January 2, 2020 • 43 mins
Live from Cincinnati, Bob sits down with Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard to discuss the company’s unique culture, how it’s adjusted its marketing strategy in recent years, and why the company has made diversity a priority. Learn why P&G still lives up to its original motto: “pure goods at an honest price.” Also, we dive into how the company has grown to a workforce of 47% women managers, and why rediscovering audio has helped P&G create more effective advertising. Plus, learn why Marc considers himself an introvert, what his daily mantra is, and why “coming out” as a Mexican-American was so important for P&G.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
My mom is of German descent and my dad is Mexican.
His real dad's name was Gonzales. He was adopted by
a man named Pritchard, which is uh, an English name.
(00:21):
I my whole life have presented as white. I recognized
that there's privilege associated with that. I'm not sure I
would have made it to this role given the prejudice
and biases around realizing the privilege of this position, the
opportunity to make a difference right some of the wrongs
and affect bias by what we do on advertising. I
(00:45):
came out as a Mexican. It was emotional, but it
was important because they created emotional safety for other people
who do the same. Hi am Bob Pittman. Welcome to
Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. Normally
(01:06):
we have chats in a small studio with just me
and a guest. Today we are doing this episode in
Cincinnati at Procter and Gamble in front of a live audience,
So all of you welcome to Math and Magic and
I Heart Podcasting. We usually have a guest with a
(01:28):
strength in either math or magic. Sometimes we have someone
who is ambidextrous and has both. But today we're exploring
leadership driven by insights, curiosity, empathy, and courage. Our guest
on this episode is someone who is well known and
much respected as a role model in marketing corporate management.
In addition to exhibiting those characteristics of the strong leaders,
(01:49):
he also has a platform that can magnify the impact
and make a lasting difference. Mark Pritchard, Chief rand Officer
of Procter and Gamble. Mark is a gifted and innovative
marketer whose actions have not only redefined marketing, but his
actions in leadership have led to major changes in his company,
in the media industry and in society in general and diversity,
(02:10):
concepts of women's beauty, transparency, and new models of purpose
driven marketing. And this has not only been good for society,
it's been good for business. Procter and Gamble has been
delivering records setting financial performance for at least the last
year and a half. Mark has led a life of humility,
fairness and leadership without the paralysis of fearing mistakes. He
(02:31):
plays it right. Not safe. Welcome Mark, happy to be here, Bob,
Thanks for having me Mark. I want to dig into
all the meaty stuff. But first I'd like for us
to do you in sixty seconds. You ready, I'm ready.
Do you prefer beetles or stones? Stones, Cincinnati or Bloomington's
Bloomington sunrise or sunset? Sunset? Basketball or gymnastics basketball? That's easy?
(02:57):
Spring or fall? Uh? Fall? Call or text call? Catch
up or mustard neither. It's about to get harder. Smartest
person you know, my wife Betsy right answer by the way.
Childhood hero you know who was it? Abraham Lincoln? First
job I bust tables at mcl cafeteria. Favorite song I
(03:22):
Only Have Eyes for You song at my wedding, My
first dance with my wife. Oh, that's nice. Favorite city
since Mattie. Last vacation, that's vacation. That's scary. This is
part of the problem with working too hard. I went
to Maine where my daughter got engaged. Secret talent I
can sing pretty well. Favorite basketball team the guys I
(03:44):
played with every Saturday morning. Favorite food tacos. What did
you want to be when you were growing up? Rock star?
And here you are. Let me begin with a question
about our location. Does being located here in Cincinnati, in
Ohio the middle of the country, keep you in the
company better grounded in Middle America and the mass market.
(04:06):
Is it an advantage. It's an advantage in some ways,
the disadvantage in other ways. But I think what is
more important is the people we hire. The people we
hire are grounded in just really strong ethics and values.
We have what we call our purpose values and principles.
We hire people who have high integrity, trust, teamwork, ownership, leadership.
(04:32):
My first day on the job, my boss said, we
do the right thing at PNG. So it's less about
where we're located. It's more about who we hire and
who we bring in and who we build. You may
know that this is one of the few companies that
still most of the people grow from within. Do you
feel like people walking the streets here get a different
feeling of the heartland than people walking the streets in
(04:54):
New York or l A or Silicon Valley and that
gives them any marketing advantage. I think gives them a
different context, and I think it gives them a different experience.
I don't think it necessarily gives them a different marketing advantage.
I think what's really important, Bob is extracting the creativity
out of every individual, and that happens if you're in Cincinnati,
in New York, in Geneva and Singapore and Guangzho, China.
(05:18):
We got a brilliant marketing in all the places in
which were located, every city, every country, because we've got
great people who really get connected and do great things.
I want to talk a little bit about the view
of this company, and I want to go back in time,
back to when you were GM of the Cover Girl
business and you had an epiphany about the broader impact
you could have on culture. It had an immediate effect
(05:40):
on the Easy Breezy Beautiful ad campaign and very well
known at that time. Can you tell us what led
to that epiphany and how it changed you? What I
was doing at the time as I was a general
manager of our CoverGirl business, which is Baltimore. And then
my white Betsy and our three daughters, who are all
under the age of ten, went to a place called
(06:00):
wind River Ranch up in the Colorado Rockies. It was
a spiritual ranch, nondenominational spiritual ranch. Because I was born Catholic,
my wife's Jewish. My dad was an alcoholics anonymous, so
he had a higher power and he was also there
with us. When we were there, the spiritual leader at
the very end of it came up to me and said,
you know, Mark, you really can make a big difference
(06:23):
in the world because you're in business. The greatest force
for good in the future is going to be business.
It's not going to be clergy, it's not gonna be government.
It's going to be business. If you choose to do so,
you can do a lot of good. We had just
introduced the Easy Breeze Beautiful Cover Gold campaign and I
literally it was an epiphany where I thought, oh wow,
the effect that we have on the standard of beauty
(06:46):
is profound. We're essentially portraying what we view is the
standard of beauty and unfortunate the time, the spokespeople we
had were too young, too skinny, and too white. And
I sat there and looked at my ten year old
daughters and I said, you know, I have an oligation
(07:06):
to do the right thing. And I knew then that
we needed to make a change. We brought in Queen Latifa,
we brought in all in Generous, Sophia Vergara, Pink, Janelle Monet.
We became diverse. We moved to a standard of beauty
that came from within as opposed to externally, and it
was really a very profound moment because I realized how
much impact advertising can have on people's perceptions. And that
(07:32):
was really the start of what I hope we're doing
now at that moment. What was the reaction internally from
the consumers and from the ad industry. Well, at first,
when I went back and talked to our agencies at
the time, They're like, well, wait, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not what women want to see. They don't want
to see themselves if they want to see other people
(07:57):
who are the quote better version of them selves. M
I said, no, no, no, no no, no, no, we need
to try. We can do something that's better. Thankfully, Alice Erickson,
who was the creative director at the time, did a
magnificent job, and she's the one who really, along with
the other team, brought in Queen Latifa. That really is
what transformed that campaign and that brand. What was the
(08:20):
reaction internally when you came back with this epiphany, You know,
internally people got it. They got it pretty quickly. They thought,
you know, yeah, this is something we can do, and
we went for it. It really unlocked a lot of creativity.
John Pepper was the first P and G CEO I
ever spent time with. I was back in the nineties,
and I must say when I met him, it was
(08:41):
not what I expected. I was sort of expecting. I
guess I don'tn't know what the cold, ruthless corporate killer. Instead,
I found the man who was interested in doing good
and interested in positive change in society. It was a
strong business as a force to do good philosophy very
much concurent with the story telling. Has that always been
(09:02):
the case at P and G? Where did that come from?
That came from the very beginning of this company. You
can go right down these halls and you can see
our archives. There's a picture of our founder's store, Procter
and Gamble. And the first claim we made was pure
goods at an honest weight. We sold candles, and so
(09:23):
what distinguished the company was that we had purity and
the products where some didn't, and we actually had an
honest weight. We said, here's how much is in here,
and that's exactly what we delivered. That's the foundation of
this company and it's always been that way. I want
to come back to the topic because I think it
really does make this company very special. But I want
(09:45):
to get a little context about you, and I want
to go back to the young mark. You were born
in Oakland, California, in the dawn of the sixties. You're Taurus,
and if you believe astrology, you seem to fit the
profile patients stepfast and radiate calm and fortitude, and I
love this one and often associated with successful business people.
Were you that way as a kid? I was pretty calm,
(10:09):
low key, and my brother was not. He was a
year younger and he was all over the place, and
he used to joke about how he'd be all over
the place and I'd be sitting there just focused on
my truck and playing around and doing things. So I've
always been that way. I'm actually quite introverted. I need
my turtle time, so to speak, where I can go
(10:30):
back into my little shell and just kind of hang
out and get some energy. Where did you grow up. Well,
started in Oakland, especially Filo, California, which is near that.
