Professional Problems of Advertising —— Analysis of Procter & Gamble Product Promotion Based on Brand Strategy

The charm of cleanliness is still there for a hundred years

Procter & Gamble, founded in 1837, is the number one consumer goods company in the United States and one of the largest consumer goods suppliers in the world. The company has subsidiaries in more than 70 countries and regions, including production plants, and the total number of employees worldwide exceeds 65,438+065,438+00,000. More than 300 kinds of products sell well in 140 countries and regions, covering shampoo, hair care, skin care products, cosmetics, baby care products, medicines, food, beverages, fabrics, home care, personal cleaning products and other products. Among them, Bilang and Tide brand washing powder, Rejoice and Pan Ting brand shampoo, Crest toothpaste and Pinker potato chips are also well-known brands familiar to domestic consumers.

In the fiscal year of 1999-2000, P&G's total product sales revenue was as high as $39.95 billion and its total profit was $3.54 billion, ranking 75th among the latest Fortune 500 companies.

More than 70 websites are a fortune.

By establishing several websites focusing on different products and contents, we can fully capture the huge business opportunities in the Internet field.

P&G is a traditional business giant with a long history of 100 years, but it has not lost to many new economic companies in Web practice. At present, the company has more than 70 websites, which even makes many technology giants fall behind.

At the end of last year, Procter & Gamble launched a new website called BeingGirl.com, which Internet users who like to learn from others will definitely understand as a community website for girls. However, this is not the case. Although it is similar to a typical community website, this website also provides a lot of content and topics closely related to girls' lives, such as eliminating acne. But at the same time, this website is dotted with some beautiful label links of various names, which are finally linked with products. At that time, this website was a little different from ordinary community websites, which reflected the good intentions of cleaning company in web strategy.

This website is the 72nd website established by Procter & Gamble. Previously, most of these websites involved the most famous product brands and related knowledge of the consumer goods giant's more than 300 brands, including Tide, Crest, Scope, Olay, Pan Ting and so on. For example, on the website of Tide.com called Tide, the skills of washing clothes are provided. Crest website named after Crest provides common knowledge of dental care; Personalized hair care consultation service is provided on Pantene.com website named after Pan Ting.

BeingGirl.com, a community website built around products, is a brand-new attempt of P&G's network strategy. Just as this company tends to invest in research and development of hundreds of products at one time in traditional fields, the company also strives to capture the huge business opportunities in the Internet field by establishing multiple websites focusing on different products and contents.

This move has made the cleaning company, which has dominated the traditional consumer goods field for more than a hundred years, a leader in the online consumer goods market, and this is precisely the personality of the cleaning company that dares to innovate and keep trying. Although at the beginning, P&G was not sure about the final effect of the Web strategy itself: because this strategy may successfully introduce the company into the e-commerce world, it may be limited to some marketing advantages and advertising effects, or even a lot of unnecessary human and material resources consumption.

Adventure network

The construction of more than 70 websites of P&G is only a part of P&G's overall Internet strategy. In fact, this strategy of the company also contains more "ambitions".

Procter & gamble is not completely successful in grasping the website strategy, but at least it can get a lot of valuable information from consumers through the construction of the website.

In fact, since we entered the Web field in the mid-1990s, we have been trying to market Scope mouthwash and Tide washing powder with the help of Web pop-up advertisements, and P&G's investment and innovation in the Web field have never stopped. 1998, P&G held the first marketing forum named FASS (Advertising Stakeholder Summit) with the theme of Internet advertising in the industry, and invited all parties including competitors and strategic partners to gather at P&G headquarters to discuss how to effectively use the Internet as a new advertising media marketing product in the future. Recently, this forum has developed into an influential industry organization to discuss interactive advertising and marketing strategies.

Like the strategy usually adopted by many large companies, when it comes to the specific deployment cost and annual maintenance cost of the company's existing more than 70 websites, the executives of cleaning company always evade and never give a positive answer. The specific figures of this part of the cost can not be found in the relevant information published by the company. However, most analysts believe that this will undoubtedly be an expensive figure. According to the online price index provided by business magazine B2B, considering various factors such as function, the average initial construction cost of a medium-sized website is generally between 6,543,800 and 600,000 dollars. In terms of website maintenance cost, according to the data of market research organization Jupiter, the average annual maintenance cost of an ordinary business website is more than 500 thousand dollars; The average annual maintenance cost of complex e-commerce websites may even be as high as millions of dollars. As far as Procter & Gamble's websites are concerned, most of them provide friendly user interfaces, and in order to expand their influence, these websites often need to carry out some marketing activities at the beginning of their launch. Therefore, the overall deployment cost and maintenance cost of more than 70 websites of P&G Company can be imagined.

