' dandruff removal, Pan Ting's hair care experts, Sassoon's professional hairdressing products, Shufujia's sterilization and long-term inhibition of bacterial regeneration, and Bilang's strong decontamination have all promised important benefits to consumers and won their recognition.

Many people think that USP theory is gradually declining with the gradual improvement of production technology and the increasing homogenization of products. However, in today's complicated daily chemical brands, why can Procter & Gamble, which still uses USP, continue to succeed? First of all, this is inseparable from P&G's brand positioning. P&G's positioning is "high quality and good price", which gives people a trustworthy feeling. Secondly, it is related to P&G products. As a daily cleaning product, consumers are most concerned about the effect of the product. It is in line with consumers' psychology to adopt USP strategy and give consumers a real promise of benefits.

Second, the appeal strategy

Procter & gamble's product advertisements have clear and consistent appeal targets, appeal focuses and appeal methods.

Procter & Gamble decided to attract ordinary housewives. Because its main commodity is household goods, housewives are the people who decide the right to buy cleaning products in the family, so its advertisements mainly attract housewives. The advertising model industry generally uses ordinary housewives instead of stars. Procter & Gamble believes that the advertisements of mass home products should be close to consumers and talk directly with consumers in familiar scenes and languages. At the same time, they think that their products are superior among similar products, and celebrities are not suitable for their products and advertising methods.

There is always an important interest point promised to consumers in P&G advertisements, that is, a USP, and the whole advertisement closely revolves around this USP. This USP is often based on the function of the product, emphasizing the special efficacy of a product. For example, Shufujia soap mainly emphasizes its "sterilization and long-term inhibition of bacterial regeneration", and its advertisement appears as a housewife, suggesting that bacteria are harmful to family health, while Shufujia can sterilize and inhibit bacterial regeneration, so Shufujia is the best choice. Head & Shoulders shampoo emphasizes its "dandruff" effect, and the advertisement asks what to do if you have dandruff. Then please use Head & Shoulders, because it has a good dandruff removal effect. The focus of the appeal makes P&G advertising generally "solve the problem".

P&G's appeal method emphasizes rational appeal. "Rational appeal" refers to the rational motivation of the audience to make rational decisions through a true, accurate and reasoning thinking process. [4] Procter & Gamble's advertisements tell consumers in this way what benefits they will get if they buy Procter & Gamble's products, thus persuading consumers to buy them.

Three performance strategies

Advertisements are mostly demonstrative and adopt the appearance of consumers. Advertising films generally use the expression of appearance, so that people who often use products, usually housewives, can directly attract consumers with plain and familiar language, provide consumers with one or more benefits, directly explain the characteristics of products, and use the special functions of products to impress consumers rationally.

Four media strategies

Mainly using TV advertisements. When you turn on the TV, you can see advertisements for P&G products almost every day. Although Procter & Gamble spends advertising money on newspapers, magazines and other major media, most of its advertising money is spent on TV, the most popular media, because it mainly produces a large number of low-profit household goods. This media strategy is also very obvious in China. At the same time, the popularity of TV media can fully demonstrate the functions of P&G products.

Five delivery strategies

In the perennial advertising at the same time with different promotion methods, comprehensive use. Procter & gamble's advertising is carried out all the year round and never stops. Almost every day, we can see the promotion of P&G products on TV. This is different from other brands, such as Unilever. Other brands generally use leap-forward advertising or advertise before the product market introduction period and sales peak season. P&G's uninterrupted advertising strategy is related to its products. As a daily cleaning product, it is the daily consumer goods of ordinary families and belongs to the goods that consumers often buy. Such as soap, washing powder, shampoo, etc. Consumers will buy it almost every once in a while. Perennial advertisements first let consumers know about Procter & Gamble, and long-term advertisements will also arouse consumers' desire to try to buy. In addition, higher product quality will make consumers have a sense of identity with products, and gradually make consumers become a fixed consumer group of Procter & Gamble, and further enhance their market share.