Then it went to Denver for twelve years till fourteen,
then went to Arkansas for two years, which was quite
a shot where in Arkansas in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
It was a very big, big change, going from really
(10:52):
what was at the time, you know, hippie country, and
I had long hair parted down the middle, often mistaken
or a girl. But then um went to Arkansas, and
then we moved to Elkhart, Indiana. My dad worked at
Miles Laboratory, as he had a sales territory in Arkansas,
and then we moved the home office up here, Indiana,
and then went to Bloomington, which is where I went
(11:14):
in the university, and then ended up here in Cincinnati.
I know you've talked about your own family diversity as
well as the world you grew up with. Can you
share that? Yeah, my mom is of German descent and
my dad is Mexican. His real dad's name was Gonzalez.
He was adopted by a man named Pritchard, which is
(11:35):
uh an English name. My parents got married, and my
whole life have presented as white. I recognized that there's
privilege associated with that I was lucky enough to be
named Pritchard. My parents considered naming me Mick because they
had a really good friend named Mick. I think often
(11:55):
that I could have been Mickey Gonzalez, which I'm not
sure I would have made it to this role given
the prejudice and biases around, so you know, you recognized privilege.
Probably the most profound moment was a few years ago.
A couple of years ago, were actually admitted publicly that
I was half Mexican, which I had never done in
(12:16):
thirty five years. Consciously, you hadn't done it or just
never gotten around. It was conscious because I was kind
of you know, I grew up in the sixties. My
dad was kind of an activist. He was very active
in the Mexican community. We used to go up to
this place called Wattenburg or called Latte, which was a
place where there were migrant farm workers that were all Mexican,
(12:38):
and he was very much into that kind of thing.
So I kind of adopted that activism. So I was
very much into Chicano activism. When I was in Colorado.
I moved to Arkansas. Half the high school with black
so I was very much into civil rights and those
kinds of things. When I got to college, that was fine,
But then when I got to work, I kind of
(12:58):
suppressed my Mexican heritage because I learned about labels. When
I would put an application where I would say race,
you know, Caucasian, Hispanic, whatever said that would put if
you put Caucasian, because it will affect how you're viewed.
That always in there in the subconscious. So when I
(13:22):
got to work and I suppressed it, and then when
I started getting in this position, realizing the privilege of
this position and the opportunity to make a difference and
right some of the wrongs and affect biased by what
we do on advertising, I came out as a Mexican.
It was emotional, but it was important because they created
(13:45):
emotional safety for other people to do the same. Well.
It's a powerful story in the business and I think
the impact you've had on people is well known. Did
you feel like an outsider when you have a heritage
or an identity being a half Mexican and seeing what
happened to my dad, there's that little bit of feeling
sometimes on the outside. Then moving having to break into
(14:06):
a new group where I was the hippie yankee. Literally
they called me the hippie yankee down in Arkansas, so
I felt outside. Then then moved to Northern Indiana, where
I was just also an outsider. Again, different type of culture.
Ever where you go. Whenever I start someplace new, there's
(14:26):
always that little bit of a feeling and look, I'm
not the only person that feels that way, but what
it does is allow me to have some empathy. Does
that help you as a market or two and as
a manager? I think in the way in which trying
to just understand other people more effectively. In order to
be able to engage and be part of something, you know,
(14:48):
you need to understand other people so you can connect
with them. You went to Indiana University in Bloomington's why
they're because it was local? Yeah, because we could afford it.
That's a good reason. Yeah. We lived in Elkhart, Indiana,
which is right next to Outbend. And I said I
wanted to go not to day. My dad said, no,
no way, we can't afford that. You can go to Indiana.
When you went to college, what did you expect to
get from college? And looking back on it, what did
(15:10):
you get from college? I just looked back at what
I was like when I was eighteen years old and
I went to college because my dad said you need
to go to college. And I remember pretty clearly where.
He said what do you want to major? And I
said journalism? He said no, no, I don't think so,
You're not going to make any money in journalism. I said, oh, okay,
what do you think business? Okay, he was in marketing
(15:33):
at the time. You know, I thought I'd go get
a degree, I'd get a job and go from there.
And what I got out of it is I learned
how to learn. More than anything. I look back on
it and learned how to learn, and that has carried
me with me every day. I learned something new every
single day, and I go at my job in that
way as well. There is an ongoing debate about whether
(15:54):
we pushed too many kids onto the college track. Where
do you come out on that. Do you have a you, well,
I don't know. I think it would be great if
every kid could have some form of college education. That
doesn't mean that people can't go into a technical track
or a tradecraft or anything like that. Those are all
wonderful approaches, But if anything, I think we need to
(16:16):
make sure that we educate more many people as possible. Absolutely,
I think that's one of the things that's got to happen.
Education is one of the areas that we spent a
lot of time on ensuring that we get people educated,
particularly women. Blacks, Latinos, and other cultures. That's important. So
you join PNG right after college, and you showed your
(16:36):
leadership skills early. As I understand that you had a
dozen or so folks working for you when you were
a very young man, many of whom were older than you.
How did managing an older, more experienced workforce help shape
your management style. I was twenty two years old, four
months out of college, working at the Mahoopani plant, which
(16:57):
is one of our biggest, if not our biggest plant,
and I had a dozen people working for me. I
was the planting accounty management. These were experts. These are
people who had been doing this for anywhere from twenty
to forty years. I didn't know what I was doing.
They were kind enough to help me be a good manager.
Since I didn't know their skill and their craft, then
(17:20):
I wasn't even going to try. What I was gonna
do is be there to help them whatever they needed.
That's really the way I focused. It was focused on
what do I need to do to help you? And
then what can I do to add uniquely. It was
the beginning of my mantra, which is to be useful
to other people. And that's really what I focused on
that stayed with you all this time, stayed with me.
(17:40):
In fact, I wake up every day and ask for
the strength to be useful to whomever I come in
contact with. What is really interesting and quite different than
most people we've had on Math and Magic is how
P ANDNG has prioritized leadership and management skill over professional
skill or knowledge point you're just making you move from
financial analysts, profit forecaster into strategy and then brand manager, associate,
(18:04):
advertising manager, marketing director, then GM. You even did a
stent outside the US leading the development P and g's
global I T strategy at about the time the Internet
popped up into the consumers lives and you worked in
hair care, oral products, skincare, the US cosmetics and fragrance products.
So you had multiple disciplines, multiple product categories. The only
(18:27):
constant was leadership. Can you give us the philosophy the
company has for doing that and how they view the
career path of young managers like you were and how
it helped to you. Leadership is one of those foundational
skills that we really seek at PNG. We also look
for initiative, We look for the ability to make things happen.
(18:47):
We look for thinking, and problem solving. We hire really
smart people, but we're also looking for people who can
work well with others collaboration. It seems like you really
do prioritize that, and I think in most companies you're
in a career track, you're a creative type, you're an
I T person or whatever. It's very hard to say
I'm gonna take my I T manager or make them
my marketing manager. Yet the sense I get at P
(19:10):
and G is that you think smart people can learn
or do anything, and certainly manage any of these disciplines.
I wish it was as good as you describe it.
It's still a little siloed, but in fact, we just
had our management meetings here where the most senior managers
the company came in here for a week, and one
of the things we talked about was moving toward a
more skill based, less siloed development approach, because we find
(19:36):
that smart people can do great things. If you give
them enough of the technical and professional skills, they can
do pretty amazing things. There's some plunge ability, as you describe,
but we think we can go even further. So if
you find a new manager and say that person has
incredible potential. Do you deliberately push them through different disciplines
(19:58):
to try and give them a broader experience or does
that happen by accident it happens deliberately. I would say
it doesn't happen as much as we'd want it to.
I think we want to do more. I started in finance,
moved into in the marketing, So that was an example.
There's many many people who have started in one place,
moved into another, and then moved up through the ranks.
Any advice you would give companies that don't do it
(20:20):
this way? What would be your argument for the advantage
of doing it? The advantage of doing is that right
now the world requires it. The world's moving way too
fast for us to be able to just stay in
one particular discipline. We're looking for people who have marketing
skills and analytical skills, and creative skills, and design skills
and communication skills. You mentioned that P and G really
(20:43):
does grow its leaders internally and from the outside. You're
known for that. I mean here you are the entire
career of PNG. How does the company think about how
that happens. The way we focus on developing leaders is
building their skills, building their capabilities, but the application of
those to deliver results is the key differentiator. You've got
(21:05):
to figure out how to build brands and build businesses
combined with judgment around what potential might be. And then
a big part of this putting people into jobs that
are challenging and they stretch, and that's what really then
propels them. We'll be right back with more from our
live recording of Math and Magic after this quick break,
(21:27):
we're back with Mark Pritchard from a live recording of
Math and Magic at Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati. I
want to get to some meat of marketing now. You
live through the advent of the birth of cable TV networks,
the introduction of the web, the birth of social search,
mobile targeting, retargeting, programmatic buying, and more. Yet your most
(21:47):
dramatic bottom line successes, certainly recently, have been after you
quite dramatically and vocally overhauled your entire marketing and quite
famously said for all of us and you, we love this.
