How to Suck at Marketing (Just like Proctor and Gamble) 👎👎👎
If there’s one thing that makes me frustrated, it’s when people blame a marketing channel for their terrible ads.
In fact, a friend of mine linked me out to this article the other day.
Basically, it says that Proctor and Gamble have reduced their ad spend by over $1 Billion (yeah, with a “b”) on digital channels.
And on the call they said, “We didn’t notice a decrease in sales!”
WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!!!
First off, I totally believe them. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it.
Crappy ads are crappy ads.
But if you are doing such a poor job of tracking that you can cut $1 billion and not notice a change, your ads are just bad.
In the article they blamed “click fraud” (basically bots that click on ads to make website owners money – very dishonest). Sure, click fraud is a thing.
But seriously, how are you not measuring these things?
Now, let me show you an example of how bad P&G is at digital marketing.
How to Lose the Razor Market:
To do this, we’ll take one of their flagship brands: Gillette Razors.
Here are the facts:
- In 2010, Gillette had 70%(!!!) of the market share in razors
- In 2016, they had 54% and are rapidly decreasing
That’s a HUGE loss in market share for one of the staple brands of a company.
What happened between 2010 and 2016?
Well, first Dollar Shave Club launched in 2011. And several other online competitors have launched since then.
These competitors, aren’t only more nimble, but their prices are much lower.
Check out Consumer Report’s price on razors:
Source: Consumer Reports
Look mom! I saved so much money! 😒
The Business Changed:
If you’re not familiar with companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, their business model is subscription based – pay monthly (or every two months) and get razors mailed to your door.
Gillette finally started offering this service, but see if you can find it on their site:
https://gillette.com/
Seriously, did you find it? There’s little link in the header and a slider that you have to wait 10 seconds to see.
The model is changing and P&G has refused to change with it.
How to be invisible online:
On top of that, I’m not sure where these billions of dollars are going, but they aren’t doing much.
If you query “best shaving razors” in Google, Gillette has one product in the products group.
They don’t show up in the PPC ads (that’s Dollar Shave Club and Dorco).
And they don’t show up in Google results unless they happened to be reviewed by a third party site.
So, P&G, what exactly are you spending these billions on? Because it certainly isn’t helping grow this brand.
Take Ownership:
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s happening over at P&G. They hire (supposedly) some of the best and brightest marketing minds in the world right out of Ivy League schools.
But there is no one taking ownership of their marketing. They are marketing like it’s the 1950s.
Because of companies like Proctor and Gamble, there are some agency heads riding around in Rolls-Royces, but the brand isn’t growing. It’s shrinking.
And here my point: the problem isn’t the channel.
How do I know? Because that 20% of market share that they lost went straight to online brands.
Let this sink in: Proctor and Gamble announced that online marketing isn’t working while they are losing market share to online-only brands.
They are losing market share because their price is too high and their marketing is terrible.
So how about online?
Here’s the thing: You may be in the same boat as P&G. Maybe you paid someone to help you online and you didn’t get any results.
If so, I’m sorry you had a bad experience.
But don’t blame the channel. If you’re not getting a channel to work, you (or your agency) is probably just doing it wrong.
Adjust your strategy. Adjust your business model.
Online is changing everything. The companies that are going to beat you are going to beat you online. I promise.
So…..maybe it’s time for a new strategy?
HT for Avinash for bringing the Gillette issue to my attention.