Although, the overall scale advantage of P&G website helps to reduce some costs. For example, the servers and background technologies used in these websites are deployed and maintained by the company itself, which can reduce some costs to some extent. However, the unfamiliarity and maintenance of most of the company's websites still depend on professional advertising agencies and web design companies. Therefore, even according to the most conservative minimum standards, the unfamiliar cost of all P&G websites is estimated to be tens of millions of dollars, and the average annual maintenance expenditure will not be less than several million dollars.

Of course, for this consumer goods giant, compared with the annual advertising expenditure of billions of dollars, this cost is no less than nine Niu Yi hairs. For example, 1999, the advertising cost of cleaning companies is as high as $3.7 billion. However, this does not mean that there is no shortage of clean funds.

In the first half of 2000, Procter & Gamble admitted that its predicted growth rate of 13 percentage points was obviously too optimistic, and its actual growth rate was only expected to reach 4 percentage points. As soon as this statement came out, Wall Street was very dissatisfied with the consumer goods giant, and P&G shares plummeted from 1 18 at the beginning of the year to 60 dollars per share. To this end, Procter & Gamble has to adopt the strategy of reducing R&D new product funds and laying off 654.38+500,000 employees around the world, and strive to improve profit margins and win back the hearts of Wall Street investors. Faced with these financial pressures, the company's Web strategy, which costs millions every year and is difficult to see obvious results in the short term, is undoubtedly the most likely victim of the company's unsatisfactory financial situation. However, in fact, cleaning company did not give up this strategy, but managed to stick to the company's Web strategy today. This also shows the firm belief of the company in the Web strategy from one side.

Of course, the construction of these more than 70 websites is only a part of P&G's overall Internet strategy. In fact, this strategy of the company also contains more "ambitions". For example, in this strategy, it also includes further strengthening cooperation with marketing partners such as Women.com and Bolt.com, and using P&G's venture capital incubator and Internet venture fund to support Internet startups with more development potential such as Plumtree software and Yet2.com. At the same time, the company will establish a global online B2B trading market named Transora.com with Unilever, Coca-Cola and Nestle.

In fact, the value of more than 70 websites of Procter & Gamble cannot be simply measured by money. These websites not only established the brand image of cleaning company in cyberspace, but also provided a lot of valuable data and information for the company, enabling the company to conduct more targeted online product direct sales attempts. As far as the eyes are concerned, the most important one is undoubtedly data acquisition. Procter & gamble's efforts in this regard, as Deutsche Bank analyst Andrew Shore said. Brown Investment Bank pointed out that just like the first landing on the moon, all the data and information that P&G can collect are very precious. They urgently need all the data and information they can collect.

At the same time, this part of information collected online can also be an important reference for cleaning companies to reduce costs, especially marketing costs. The company expects to cut millions of dollars in advertising budget through the Internet, especially since the middle of 2000, when the market has dropped to a certain extent, this information from the Internet can enable the company to achieve more accurate marketing at a lower cost.

A former Procter & Gamble spokesman said that Procter & Gamble's understanding of advertising and marketing has changed greatly, and it gradually began to adopt a more open attitude towards other media, including the Internet.

As analyst Harry Milling pointed out, the public may be impressed by Procter & Gamble's network strategy. At present, P&G's own grasp of the Web strategy is not completely successful, but at least they have successfully obtained a lot of valuable information from consumers through the components of the website, so as to more accurately understand the user's reaction to the company's products.

Trial, failure and success

Previously, in product research and development and business development, P&G was used to adopting the strategy of multi-point attack and diversified income, and the company never expected all attempts to succeed, but the success in some aspects was enough to bring rolling profits to the company.

Like many other companies in this field, P&G's attempts and failures are common, whether in product development or business development. Looking back on the development of this company, we can easily find that these constant attempts and failures have laid the foundation for the company's success, and finally it has long been the glory of cleaning today. Even today, the company is still in the process of continuous exploration and has found the road to success through continuous trial and error. The practice in the field of Web is also an important part of the company's continuous trial and error, and finally its successful development.

At first, P&G's innovative network strategy didn't surprise analysts too much. They only regard it as a new strategy for cleaning companies to meet the challenges of competitors such as Unilever. Unilever has also begun to invest heavily in online commerce and tried to surpass their competitors. As Daniel peris, an analyst in the field of consumer goods in Argus, a market research organization, pointed out: P&G company is used to adopting various income strategies in product development and business expansion. The company never expects all attempts to be successful, but the success in some aspects is enough to bring rolling profits to the company. Peris believes that at present, Procter & Gamble is trying to do the same thing in the Internet field: they don't expect the existing 70-odd websites to be a great success, but as long as one or several websites and one or more strategic ideas can get what they want, other websites will be equally valuable.