What is old is new again? Referring to TV, radio
and outdoor, what exactly did you and your team do?
(22:08):
We constructively disrupted ourselves. We did this as a company
about five years ago where we first of all changed
our portfolio. Our portfolio products needed to change. We had
sixteen categories. We moved to ten, ten categories where performance
drives brand choice, because that's what we're all about. Star
Candles was the best candle in the world, and Ivory
(22:30):
Soap when it came out was the best soap in
the world. And that's what we do is focus on
products where performance drives brand choice. And then we changed
our strategy to focus on irresistible superiority, literally irresistible. It
had to be the best and people had to have it.
And then what we did is focus on in the
marketing area, reinventing brand building from mass marketing with lots
(22:53):
of waste two mass precision, one to one brand building
using data and digital technology. That's how we started to
reinvent media, so mass blasting lots of waste to using
the data to get to one to one precision. It's
why we rediscovered the power of audio. Back when radio
(23:16):
came around, we created the ability to connect with people
through radio and it's just wonderful whenever you and I've
had several conversations about now the ability to engage with
people in precision to reach people, and then things like podcasts,
which has now become this completely new new media. As
we started getting into new media, we started getting your
(23:39):
new creativity. We started getting into reinventing advertising, creating content,
partnerships and new ways of doing things while still doing
the fundamentals. That changed our agency model. We used to
have fixed relationships that lasted for decades to the ability
to flow in and out so we can get greater
levels of creativity. Finally, we went into too being a
(24:01):
force for good and a force for growth rather than
just focusing on one particular vector. It's been a pretty
big transformation that's making a difference. It's someone who's in
the audio business. It looks like this year P and
G will probably wind up as the number one advertising radio,
or at least close to it. Three years ago, you
may not have been in the top fifty. What happened there.
(24:22):
Part of the reason why I think it came about
is because we started having different types of audio or
radio opportunities. There were many Pandora, Spotify, Serious, I Heart.
These all offered new opportunities with new levels of ways
to engage consumers. We followed consumers, where are they spending
their time. That was a big aspect of it, because
(24:44):
that's fundamentally what it's all about. And then we started
getting creative, We started rediscovering creativity. What that did then
is allow us to be able to try things, measure
the performance, and then start reinvesting in it. When you
look at advertisers supported broadcast television, your reach is declining
pretty substantially. Does that impact looking for other media like
(25:07):
radio to get reach. TV used to be the big
reach medium, at least than most of my career. Laws. Yeah,
TV is still a big reach medium and we still
have a pretty heavy investment in TV. The part of
it that is the perplexing aspect of it is how
reach continues to decline yet cost continues to go up.
Just define the laws of economics, but many of us
(25:29):
continue to go towards that. What that does is that
causes you to look at different ways to engage with people,
and many many cases in TV in particular, and we
actually found this in digital once we demanded to get
the data, was that there's too much frequency. The most
annoying part about advertising and media is excess frequency. Having
to hear or see the same add over and over again,
(25:51):
part of our job is we started getting the data,
which is a big difference in that we finally came
to Grips with the wall gardens and probably gonna stay walled.
So we went out and got our own data. And
so now we have over a billion ideas, so we're
able to more easily track where things are going, programmatically
serve things so we can cap the frequency so we
(26:11):
don't annoy people, find new alternatives like radio, like audio,
and then measure the performance. Let's spend the second on
the creative, the magic in the math and magic equation.
What makes a good ad something that is useful and
interesting and in our case actually conveys the superiority of
(26:32):
the product. Great ads have an insight that helps a
person connect to that because they know they recognize it.
We call out a problem that you have and then
we show you how to solve it. Is We have
some really funny ads. We have some really informative ads.
Some of the most interesting ads we put out there
like infomercials. I've actually gone back to informers. Mr Clean,
(26:53):
Magic Eraser. We could not find a way to make
this brand grow. We did a Super Bowl ad that
was really funny nothing. What we did is we actually
put out an AD that's pretty much like an informercial,
which said, here's all the problems that you have in
your home in terms of cleaning stuff, and then it
talked about how Mr Clean Magic eraser can clean all
those different things. And it was the most straightforward some
(27:17):
might even call it boring ad. And the business results
went up ten to as soon as you put it
on Why because it was useful. It was useful and
it told people how this product worked. It's not going
to win any wards it can, but that's fine because
it's growing to business. Someone told me very early in
my career I got my first gold Records. Might looked
(27:39):
at me, small timer and says, you know, kid, you
can't take it to the a MP. Yes, doesn't add
have an expiration date. You talked about you don't want
people to get tired of your ads? Is a great ad?
A great ad for a long time. Yeah. I really
believe that the only reason why people are annoyed by ads,
or why and ad gets old is that they see
it over and over again. We actually get tired of
(28:01):
ask before consumers do. In many cases. I don't know
if you've seen some of the sk two work that
we've done recently. Those are completely different type of ad.
Those are like comedy sketches with James Gordon and the
Naly went Tona Bey and John Legend, and they're hilarious.
I don't think those are going to get old for
a long time. It's funny and radio we played the
songs the personalities on the air here the songs, and
(28:22):
about the time the personalities say, gosh, I'm sick of
this song, the consumers to sing, what's that new song
you're playing? Exactly. Great songs don't get old. Great ads
don't get old. We've had ads where we've showed them
over and over again, some of our Olympic advertising. Do
you ever go back and pick up an old campaign
or an old ad or elements from it and bring
it around again. Periodically we go back and look for inspiration.
(28:44):
Now you give me some ideas to go back and
do some of that. I want to jump back to
where we began. P and G is a huge company,
but it has a heart that you might actually expect
from a nonprofit. You talked little bit about where this
came from, but I'd like to hit a couple of
the things you've on and are doing, just to get
a little context on it. Love over Bias. Can you
(29:05):
give us a minute on that? Yeah? Love Over Bias
was our last Olympic ad, which was trying to shine
the light on the bias that exists in the world
and then imagine what the world can see if they
looked at it through mom's eyes and looked at people
through mom's eyes. It was just a brilliant add It
was one of the best we've ever done. It was
also directed by Alma Horrell, who is you may know,
(29:30):
founded Free to Work. Just a brilliant director gave just
such a touch to it that was just phenomenal that
really helped build our business. At the same time, were
you able to measure it in any way the impact
it had on changing attitudes? Primarily the way we measured
that one is through just the sentiment that it provided.
The reactions that we got of an ad is really
brilliant or a piece of work is really brilliant. It
(29:52):
does amplify and get carried. You've been a vocal advocate
for pay equality. I think if my numbers are right,
about forty of the manager years of the company are
now women seven Sorry with old numbers. How did the
company do that? What was the process to get there?
Because I think there's a lesson in that for a
lot of other companies that are wrestling with the same issue.
(30:13):
A big part of that came from leadership. When I started,
there were not many women managers, but the leadership at
the time, John Smail and then eventually John Pepper and
others said diversity is important, and that led to over
time now at and we're seeking to get leadership still today,
David Taylor is absolutely adamant about the power of diversity,
(30:35):
and over time. What we also found, Bob, was that
diversity is not only the right thing to do, it's
the smart thing to do. When it comes to building business.
The most diverse companies, the most diverse teams tend to
do better. It's gender, it's race, it's nethicity, it's a
sexual and gender identity, it's ability, religion, and age, and
(30:58):
we look at things out on an intersectional basis because
it's intersectional. Quality is important. A big part of that
is because that's who we serve. We serve all humanity,
so therefore our company needs to reflect humanity. So we're
deliberately focusing on that. We're not where we want to
be yet, but we're absolutely deliberate about making a difference there.
You're a good role model for all of us. We
(31:19):
reach Americans every month, so we say we need to
reflect that in every layer of our company. We're not
there and are working to get there. Our industry has
a lot more work to do on that front, there's
no question about that. One of our goals is to
get equality in the creative supply chain, so to speak,
so companies, agencies behind the camera. We're making progress. We've
(31:42):
got at least women in our brand organization, so that's
at least a good start at literally every level. Let's
talk about P and G products and the company itself
and how it plays role in fighting extreme poverty, plastic pollution,
education girls. Give us a little context for some of those.
