
Jim Stengel, P&G ex-CMO
This month, Jim Stengel officially retired as Chief Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble. As the leader of the largest spending marketing organization in the world, Jim was often named the most influential marketer and brand-builder in the industry. Last week, he gave his final speech as P&G’s Chief Marketing Officer, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, FL.
Here is Mediapost’s summary of Stengel’s five lessons of brand building:
Lesson One: Put people at the center of all you do.
Treat your people the way you would want your customers treated. “We too often forget brands are people. It’s the collective intent of people behind them,” he says.
“I have learned in my career that the most important legacy is the impact you will have with the people you work with. We all have rough months, rough years, which blend together, but what you will remember is relationships and people.”
Lesson Two: Engage your heart and mind in everything you do.
Says Stengel, “We need balance. Too often as an industry we approach everything with head, not heart. We often talk within P&G of personal relationship as a metaphor for marketing. How many of us internalize that and apply it to how we approach business and customers?”
“If we thought about everything we do in marketing, if they all tried to emanate from this idea of great relationship we would do and measure things differently.”
He offered brands other than P&G’s as examples: Apple, Southwest Airlines, online shoe company Zappos, and Amazon.com. “What we find with the strongest brands is they have strength and competitive advantage in emotional areas that drive brand,” he said.
Lesson Three: Results.
“In our industry we tend to make things complicated, focusing on activities that don’t drive brand,” said Stengel. “Why are CMO tenures short? Look at organization designs across companies; they are all over the place Too much spend goes to short term and tactical that doesn’t build loyalty and relationship with consumers.”
He asked, rhetorically, why many CEO’s and CFO’s don’t value marketing. “Because too much we focus on a bustle of activities, not the few things that drive growth of brand. Sales are important but if you don’t look at other measures of brand health, you are being short sighted.”
Lesson Four: Creativity is about solving problems.
We too often have the wrong discussion with agencies. We talk fees, etc, short term stuff, not how to come together about how to create a powerful brand.”
Lesson Five: Have a purpose.
“I am devoting the next chapter of my life to this mission. He cautioned that, by purpose, he doesn’t mean cause-based marketing, but an inspirational, motivational reason for being. “For example, Nike’s purpose is to build self esteem, to be an inspiration for athletes around the world.” The purpose of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish? “To bring optimism to children. Old Spice? To help guys navigate the seas of manhood,” he said.
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Stumble It!
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:
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