One of the great properties that I get to work on at P&G Productions is the People’s Choice Awards.  In it’s 36th year, I think the 2010 show might just be one of the most exciting ones yet.  Yeah I am biased but we have announced Mark Burnett as our Executive Producer, moved the show to the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and formed a pretty cool alliance with MySpace.  Those are some cool changes.

And with all that, we have also made it even easier to cast your vote for this year’s winners with voting on both PeoplesChoice.com and on MySpace.  So have you voted yet? [end commercial message]

Following up on my post about my new role at P&G, the Cincinnati Enquirer had a great story in Sunday’s paper about our goals with Digital Content and moving the Soap Opera genre online.  As the story states:

The Webisode [A Parent is Born] is the latest example of how P&G, the inventor of the daytime drama, has moved beyond the soap opera and into the digital world, but with the same purpose it had when it launched the “Ma Perkins” radio serial in 1933: to create an interested audience it can use to build loyalty to its brands… Just as it did with the soaps, P&G is creating places where it can gather a big audience, with the goal of building goodwill toward brands such as Pampers diapers, Iams dog food, Febreze fabric freshener and Dawn dish soap.

To read the full story, visit the Cincinnati Enquier’s site here.

“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol

Without a doubt, I am going to look back on September 2009 as a month of lots of great change in my life.  In fact, two big milestones happened last month that I wanted to share…one personal and one business.

First on the personal side of things, I had the amazing fortune to have Cindy Hickerson take my hand in marriage on September 12, 2009.  As it is meant to be, the night was one of the best in my life as we shared it with our family and friends.  And the whole experience had the perfect conclusion as the new Mrs Knox and I spent the week in sunny Key West, FL on our honeymoon.

WeddingCity

Now as for the business side, there are changes on that end as well.  When I returned from my honeymoon, I actually started a new role at P&G as I moved over to become Brand Manager, Innovation & Design for Procter & Gamble Productions (PGP).  P&G Productions is a fascinating part of our company, charged with developing original content and entertainment to create powerful emotional relationships with our consumers.  This is the group responsible for inventing Soap Operas in the 1950’s, running the People’s Choice Awards for the past 35 years and creating multi-platform content such Petside.com.  In this new role, I will be applying my digital background to help P&G Productions to find the next generation of content,  partnerships and entertainment to connect our brands with consumers.

PGP_Web

So needless to say, September was a busy month filled with exciting changes.  And both are changes that make me even more excited for the days, months and years to come.

Over the past few days, I have been fascinated by the response on Twitter and in the blogosphere about the P&G program with Tide Loads of Hope.  On Friday afternoon, I decided to add my perspective to a post made by Peter Kim on his site Being Peter Kim.   Peter was one of the Social Media / Digital experts who helped P&G with the event.  I wanted to share my comment with the readers of Hard Knox Life but I’d encourage you see the full discussion on Peter’s site.

Peter,

While I thanked you for your participation previously in this thread, I now want to join in on the amazing (and constructive) dialogue that has continued since then. In full disclosure I’m part of a small team at P&G building our Digital skills, including Social Media and was also on the team that designed this training event. And as you know, I’m also a believer in “eating what you cook” in digital so I’m relatively active in both blogging (HardKnoxLife.com) and Twitter (@daveknox).

I’ve spent the past day listening to the conversations about our event but thought I would offer some additional perspective on the event.
The P&G Digital Event was an internal training exercise for 100 or so of our senior marketing leaders. We wanted to create a hands-on event for them to see first-hand what Social Media is all about. We wanted to bring it to life for them and take it beyond buzzwords and shiny objects like Twitter, the Long Tail, or CGM.

We hoped to see our leaders come away with several realizations but a couple I’ll mention relevant to my comments include:

  1. Social Media is mainstream. Facebook, Twitter, etc aren’t just for college kids or geeks. It is being used by the young and old.. by the geeks and the Soccer Moms (or Mommy Bloggers) alike.
  2. But despite being mainstream, its not one size fits all and you need to build trust to have a conversation.
  3. And with all that said, the first step is listening in social media.

It is the last point I really want to speak to. As I’ve followed the conversation, it looks like some have thought we were “having a one night stand” with Social Media. That isn’t the case at all. There are many P&Gers that are active in Social Media – as well as many of our brands. We wanted the event to help support those that aren’t as active see first hand that you have to be wired differently than traditional marketing efforts to be successful in the space.

Sure we could have told them that in a speech or powerpoint but that goes against the heart of Social Media where it is about doing and living it. Luckily some of the best and the brightest in the space where willing to help us show our marketers how to do just that. Many are our business partners today. But I also believe that their engagement was more than just “good account management.” People like Peter Kim, David Armano, Deb Schultz, Pete Blackshaw and many others involved are truly ambassadors of Social Media who can help teach marketers the RIGHT way to be involved. I’m honored that they are willing to help us learn.

Every P&G marketer involved woke up the next morning having seen firsthand a world that is different than the world they know and that digital is having an impact on people’s lives in new ways. And while change doesn’t happen overnight we’re working to embrace the truly dynamic and exciting digital space to serve consumers and build our business.

Thanks for listening and please keep up the dialogue. Healthy debate is how we all learn together. And please believe me when I say that P&G is here to learn and live our motto that the “Consumer is Boss.”

Dave Knox
Procter & Gamble Brand Manager, Digital Business Strategy

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I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that helped P&G last night with our Loads of Hope program.  In just over 4 hours, we raised $50,000 for charity… a sum that was then matched by the Tide brand.  It’s amazing that through the power of Social Media and the support of some wicked smart people, you could raise $100,000 to help a great cause.  You can’t help but feel good about that.

If you want to get a feel for the event, you can check out the Twitter Stream (where Tide was a top 10 term last night) or read the great insights by some of the people that participated last night.

Thank you again to everyone for your support.  We helped a great cause and helped to teach ourselves about the power of digital and social media.

And I promise no more mentions of “buy this t-shirt” on this blog or Twitter.

* NOTE: Despite the plugs for Loads of Hope last night and today, this blog remains my personal blog and anything stated here is not the opinion of my employer.

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