(32:03):
We have some what we call citizenship pillars ethics and
corporate responsibility foundational. Then we have community impact things like
clean safe drinking water that we provide to now fifteen
billion liters of clean water to people who don't have any.
Then we have gender quality, diversity, inclusion, and environmental sustainability.
(32:25):
We made a choice to build it into our business.
So we used to bolt it on as a separate activity,
we now have built it in to how we do things.
So when we think about gender equality, for example, we
use our voice in advertising as a way to have
an accurate and realistic portrayal of women and again of race, ethnicity,
(32:49):
sexual and general identity, religion, ability, and age, because that
accuracy will then portray people as they are and eventually
eliminates Because when you reach five billion people on the
planet every day and you're the world's artest advertised ordinary,
you have an impact. So that's number one. Then we
(33:10):
periodically take stands like we did with Like a Girl,
like we're doing that with im period poverty, take a
stand because we can use our voice to be able
to make a difference. We won't spend that much on
those things, but we get an outsized impact because people
care about that. We're now building in sustainability into our products.
The head and Shoulders beach plastic bottle, take the wasted
(33:30):
plastic off the beaches turned into a plastic bottle and
the allianced and plastic waste is another effort we're working out.
Do you think on things like that that you are
reflecting the consumer, are actually leading the consumer into places
they should be. Frankly, I think we're reflecting what the
consumers wanted to man think they're already there. Nine out
of ten consumers feel better about a brand if they
(33:52):
support some kind of an environmental or a social cause.
More than two thirds now, particularly millennials and Gen Z,
are choosing brands on the basis of shared beliefs and increasingly,
and I think we will see that exponentially increase, which
is why we've made a choice that we're going to
build it into how we innovate and how we build brands,
as opposed to have it as some kind of a
(34:12):
separate effort. I know your job title doesn't say this,
but you are clearly a role model for marketers. Does
that affect you? I mean, are you conscious of it?
I'm honored that somebody would think that, and I come
at it though through the I think of responsibility to
be in this position, to have the privilege to try
to role model. These positions have a certain level of
(34:34):
impact that what I try to do is use that
for good. That's why I try to think about every day,
is what can I do to be useful today useful
to whoever. Frank Blake a CEO of Home Depot, former CEO,
and he's now one of our board members. He gives
this idea of the inverted pyramid. The leader's position is
at the bottom of the pyramid down here. Leadership is
(34:55):
a weight bearing position, and your job is to support
the people in your organization. You could not probably get
any more rewards or honors than you've gotten. What do
you do to keep that from going to your head?
How do you not have Darth Vader whispering in your
ear trying to bring you over to the dark side
of the force? You know, as an extreme introvert, I
(35:16):
find those things incredibly embarrassing because there's a little bit
more attention than I would want. Again, I try to
flip it around to say, don't read your own press.
Whenever I've received anything, I've tried to think, is there
something I can convey that's useful in this discussion. I'll
give you a little story that might illustrate this a
little bit. I was a general manager of cosmetics, then
(35:37):
I became the president of Cosmetics and Personal Care. Then
I was the president of Global Strategy, working for the CEO.
But I had no P and L responsibility. Tell you what.
The phone never rang, the emails dried up. For two years.
On business job, I would go to things and it's like, hey, Mark,
how you doing. Yeah it's good, good good? Yeah, what
(35:58):
are you doing? I was on global strategy working for
the seriod. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have responsibility. No, hey, good,
seen you. Then I became CMO of P and suddenly
the most popular man, and he alone started ringing again.
It's the position, it's the chair. Don't ever let the
(36:20):
position or the chair get to your head. You can
do the right thing, do a good job, and be
a good person, and stay humble and stay in yourself
and everything will be fine. That lesson that I had
for those two years is very, very valuable, and I
convey that lesson frequently. Stay humble. Let me get you
(36:41):
to give some advice. How do you think about work
life balance for you and work life balance for your
team and the people who work here. Work life balance
to me is a bit of a myths if you
think of balance is being equal, because in some of
the positions that we're in, a certain position that I'm in,
there's not an equality in terms of work and life.
(37:02):
It's work life integration, and the two have to go together.
So it's really consciously making time for when you want
to do something other than work. I wish I was
better at it, because honestly, I'm not. Still have a
tendency to go too much work. When it comes to
the people who work with me, I don't want to
impose my standards on them. I recognize that there are
(37:26):
times when I do that where I will make phone
calls at certain times, and I have to really be
careful of that. Sometimes I have certain people who I'm
looking out of the audience right now, who are smiling brightly.
I'm not looking at people, and I'm trying not to.
I think that's really the advice I would give. Just
engage with the humans that you work with, and understand
(37:47):
their life enough and their work and their expectations, and
have enough of an exchange and build enough trust to
where you can have those kinds of conversations. I had
one person who wants told me, said, Mark, quit sending
emails on the weekends. To why because everybody's scrambling around
doing everything. I said, oh my god, Okay, tell you what.
I might send you an email on the weekend. That
(38:07):
is not a requirement for you to respond to me
on the weekend. The reason why I'm sending your emails
on the weekend, it's because I'm working the entire week
in meetings while you guys are sending me emails. So
the only time I had to do emails is on
the weekends. So that's why I'm doing that. And I
didn't realize it until they said, you know, yeah, you
Core Matt over here was working until all hours of
(38:28):
the night on a Sunday night, and say, oh my god,
I felt terrible about that. So have a conversation, have
the dialogue. It can all work out. Respect other people's
boundaries as well, and then as a coworker, communicate your boundaries,
make sure you understand those boundaries. Don't make the assumption
to this one big, really really important assumption that people
make is that we as managers our machines and that
(38:50):
we're not human. And I used to think the same
way of people that were in my position when I
was younger. Poor the humans, you'd be surprised when you
put your quest out there, you put your expectation out there.
Usually respond what advice would you give yourself to the
twenty one year old Mark. My big advice is on
(39:10):
Mark is think about other people more than you think
about yourself. It took you a while to realize that, Yeah,
it did. It took me a while. What was your
epiphany there? Frankly, once I got married and started having children,
that is usually what changes you, as everyone well knows. Also,
in this role, I don't have PMO responsibility, so my
job is to help other people. Now, looking back on that,
(39:32):
I wish I had been more in service of others
throughout my entire career. Before we wrap up, I have
one more question about you. You did not move from
company to company. You built your entire career in this
one company. We talked some about the advantages of it.
Did you intend to do that? Was that deliberate action?
Not really. I got an undergraduate degree at Indiana and
(39:52):
Finance and Business. I thought I would probably work for
two years, and then I'd probably go back and get
my m b A and then do something else. I
just kept learning and getting challenged every single day. Thirty
seven and a half years later, I feel like I'm
just getting started. We always wrap up one way. We
give a shout out to the greats in math and
(40:14):
magic of marketing. So if you think about the person
who you know or know of that's the greatest math person,
who would that be, well, the greatest math person. There's
two of them that come to mind. There's like three
of them that come to sorry, but we're alright. Curties Singh,
(40:35):
who is our chief Analytics and insights officer, who is
just brilliant. He understands the math and he understands the
data and he gets insights that make profound changes in
terms of how we think about things. And connected to that,
Jasmine jew and Yah and He who are in China
who have completely transformed our business in China. That business
(40:56):
used to be five years ago television, very little digital,
and they have completely flipped a digital. Almost all of
it has done programmatically, all driven through data and analytics,
and they've completely changed things. Three way time math, Let's
go to magic. Who's the greatest magician? Who's that great creative?
(41:17):
That one might be like a five way time sorry,
one of Alice Erickson, who was easy, Beauty, beautiful cover girl.
I would also put in there Queen Latifa and Katie
Couric because they have constantly changed themselves Katie has a
podcast on the He's in the Family, and I would
also put Arianna Huffington's in there in terms of people
(41:38):
who have She also has another podcast, Wow Keeping that Planned.
But think about the longevity that they've had because they
are constantly recreating themselves. There's some real power to that.
Almarel is one of those up and comers who has
really got this gaze that I find to be brilliant.
John Legend, James Cordon, they're doing some work with this
(42:00):
on SK two. John Legend was one of our podcasts
to spit the guest. Yes, we love your choices. Mark.
We really appreciate your unique contributions to marketing. This has
been an honor. I appreciate the hospitality out here in
Cincinnati and Procter and Gamble and to the room of
all of you are first ever live audience for Math
(42:20):
and Magic. Thank you too. All right, thank you. Here
are a few things I picked up in my conversation
with Mark. One. Creating a bold campaign based on values
can unlock creativity. When P ANDNG committed to diversity and
they're easy, breezy beautiful cover Girl campaign New Talent brought
(42:42):
fresh ideas to the brand two. Smart people can stretch
their skill set and become invaluable assets in today's workplace.
