P&G: Reviewageddon Or Just A Review?

A POV on P&G’s newest venture to cut marketing costs.

Advertising Age published an article in May discussing the massive media planning and buying review P&G is performing across their digital channels and brands. The first thought is to run for cover as if the sky was falling. In my experience, this is not a sign of the “end-of-days”, and here’s why.

At the same time P&G is looking to reallocate funds and assess means for spending billions of dollars in marketing, they also had a massive change in leadership. They now have a new North America Media Director in Kristine Decker. This is always the time for any new director to shake things up and review its current budgets, strategies, and overall successes.

In doing so, P&G admits “The move to review comes as the packaged-goods giant aims to cut $500 million in agency fees and reduce the number of agencies it works with, according to comments from P&G Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller on the company’s recent earnings call.”

So, based on that, why not improve ROI by cutting down agency costs and the number of agencies a large company deals with in order to improve the bottom line?

This is a trend, but not one that eludes to a bad economy or a run for from digital marketing. This is a simple, dollars and cents business decision, based on improving company ROI, new leadership, and “that time of the year”.

Anvil’s approach, when it has helped clients go through similar changes, for either internal business sense or economic reasons, has helped strategize budgets, campaign performance, and updated or new strategies that will boost the bottom line and keep the business moving forward during and after the transition and review. The main goal in any review is to be transparent, think outside the box, and most importantly, do right by the client.