When P&G introduces new products, advertisements will become rich, and the cost of advertising investment will also increase greatly. At the beginning of new products entering the market, P&G invested a lot of money in advertising to achieve higher advertising coverage. After consumers know and accept the new brand, P&G has changed from strong advertising to the simultaneous and comprehensive use of advertising and other promotional means. In order to form consumers' buying habits, 1988, P&G came to China with their consistent principle of "customer first" and the concept of "producing and providing world-class products and services". When P&G enters the China market, there will inevitably be the problem of brand localization while the brand is internationalized. Advertisements that have a good effect in one cultural field may not achieve the expected effect in another cultural field. Many enterprises standardize the core positioning of brands and combine the culture reflected by product information with the audience culture of market segments to achieve the goal of "international brand, local culture". This practice is the performance of international brands in localization. Procter & Gamble's advertising strategy in China is mainly manifested in adhering to the international advertising strategy, focusing on the localization of international brands, grasping the consumption psychology of domestic and foreign consumers buying daily cleaning products, localizing products and internationalizing advertising strategies, and making appropriate adjustments to its advertising strategy for China consumers.

First, adhere to the international advertising strategy.

Comparing P&G's advertisements in China and China, we can see that their advertising strategies are not very different. In China, we mainly follow our own advertising strategy. Most of P&G's advertising strategies and features mentioned above are still implemented in China. This is very different from other foreign brands entering the China market. When many commodities enter the China market, their original marketing and advertising strategies have changed greatly to adapt to local customs and make people accept their commodities. P&G has not encountered similar problems mainly because P&G has summed up the above-mentioned basic marketing strategies through long-term practice for more than 50 years since its establishment, which has kept P&G in the market for a long time. At the same time, starting from the products produced by Procter & Gamble, household cleaning products as consumables, whether in foreign countries or in China, people mainly pay attention to the quality, use effect and price of the products, which is much less influenced by cultural factors than other commodities, making its original advertising strategy focusing on rationalizing the efficacy of commodities continue to be popular in China. At the same time, the concept of brand management, the formation of brand personality of each brand, the application of USP strategy and so on. In China, it was also a big fight.

Second, the localization of international brands

In order to better understand the consumers in China, P&G has established a perfect market research system in China. Follow up with consumers and try to establish a lasting communication relationship with consumers. Procter & Gamble has set up a huge database in China Market Research Department, analyzing and feeding back consumers' opinions to the production department in time, so as to produce products more suitable for China consumers. Guangzhou Procter & Gamble creatively uses its original marketing experience and world-class technology to improve local products and regional products. By understanding the needs of consumers, we can produce products suitable for China market and formulate marketing strategies suitable for China market.

1997, new products brewed by Procter & Gamble China: In order to show the beauty of modern oriental women's black hair, a brand-new hair moistening product was launched, named as "Moisturizing Beauty", which means "Moisturizing" and "Beauty". Product target positioning: mature women. The brand "Runyan" has been pregnant for nearly 3 years since the product was put on the market. The black Chinese herbal medicine Runfa Dew, which was finally put on the market, emphasized that it was specially designed for orientals. The original moisturizing essence of Chinese herbal medicine is added into Runfa Dew, which combines international advanced technology and traditional Chinese herbal medicine ingredients in China, especially suitable for oriental hair quality and hair color. Advertising combines ink painting, mysterious woman, hair ballet and other pictures to create an oriental atmosphere. At the same time, starting from Hangzhou, China, the modern and traditional oriental beauty created by cities and products hit it off. When the product was launched, the company held a series of public relations propaganda, such as launching a well-defined world and writing various "embellishments"; Sponsored the China Academy of Fine Arts and held the "Creating the Beauty of Black and White" ink painting exhibition, which all achieved great success. In this way, P&G people carefully prepared the "eye-moistening" money for three years and went on the road. This shows how much effort and patience P&G has made for cross-cultural advertising.