At P and G, this approach is part of how
they think about every employee's potential. Three. Follow the consumer
and what influences them. When Mark looked at the reach
and power of audio, he saw an opportunity for growth
(43:03):
that really paid off. He's had five straight quarters of
record growth in his business. Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which
(43:24):
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill
Plax and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor
Ryan Murdoch, and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel
Mango and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
My mom is of German descent and my dad is Mexican.
His real dad's name was Gonzales. He was adopted by
a man named Pritchard, which is uh, an English name.
(00:21):
I my whole life have presented as white. I recognized
that there's privilege associated with that. I'm not sure I
would have made it to this role given the prejudice
and biases around realizing the privilege of this position, the
opportunity to make a difference right some of the wrongs
and affect bias by what we do on advertising. I
(00:45):
came out as a Mexican. It was emotional, but it
was important because they created emotional safety for other people
who do the same. Hi am Bob Pittman. Welcome to
Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. Normally
(01:06):
we have chats in a small studio with just me
and a guest. Today we are doing this episode in
Cincinnati at Procter and Gamble in front of a live audience,
So all of you welcome to Math and Magic and
I Heart Podcasting. We usually have a guest with a
(01:28):
strength in either math or magic. Sometimes we have someone
who is ambidextrous and has both. But today we're exploring
leadership driven by insights, curiosity, empathy, and courage. Our guest
on this episode is someone who is well known and
much respected as a role model in marketing corporate management.
In addition to exhibiting those characteristics of the strong leaders,
(01:49):
he also has a platform that can magnify the impact
and make a lasting difference. Mark Pritchard, Chief rand Officer
of Procter and Gamble. Mark is a gifted and innovative
marketer whose actions have not only redefined marketing, but his
actions in leadership have led to major changes in his company,
in the media industry and in society in general and diversity,
(02:10):
concepts of women's beauty, transparency, and new models of purpose
driven marketing. And this has not only been good for society,
it's been good for business. Procter and Gamble has been
delivering records setting financial performance for at least the last
year and a half. Mark has led a life of humility,
fairness and leadership without the paralysis of fearing mistakes. He
(02:31):
plays it right. Not safe. Welcome Mark, happy to be here, Bob,
Thanks for having me Mark. I want to dig into
all the meaty stuff. But first I'd like for us
to do you in sixty seconds. You ready, I'm ready.
Do you prefer beetles or stones? Stones, Cincinnati or Bloomington's
Bloomington sunrise or sunset? Sunset? Basketball or gymnastics basketball? That's easy?
(02:57):
Spring or fall? Uh? Fall? Call or text call? Catch
up or mustard neither. It's about to get harder. Smartest
person you know, my wife Betsy right answer by the way.
Childhood hero you know who was it? Abraham Lincoln? First
job I bust tables at mcl cafeteria. Favorite song I
(03:22):
Only Have Eyes for You song at my wedding, My
first dance with my wife. Oh, that's nice. Favorite city
since Mattie. Last vacation, that's vacation. That's scary. This is
part of the problem with working too hard. I went
to Maine where my daughter got engaged. Secret talent I
can sing pretty well. Favorite basketball team the guys I
(03:44):
played with every Saturday morning. Favorite food tacos. What did
you want to be when you were growing up? Rock star?
And here you are. Let me begin with a question
about our location. Does being located here in Cincinnati, in
Ohio the middle of the country, keep you in the
company better grounded in Middle America and the mass market.
(04:06):
Is it an advantage. It's an advantage in some ways,
the disadvantage in other ways. But I think what is
more important is the people we hire. The people we
hire are grounded in just really strong ethics and values.
We have what we call our purpose values and principles.
We hire people who have high integrity, trust, teamwork, ownership, leadership.
(04:32):
My first day on the job, my boss said, we
do the right thing at PNG. So it's less about
where we're located. It's more about who we hire and
who we bring in and who we build. You may
know that this is one of the few companies that
still most of the people grow from within. Do you
feel like people walking the streets here get a different
feeling of the heartland than people walking the streets in
(04:54):
New York or l A or Silicon Valley and that
gives them any marketing advantage. I think gives them a
different context, and I think it gives them a different experience.
I don't think it necessarily gives them a different marketing advantage.
I think what's really important, Bob is extracting the creativity
out of every individual, and that happens if you're in Cincinnati,
in New York, in Geneva and Singapore and Guangzho, China.
(05:18):
We got a brilliant marketing in all the places in
which were located, every city, every country, because we've got
great people who really get connected and do great things.
I want to talk a little bit about the view
of this company, and I want to go back in time,
back to when you were GM of the Cover Girl
business and you had an epiphany about the broader impact
you could have on culture. It had an immediate effect
(05:40):
on the Easy Breezy Beautiful ad campaign and very well
known at that time. Can you tell us what led
to that epiphany and how it changed you? What I
was doing at the time as I was a general
manager of our CoverGirl business, which is Baltimore. And then
my white Betsy and our three daughters, who are all
under the age of ten, went to a place called
(06:00):
wind River Ranch up in the Colorado Rockies. It was
a spiritual ranch, nondenominational spiritual ranch. Because I was born Catholic,
my wife's Jewish. My dad was an alcoholics anonymous, so
he had a higher power and he was also there
with us. When we were there, the spiritual leader at
the very end of it came up to me and said,
you know, Mark, you really can make a big difference
(06:23):
in the world because you're in business. The greatest force
for good in the future is going to be business.
It's not going to be clergy, it's not gonna be government.
It's going to be business. If you choose to do so,
you can do a lot of good. We had just
introduced the Easy Breeze Beautiful Cover Gold campaign and I
literally it was an epiphany where I thought, oh wow,
the effect that we have on the standard of beauty
(06:46):
is profound. We're essentially portraying what we view is the
standard of beauty and unfortunate the time, the spokespeople we
had were too young, too skinny, and too white. And
I sat there and looked at my ten year old
daughters and I said, you know, I have an oligation
(07:06):
to do the right thing. And I knew then that
we needed to make a change. We brought in Queen Latifa,
we brought in all in Generous, Sophia Vergara, Pink, Janelle Monet.
We became diverse. We moved to a standard of beauty
that came from within as opposed to externally, and it
was really a very profound moment because I realized how
much impact advertising can have on people's perceptions. And that
(07:32):
was really the start of what I hope we're doing
now at that moment. What was the reaction internally from
the consumers and from the ad industry. Well, at first,
when I went back and talked to our agencies at
the time, They're like, well, wait, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not what women want to see. They don't want
to see themselves if they want to see other people
(07:57):
who are the quote better version of them selves. M
I said, no, no, no, no no, no, no, we need
to try. We can do something that's better. Thankfully, Alice Erickson,
who was the creative director at the time, did a
magnificent job, and she's the one who really, along with
the other team, brought in Queen Latifa. That really is
what transformed that campaign and that brand. What was the
(08:20):
reaction internally when you came back with this epiphany, You know,
internally people got it. They got it pretty quickly. They thought,
you know, yeah, this is something we can do, and
we went for it. It really unlocked a lot of creativity.
John Pepper was the first P and G CEO I
ever spent time with. I was back in the nineties,
and I must say when I met him, it was
(08:41):
not what I expected. I was sort of expecting. I
guess I don'tn't know what the cold, ruthless corporate killer. Instead,
I found the man who was interested in doing good
and interested in positive change in society. It was a
strong business as a force to do good philosophy very
much concurent with the story telling. Has that always been
(09:02):
the case at P and G? Where did that come from?
That came from the very beginning of this company. You
can go right down these halls and you can see
our archives. There's a picture of our founder's store, Procter
and Gamble. And the first claim we made was pure
goods at an honest weight. We sold candles, and so
(09:23):
what distinguished the company was that we had purity and
the products where some didn't, and we actually had an
honest weight. We said, here's how much is in here,
and that's exactly what we delivered. That's the foundation of
this company and it's always been that way. I want
to come back to the topic because I think it
really does make this company very special. But I want
(09:45):
to get a little context about you, and I want
to go back to the young mark. You were born
in Oakland, California, in the dawn of the sixties. You're Taurus,
and if you believe astrology, you seem to fit the
profile patients stepfast and radiate calm and fortitude, and I
love this one and often associated with successful business people.
Were you that way as a kid? I was pretty calm,
(10:09):
low key, and my brother was not. He was a
year younger and he was all over the place, and
he used to joke about how he'd be all over
the place and I'd be sitting there just focused on
my truck and playing around and doing things. So I've
always been that way. I'm actually quite introverted. I need
my turtle time, so to speak, where I can go
(10:30):
back into my little shell and just kind of hang
out and get some energy. Where did you grow up. Well,
started in Oakland, especially Filo, California, which is near that.
