Procter & Gamble recently cited its ability
to use Facebook's branded Pages for free as one reason it may have cut its $10
billion ad budget
P&G is the world's biggest advertiser—its
budget is $10 billion—and Facebook is eager to prove its ad products are
effective. It gave this anecdote about a 9 percent increase in Secret deodorant
sales following a P&G Facebook campaign:
Procter & Gamble chose to advertise on
Facebook to generate awareness for Secret deodorant’s “Mean Stinks” program and
selected a female audience likely to be receptive to the campaign. The ad
featured a confessional-style video of a girl admitting that she had bullied
others, realizing the damage she had caused, and apologizing. In the 26 weeks
after the Mean Stinks campaign launched, Secret experienced a 9% increase in
U.S. sales and an increase in engagement with its Facebook Page
Consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble Co. is said to be
ending its 77-year run as a prominent sponsor and producer of soap operas — a
genre the company helped create — in favor of producing more campaigns using
social media.
The switch from soap operas
to social media is one motivated by its success with previous social media
campaigns — such as its Old Spice Guy YouTube promotion — and a desire to
capitalize on the more readily available opportunities of reaching women
through digital media.
Digital media has “become
very integrated with how we operate, it’s become part of the way we do
marketing,” marketing chief Marc Pritchard told the Associated Press.
“It’s kind of the oldest form of marketing — word of mouth — with the newest
form of technology.”
The company is an important
advertiser that spends nearly $9 billion per year to advertise its products.
The company is finding social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to be more effective channels for
reaching women and has spent much of 2011 experimenting with campaigns in these
arenas.
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