Ogilvy said that "the content of advertisements is more important than the performance". P&G's product features are suitable for its advertising strategy in the United States. However, if the products are not suitable for the consumers in China and can't satisfy them, there is still no market for the products. Producing products suitable for the consumers in China is the foundation of P&G's success in China. P&G improves its products according to the characteristics of China people and other factors to adapt to consumers in China. When P&G started to enter other countries, it used American products. As a result, when it promoted Pampers diapers in Japan, it failed because it was not suitable for Japanese babies. P&G summed up experience in setbacks and failures, and eventually became an expert in studying and understanding consumers in every country and region. According to the difference of water quality and consumers' hair quality in China, P&G's shampoo products have adjusted their ingredients and changed their labels. The localization of products provides a foundation for the localization of other aspects.

Give the product a China name. This question seems simple. In fact, m&'s foreign products still use their original names after entering China, such as m & ampm chocolate. This will certainly play a certain role in maintaining the internationalization of products, but in fact, for China consumers of products, if they can't even say the name of the products clearly, how can they remember the brand and become its long-term users? Procter & Gamble has done a good job in this respect, giving each of its products corresponding Chinese names, such as Rejoice, Pan Ting and Head & Shoulders. Shoulder), sassoon, skin cream, Olay, zest, etc. When the product is promoted in China, it adopts its Chinese name, which provides convenience for consumers to remember the product.

China models are used in advertisements, and many China products like to invite foreign models for publicity when they are sold in China, giving people the impression that the products are international. On the contrary, this phenomenon does not exist in the P&G advertisements we saw in China. Most products are advertised by a housewife in China, who directly stated her experience of using P&G products. Gradually use stars to advertise. As mentioned above, P&G rarely uses celebrities to promote its products in American advertisements. However, we found that stars gradually appeared in P&G's advertisements in China. For example, Pan Ting used Zhang Ziyi and Elva Hsiao as spokespersons for different types of shampoos, and Faye Wong and Zhou Xun also appeared in the advertisements of Head & Shoulders. This is also a major change of P&G's advertising strategy in China. There are two reasons: First, Procter & Gamble's positioning in China is high-end daily products, and most of the consumers are people aged 65,438+06-40, with middle or upper-middle income and advocating brand and product quality. People in this age group are much more influenced by stars than young people (/kloc-under 0/2 years old) and middle-aged and elderly people (over 45 years old). In view of their demands, it is also a good way to properly adopt celebrity publicity; Second, with the development of economy and society, as long as star advertisements are used properly, the effect is still obvious. Following the fashion, celebrity advertising has also become a fashion, and the development of society is also a factor for P&G to approach celebrity advertising. However, when we observe the advertisements of P&G celebrities, the main advertising expressions have not changed much compared with their original advertisements. They still tell consumers the efficacy of the product and promote it with a USP, but the model has changed from ordinary people to famous stars. This shows that the overall advertising strategy of P&G has not changed.

When P&G products enter the China market, the consumers they face have changed, and consumers in China also have their own consumption psychology. The different market economy makes the position of products in the market different from the original, which affects the advertising strategy of P&G in China. P&G's products were originally used as ordinary consumer goods. Because of the economic differences between China and the United States, compared with the original domestic brands of daily cleaning products, they became high-end daily necessities. With the change of its market position, its main buyers are middle-and high-income families. In addition, the ubiquitous psychology of "worshipping foreign things and obsessing foreign things" among consumers in China also makes P&G a high-quality and high-priced commodity. This also explains why P&G used stars to advertise when it entered China. At the same time, P&G adheres to the consistent "affinity" line, selects ordinary people, and rationally tells the benefits that goods can bring to consumers in familiar scenes; At the same time, in order to adapt to the economic development of China, some products of P&G adopt the route of "low price" (for example, in the advertisement of Tide washing powder, USP always focuses on "low price and good effect"), which makes P&G expand its own market.