Then it went to Denver for twelve years till fourteen,
then went to Arkansas for two years, which was quite
a shot where in Arkansas in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
It was a very big, big change, going from really
(10:52):
what was at the time, you know, hippie country, and
I had long hair parted down the middle, often mistaken
or a girl. But then um went to Arkansas, and
then we moved to Elkhart, Indiana. My dad worked at
Miles Laboratory, as he had a sales territory in Arkansas,
and then we moved the home office up here, Indiana,
and then went to Bloomington, which is where I went
(11:14):
in the university, and then ended up here in Cincinnati.
I know you've talked about your own family diversity as
well as the world you grew up with. Can you
share that? Yeah, my mom is of German descent and
my dad is Mexican. His real dad's name was Gonzalez.
He was adopted by a man named Pritchard, which is
(11:35):
uh an English name. My parents got married, and my
whole life have presented as white. I recognized that there's
privilege associated with that I was lucky enough to be
named Pritchard. My parents considered naming me Mick because they
had a really good friend named Mick. I think often
(11:55):
that I could have been Mickey Gonzalez, which I'm not
sure I would have made it to this role given
the prejudice and biases around, so you know, you recognized privilege.
Probably the most profound moment was a few years ago.
A couple of years ago, were actually admitted publicly that
I was half Mexican, which I had never done in
(12:16):
thirty five years. Consciously, you hadn't done it or just
never gotten around. It was conscious because I was kind
of you know, I grew up in the sixties. My
dad was kind of an activist. He was very active
in the Mexican community. We used to go up to
this place called Wattenburg or called Latte, which was a
place where there were migrant farm workers that were all Mexican,
(12:38):
and he was very much into that kind of thing.
So I kind of adopted that activism. So I was
very much into Chicano activism. When I was in Colorado.
I moved to Arkansas. Half the high school with black
so I was very much into civil rights and those
kinds of things. When I got to college, that was fine,
But then when I got to work, I kind of
(12:58):
suppressed my Mexican heritage because I learned about labels. When
I would put an application where I would say race,
you know, Caucasian, Hispanic, whatever said that would put if
you put Caucasian, because it will affect how you're viewed.
That always in there in the subconscious. So when I
(13:22):
got to work and I suppressed it, and then when
I started getting in this position, realizing the privilege of
this position and the opportunity to make a difference and
right some of the wrongs and affect biased by what
we do on advertising, I came out as a Mexican.
It was emotional, but it was important because they created
(13:45):
emotional safety for other people to do the same. Well.
It's a powerful story in the business and I think
the impact you've had on people is well known. Did
you feel like an outsider when you have a heritage
or an identity being a half Mexican and seeing what
happened to my dad, there's that little bit of feeling
sometimes on the outside. Then moving having to break into
(14:06):
a new group where I was the hippie yankee. Literally
they called me the hippie yankee down in Arkansas, so
I felt outside. Then then moved to Northern Indiana, where
I was just also an outsider. Again, different type of culture.
Ever where you go. Whenever I start someplace new, there's
(14:26):
always that little bit of a feeling and look, I'm
not the only person that feels that way, but what
it does is allow me to have some empathy. Does
that help you as a market or two and as
a manager? I think in the way in which trying
to just understand other people more effectively. In order to
be able to engage and be part of something, you know,
(14:48):
you need to understand other people so you can connect
with them. You went to Indiana University in Bloomington's why
they're because it was local? Yeah, because we could afford it.
That's a good reason. Yeah. We lived in Elkhart, Indiana,
which is right next to Outbend. And I said I
wanted to go not to day. My dad said, no,
no way, we can't afford that. You can go to Indiana.
When you went to college, what did you expect to
get from college? And looking back on it, what did
(15:10):
you get from college? I just looked back at what
I was like when I was eighteen years old and
I went to college because my dad said you need
to go to college. And I remember pretty clearly where.
He said what do you want to major? And I
said journalism? He said no, no, I don't think so,
You're not going to make any money in journalism. I said, oh, okay,
what do you think business? Okay, he was in marketing
(15:33):
at the time. You know, I thought I'd go get
a degree, I'd get a job and go from there.
And what I got out of it is I learned
how to learn. More than anything. I look back on
it and learned how to learn, and that has carried
me with me every day. I learned something new every
single day, and I go at my job in that
way as well. There is an ongoing debate about whether
(15:54):
we pushed too many kids onto the college track. Where
do you come out on that. Do you have a you, well,
I don't know. I think it would be great if
every kid could have some form of college education. That
doesn't mean that people can't go into a technical track
or a tradecraft or anything like that. Those are all
wonderful approaches, But if anything, I think we need to
(16:16):
make sure that we educate more many people as possible. Absolutely,
I think that's one of the things that's got to happen.
Education is one of the areas that we spent a
lot of time on ensuring that we get people educated,
particularly women. Blacks, Latinos, and other cultures. That's important. So
you join PNG right after college, and you showed your
(16:36):
leadership skills early. As I understand that you had a
dozen or so folks working for you when you were
a very young man, many of whom were older than you.
How did managing an older, more experienced workforce help shape
your management style. I was twenty two years old, four
months out of college, working at the Mahoopani plant, which
(16:57):
is one of our biggest, if not our biggest plant,
and I had a dozen people working for me. I
was the planting accounty management. These were experts. These are
people who had been doing this for anywhere from twenty
to forty years. I didn't know what I was doing.
They were kind enough to help me be a good manager.
Since I didn't know their skill and their craft, then
(17:20):
I wasn't even going to try. What I was gonna
do is be there to help them whatever they needed.
That's really the way I focused. It was focused on
what do I need to do to help you? And
then what can I do to add uniquely. It was
the beginning of my mantra, which is to be useful
to other people. And that's really what I focused on
that stayed with you all this time, stayed with me.
(17:40):
In fact, I wake up every day and ask for
the strength to be useful to whomever I come in
contact with. What is really interesting and quite different than
most people we've had on Math and Magic is how
P ANDNG has prioritized leadership and management skill over professional
skill or knowledge point you're just making you move from
financial analysts, profit forecaster into strategy and then brand manager, associate,
(18:04):
advertising manager, marketing director, then GM. You even did a
stent outside the US leading the development P and g's
global I T strategy at about the time the Internet
popped up into the consumers lives and you worked in
hair care, oral products, skincare, the US cosmetics and fragrance products.
So you had multiple disciplines, multiple product categories. The only
(18:27):
constant was leadership. Can you give us the philosophy the
company has for doing that and how they view the
career path of young managers like you were and how
it helped to you. Leadership is one of those foundational
skills that we really seek at PNG. We also look
for initiative, We look for the ability to make things happen.
(18:47):
We look for thinking, and problem solving. We hire really
smart people, but we're also looking for people who can
work well with others collaboration. It seems like you really
do prioritize that, and I think in most companies you're
in a career track, you're a creative type, you're an
I T person or whatever. It's very hard to say
I'm gonna take my I T manager or make them
my marketing manager. Yet the sense I get at P
(19:10):
and G is that you think smart people can learn
or do anything, and certainly manage any of these disciplines.
I wish it was as good as you describe it.
It's still a little siloed, but in fact, we just
had our management meetings here where the most senior managers
the company came in here for a week, and one
of the things we talked about was moving toward a
more skill based, less siloed development approach, because we find
(19:36):
that smart people can do great things. If you give
them enough of the technical and professional skills, they can
do pretty amazing things. There's some plunge ability, as you describe,
but we think we can go even further. So if
you find a new manager and say that person has
incredible potential. Do you deliberately push them through different disciplines
(19:58):
to try and give them a broader experience or does
that happen by accident it happens deliberately. I would say
it doesn't happen as much as we'd want it to.
I think we want to do more. I started in finance,
moved into in the marketing, So that was an example.
There's many many people who have started in one place,
moved into another, and then moved up through the ranks.
Any advice you would give companies that don't do it
(20:20):
this way? What would be your argument for the advantage
of doing it? The advantage of doing is that right
now the world requires it. The world's moving way too
fast for us to be able to just stay in
one particular discipline. We're looking for people who have marketing
skills and analytical skills, and creative skills, and design skills
and communication skills. You mentioned that P and G really
(20:43):
does grow its leaders internally and from the outside. You're
known for that. I mean here you are the entire
career of PNG. How does the company think about how
that happens. The way we focus on developing leaders is
building their skills, building their capabilities, but the application of
those to deliver results is the key differentiator. You've got
(21:05):
to figure out how to build brands and build businesses
combined with judgment around what potential might be. And then
a big part of this putting people into jobs that
are challenging and they stretch, and that's what really then
propels them. We'll be right back with more from our
live recording of Math and Magic after this quick break,
(21:27):
we're back with Mark Pritchard from a live recording of
Math and Magic at Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati. I
want to get to some meat of marketing now. You
live through the advent of the birth of cable TV networks,
the introduction of the web, the birth of social search,
mobile targeting, retargeting, programmatic buying, and more. Yet your most
(21:47):
dramatic bottom line successes, certainly recently, have been after you
quite dramatically and vocally overhauled your entire marketing and quite
famously said for all of us and you, we love this.