Harry Milling, a securities analyst at Morningstar.com, also believes that in view of the success of P&G's strategy in the traditional economic field, its multi-brand parallel strategy in the online space of the Internet seems to be taken for granted. Although this company has invested a lot of money in the Internet field, it has established a number of websites that focus on different brands and seem to be slightly disorganized, and it is difficult to show obvious results in the short term. However, in the long run, this strategy is valuable. Because Harry Milling believes that the cleaning company will try its best to take advantage of this advantage and strengthen the company's follow-up business development through information from multiple websites.

Preliminary study on the door of e-commerce

Online direct selling is only a preliminary attempt by P&G Company to move towards integrated e-commerce. P&G has no intention to seize the profit space of the company's retail channels and partners.

The company's goal is to continue website construction and adjust the company's website strategy appropriately. Brand managers are encouraged to build brand image through websites.

Whether it's the washing technology on Tide.com website or the launch of BeingGirl.com website, information collection is still the main focus of the company's operation of such websites as far as the current goal of cleaning company is concerned. Elaine Plummer, Procter & Gamble spokeswoman and BeingGirl.com consultant, once pointed out that although our ultimate goal is to increase product sales, we also pay attention to communication among teenagers. We expect to know the users who visit the website and learn more valuable information from it. At the same time, you can also know the number of visiting users who request samples, so as to get more relevant product news. This is actually an opportunity to strengthen contact with users in advance. In this regard, we need to make further efforts.

For any commercial company, the ultimate goal of "communication and contact" with users is nothing more than increasing product sales. In this sense, of course, the cleaning company will not sit still. In fact, the BeingMe.com website launched by Procter & Gamble on June 5438+ 10 last year has already started to "sneak" in this respect. On this website, female users can know the most suitable female products through relevant tests, and then order products that are consumed once a month or half a year through the website, which is convenient for fitting. This is a preliminary attempt of cleaning companies in e-commerce.

Besides this website, other websites owned by Procter & Gamble, including Dobby ACard.com and Reflect.com, have also started to try similar e-commerce services. For example, on websites beyond ACard.com, consumers can order a newborn gift package consisting of branded products of companies such as Pampers and Febreze, or a food gift package consisting of products such as Pinker potato chips and Jif peanut butter.

The company's Reflect.com website goes further in this respect. The website can customize beauty products according to users' needs. Customized production and sales of products is the advantage of online commerce, which enables commercial companies to maximize product sales without affecting the interests of retailers. Procter & gamble also plans to try online sales of multiple product lines, such as online sales of new products that have not yet been put on the shelves in sellers' stores, customized products and combined sales of multiple series of products of the company.

Because most of P&G's products are very suitable for traditional store sales, analysts believe that at least for now, P&G has no intention to seize the profit space of its retail channels and partners, and online direct selling is only a preliminary attempt for P&G to move towards integrated e-commerce.

Procter & Gamble's Reflect.com website is a concentrated expression of this attempt. Although the website still faces many problems in order processing and fulfillment, it has attracted a large number of repeat customers, and the amount of each order is also considerable. Some analysts believe that the main goal of the website is not to increase product sales and gain more profits, but to explore ways to provide customized products and services. The company expects to reduce the product marketing cost and realize more ideal "one-on-one" marketing.

This is not difficult to see some clues from the marketing process of new hair care product Physiqte. At the beginning of last year, the company still followed the traditional marketing channels including expensive TV advertisements when releasing this new hair care brand, but soon the company changed its mind and turned more marketing budget to online marketing. Facts have proved that this marketing strategy has achieved great success. At the beginning of last year, before the brand's hair care products were officially launched, 600,000 users had booked the products, and they have maintained a good sales momentum since the official launch. In the third quarter of last year, the sales revenue of P&G beauty products was as high as US$ 6,543.8+US$ 900 million, among which Physique products and their successful online marketing contributed greatly.

At this point, even those analysts who have different degrees of negative opinions on the Web strategy of cleaning company have to admit that the general direction of cleaning is correct. In fact, the Web business practice of this traditional consumer goods giant is far ahead of most traditional enterprises.

Although Rubin, the head of Netquity, a company jointly funded by But Forrester * * *(Information Resources * * *, thinks that many websites of P&G are hard to get much practical effect, he also admits that the consumer goods giant's attempt in the web field is far ahead of its peers.

From P&G's point of view, the company believes that the Web strategy is still developing, and plans to continue to push all the company's brand products into the online space through continuous exploration and trial. The company's current goal is to continue website construction and appropriately adjust the company's website strategy. For example, the company has begun to encourage brand managers to build brand image through websites, which was mainly achieved through traditional marketing channels such as TV advertisements. This means that P&G will not only build more websites that focus on the company's product brands, such as Vicks.com and Crisco.com, but also build more composite websites that bring together the company's multiple product brands, such as BeingGirl.com. Yufi