What is old is new again? Referring to TV, radio
and outdoor, what exactly did you and your team do?
(22:08):
We constructively disrupted ourselves. We did this as a company
about five years ago where we first of all changed
our portfolio. Our portfolio products needed to change. We had
sixteen categories. We moved to ten, ten categories where performance
drives brand choice, because that's what we're all about. Star
Candles was the best candle in the world, and Ivory
(22:30):
Soap when it came out was the best soap in
the world. And that's what we do is focus on
products where performance drives brand choice. And then we changed
our strategy to focus on irresistible superiority, literally irresistible. It
had to be the best and people had to have it.
And then what we did is focus on in the
marketing area, reinventing brand building from mass marketing with lots
(22:53):
of waste two mass precision, one to one brand building
using data and digital technology. That's how we started to
reinvent media, so mass blasting lots of waste to using
the data to get to one to one precision. It's
why we rediscovered the power of audio. Back when radio
(23:16):
came around, we created the ability to connect with people
through radio and it's just wonderful whenever you and I've
had several conversations about now the ability to engage with
people in precision to reach people, and then things like podcasts,
which has now become this completely new new media. As
we started getting into new media, we started getting your
(23:39):
new creativity. We started getting into reinventing advertising, creating content,
partnerships and new ways of doing things while still doing
the fundamentals. That changed our agency model. We used to
have fixed relationships that lasted for decades to the ability
to flow in and out so we can get greater
levels of creativity. Finally, we went into too being a
(24:01):
force for good and a force for growth rather than
just focusing on one particular vector. It's been a pretty
big transformation that's making a difference. It's someone who's in
the audio business. It looks like this year P and
G will probably wind up as the number one advertising radio,
or at least close to it. Three years ago, you
may not have been in the top fifty. What happened there.
(24:22):
Part of the reason why I think it came about
is because we started having different types of audio or
radio opportunities. There were many Pandora, Spotify, Serious, I Heart.
These all offered new opportunities with new levels of ways
to engage consumers. We followed consumers, where are they spending
their time. That was a big aspect of it, because
(24:44):
that's fundamentally what it's all about. And then we started
getting creative, We started rediscovering creativity. What that did then
is allow us to be able to try things, measure
the performance, and then start reinvesting in it. When you
look at advertisers supported broadcast television, your reach is declining
pretty substantially. Does that impact looking for other media like
(25:07):
radio to get reach. TV used to be the big
reach medium, at least than most of my career. Laws. Yeah,
TV is still a big reach medium and we still
have a pretty heavy investment in TV. The part of
it that is the perplexing aspect of it is how
reach continues to decline yet cost continues to go up.
Just define the laws of economics, but many of us
(25:29):
continue to go towards that. What that does is that
causes you to look at different ways to engage with people,
and many many cases in TV in particular, and we
actually found this in digital once we demanded to get
the data, was that there's too much frequency. The most
annoying part about advertising and media is excess frequency. Having
to hear or see the same add over and over again,
(25:51):
part of our job is we started getting the data,
which is a big difference in that we finally came
to Grips with the wall gardens and probably gonna stay walled.
So we went out and got our own data. And
so now we have over a billion ideas, so we're
able to more easily track where things are going, programmatically
serve things so we can cap the frequency so we
(26:11):
don't annoy people, find new alternatives like radio, like audio,
and then measure the performance. Let's spend the second on
the creative, the magic in the math and magic equation.
What makes a good ad something that is useful and
interesting and in our case actually conveys the superiority of
(26:32):
the product. Great ads have an insight that helps a
person connect to that because they know they recognize it.
We call out a problem that you have and then
we show you how to solve it. Is We have
some really funny ads. We have some really informative ads.
Some of the most interesting ads we put out there
like infomercials. I've actually gone back to informers. Mr Clean,
(26:53):
Magic Eraser. We could not find a way to make
this brand grow. We did a Super Bowl ad that
was really funny nothing. What we did is we actually
put out an AD that's pretty much like an informercial,
which said, here's all the problems that you have in
your home in terms of cleaning stuff, and then it
talked about how Mr Clean Magic eraser can clean all
those different things. And it was the most straightforward some
(27:17):
might even call it boring ad. And the business results
went up ten to as soon as you put it
on Why because it was useful. It was useful and
it told people how this product worked. It's not going
to win any wards it can, but that's fine because
it's growing to business. Someone told me very early in
my career I got my first gold Records. Might looked
(27:39):
at me, small timer and says, you know, kid, you
can't take it to the a MP. Yes, doesn't add
have an expiration date. You talked about you don't want
people to get tired of your ads? Is a great ad?
A great ad for a long time. Yeah. I really
believe that the only reason why people are annoyed by ads,
or why and ad gets old is that they see
it over and over again. We actually get tired of
(28:01):
ask before consumers do. In many cases. I don't know
if you've seen some of the sk two work that
we've done recently. Those are completely different type of ad.
Those are like comedy sketches with James Gordon and the
Naly went Tona Bey and John Legend, and they're hilarious.
I don't think those are going to get old for
a long time. It's funny and radio we played the
songs the personalities on the air here the songs, and
(28:22):
about the time the personalities say, gosh, I'm sick of
this song, the consumers to sing, what's that new song
you're playing? Exactly. Great songs don't get old. Great ads
don't get old. We've had ads where we've showed them
over and over again, some of our Olympic advertising. Do
you ever go back and pick up an old campaign
or an old ad or elements from it and bring
it around again. Periodically we go back and look for inspiration.
(28:44):
Now you give me some ideas to go back and
do some of that. I want to jump back to
where we began. P and G is a huge company,
but it has a heart that you might actually expect
from a nonprofit. You talked little bit about where this
came from, but I'd like to hit a couple of
the things you've on and are doing, just to get
a little context on it. Love over Bias. Can you
(29:05):
give us a minute on that? Yeah? Love Over Bias
was our last Olympic ad, which was trying to shine
the light on the bias that exists in the world
and then imagine what the world can see if they
looked at it through mom's eyes and looked at people
through mom's eyes. It was just a brilliant add It
was one of the best we've ever done. It was
also directed by Alma Horrell, who is you may know,
(29:30):
founded Free to Work. Just a brilliant director gave just
such a touch to it that was just phenomenal that
really helped build our business. At the same time, were
you able to measure it in any way the impact
it had on changing attitudes? Primarily the way we measured
that one is through just the sentiment that it provided.
The reactions that we got of an ad is really
brilliant or a piece of work is really brilliant. It
(29:52):
does amplify and get carried. You've been a vocal advocate
for pay equality. I think if my numbers are right,
about forty of the manager years of the company are
now women seven Sorry with old numbers. How did the
company do that? What was the process to get there?
Because I think there's a lesson in that for a
lot of other companies that are wrestling with the same issue.
(30:13):
A big part of that came from leadership. When I started,
there were not many women managers, but the leadership at
the time, John Smail and then eventually John Pepper and
others said diversity is important, and that led to over
time now at and we're seeking to get leadership still today,
David Taylor is absolutely adamant about the power of diversity,
(30:35):
and over time. What we also found, Bob, was that
diversity is not only the right thing to do, it's
the smart thing to do. When it comes to building business.
The most diverse companies, the most diverse teams tend to
do better. It's gender, it's race, it's nethicity, it's a
sexual and gender identity, it's ability, religion, and age, and
(30:58):
we look at things out on an intersectional basis because
it's intersectional. Quality is important. A big part of that
is because that's who we serve. We serve all humanity,
so therefore our company needs to reflect humanity. So we're
deliberately focusing on that. We're not where we want to
be yet, but we're absolutely deliberate about making a difference there.
You're a good role model for all of us. We
(31:19):
reach Americans every month, so we say we need to
reflect that in every layer of our company. We're not
there and are working to get there. Our industry has
a lot more work to do on that front, there's
no question about that. One of our goals is to
get equality in the creative supply chain, so to speak,
so companies, agencies behind the camera. We're making progress. We've
(31:42):
got at least women in our brand organization, so that's
at least a good start at literally every level. Let's
talk about P and G products and the company itself
and how it plays role in fighting extreme poverty, plastic pollution,
education girls. Give us a little context for some of those.
(32:03):
We have some what we call citizenship pillars ethics and
corporate responsibility foundational. Then we have community impact things like
clean safe drinking water that we provide to now fifteen
billion liters of clean water to people who don't have any.
Then we have gender quality, diversity, inclusion, and environmental sustainability.
(32:25):
We made a choice to build it into our business.
So we used to bolt it on as a separate activity,
we now have built it in to how we do things.
So when we think about gender equality, for example, we
use our voice in advertising as a way to have
an accurate and realistic portrayal of women and again of race, ethnicity,
(32:49):
sexual and general identity, religion, ability, and age, because that
accuracy will then portray people as they are and eventually
eliminates Because when you reach five billion people on the
planet every day and you're the world's artest advertised ordinary,
you have an impact. So that's number one. Then we
(33:10):
periodically take stands like we did with Like a Girl,
like we're doing that with im period poverty, take a
stand because we can use our voice to be able
to make a difference. We won't spend that much on
those things, but we get an outsized impact because people
care about that. We're now building in sustainability into our products.
The head and Shoulders beach plastic bottle, take the wasted
(33:30):
plastic off the beaches turned into a plastic bottle and
the allianced and plastic waste is another effort we're working out.
Do you think on things like that that you are
reflecting the consumer, are actually leading the consumer into places
they should be. Frankly, I think we're reflecting what the
consumers wanted to man think they're already there. Nine out
of ten consumers feel better about a brand if they
(33:52):
support some kind of an environmental or a social cause.
More than two thirds now, particularly millennials and Gen Z,
are choosing brands on the basis of shared beliefs and increasingly,
and I think we will see that exponentially increase, which
is why we've made a choice that we're going to
build it into how we innovate and how we build brands,
as opposed to have it as some kind of a
(34:12):
separate effort. I know your job title doesn't say this,
but you are clearly a role model for marketers. Does
that affect you? I mean, are you conscious of it?
I'm honored that somebody would think that, and I come
at it though through the I think of responsibility to
be in this position, to have the privilege to try
to role model. These positions have a certain level of
(34:34):
impact that what I try to do is use that
for good. That's why I try to think about every day,
is what can I do to be useful today useful
to whoever. Frank Blake a CEO of Home Depot, former CEO,
and he's now one of our board members. He gives
this idea of the inverted pyramid. The leader's position is
at the bottom of the pyramid down here. Leadership is
(34:55):
a weight bearing position, and your job is to support
the people in your organization. You could not probably get
any more rewards or honors than you've gotten. What do
you do to keep that from going to your head?
How do you not have Darth Vader whispering in your
ear trying to bring you over to the dark side
of the force? You know, as an extreme introvert, I
(35:16):
find those things incredibly embarrassing because there's a little bit
more attention than I would want. Again, I try to
flip it around to say, don't read your own press.
Whenever I've received anything, I've tried to think, is there
something I can convey that's useful in this discussion. I'll
give you a little story that might illustrate this a
little bit. I was a general manager of cosmetics, then
(35:37):
I became the president of Cosmetics and Personal Care. Then
I was the president of Global Strategy, working for the CEO.
But I had no P and L responsibility. Tell you what.
The phone never rang, the emails dried up. For two years.
On business job, I would go to things and it's like, hey, Mark,
how you doing. Yeah it's good, good good? Yeah, what
(35:58):
are you doing? I was on global strategy working for
the seriod. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have responsibility. No, hey, good,
seen you. Then I became CMO of P and suddenly
the most popular man, and he alone started ringing again.
It's the position, it's the chair. Don't ever let the
(36:20):
position or the chair get to your head. You can
do the right thing, do a good job, and be
a good person, and stay humble and stay in yourself
and everything will be fine. That lesson that I had
for those two years is very, very valuable, and I
convey that lesson frequently. Stay humble. Let me get you
(36:41):
to give some advice. How do you think about work
life balance for you and work life balance for your
team and the people who work here. Work life balance
to me is a bit of a myths if you
think of balance is being equal, because in some of
the positions that we're in, a certain position that I'm in,
there's not an equality in terms of work and life.
(37:02):
It's work life integration, and the two have to go together.
So it's really consciously making time for when you want
to do something other than work. I wish I was
better at it, because honestly, I'm not. Still have a
tendency to go too much work. When it comes to
the people who work with me, I don't want to
impose my standards on them. I recognize that there are
(37:26):
times when I do that where I will make phone
calls at certain times, and I have to really be
careful of that. Sometimes I have certain people who I'm
looking out of the audience right now, who are smiling brightly.
I'm not looking at people, and I'm trying not to.
I think that's really the advice I would give. Just
engage with the humans that you work with, and understand
(37:47):
their life enough and their work and their expectations, and
have enough of an exchange and build enough trust to
where you can have those kinds of conversations. I had
one person who wants told me, said, Mark, quit sending
emails on the weekends. To why because everybody's scrambling around
doing everything. I said, oh my god, Okay, tell you what.
I might send you an email on the weekend. That
(38:07):
is not a requirement for you to respond to me
on the weekend. The reason why I'm sending your emails
on the weekend, it's because I'm working the entire week
in meetings while you guys are sending me emails. So
the only time I had to do emails is on
the weekends. So that's why I'm doing that. And I
didn't realize it until they said, you know, yeah, you
Core Matt over here was working until all hours of
(38:28):
the night on a Sunday night, and say, oh my god,
I felt terrible about that. So have a conversation, have
the dialogue. It can all work out. Respect other people's
boundaries as well, and then as a coworker, communicate your boundaries,
make sure you understand those boundaries. Don't make the assumption
to this one big, really really important assumption that people
make is that we as managers our machines and that
(38:50):
we're not human. And I used to think the same
way of people that were in my position when I
was younger. Poor the humans, you'd be surprised when you
put your quest out there, you put your expectation out there.
Usually respond what advice would you give yourself to the
twenty one year old Mark. My big advice is on
(39:10):
Mark is think about other people more than you think
about yourself. It took you a while to realize that, Yeah,
it did. It took me a while. What was your
epiphany there? Frankly, once I got married and started having children,
that is usually what changes you, as everyone well knows. Also,
in this role, I don't have PMO responsibility, so my
job is to help other people. Now, looking back on that,
(39:32):
I wish I had been more in service of others
throughout my entire career. Before we wrap up, I have
one more question about you. You did not move from
company to company. You built your entire career in this
one company. We talked some about the advantages of it.
Did you intend to do that? Was that deliberate action?
Not really. I got an undergraduate degree at Indiana and
(39:52):
Finance and Business. I thought I would probably work for
two years, and then I'd probably go back and get
my m b A and then do something else. I
just kept learning and getting challenged every single day. Thirty
seven and a half years later, I feel like I'm
just getting started. We always wrap up one way. We
give a shout out to the greats in math and
(40:14):
magic of marketing. So if you think about the person
who you know or know of that's the greatest math person,
who would that be, well, the greatest math person. There's
two of them that come to mind. There's like three
of them that come to sorry, but we're alright. Curties Singh,
(40:35):
who is our chief Analytics and insights officer, who is
just brilliant. He understands the math and he understands the
data and he gets insights that make profound changes in
terms of how we think about things. And connected to that,
Jasmine jew and Yah and He who are in China
who have completely transformed our business in China. That business
(40:56):
used to be five years ago television, very little digital,
and they have completely flipped a digital. Almost all of
it has done programmatically, all driven through data and analytics,
and they've completely changed things. Three way time math, Let's
go to magic. Who's the greatest magician? Who's that great creative?
(41:17):
That one might be like a five way time sorry,
one of Alice Erickson, who was easy, Beauty, beautiful cover girl.
I would also put in there Queen Latifa and Katie
Couric because they have constantly changed themselves Katie has a
podcast on the He's in the Family, and I would
also put Arianna Huffington's in there in terms of people
(41:38):
who have She also has another podcast, Wow Keeping that Planned.
But think about the longevity that they've had because they
are constantly recreating themselves. There's some real power to that.
Almarel is one of those up and comers who has
really got this gaze that I find to be brilliant.
John Legend, James Cordon, they're doing some work with this
(42:00):
on SK two. John Legend was one of our podcasts
to spit the guest. Yes, we love your choices. Mark.
We really appreciate your unique contributions to marketing. This has
been an honor. I appreciate the hospitality out here in
Cincinnati and Procter and Gamble and to the room of
all of you are first ever live audience for Math
(42:20):
and Magic. Thank you too. All right, thank you. Here
are a few things I picked up in my conversation
with Mark. One. Creating a bold campaign based on values
can unlock creativity. When P ANDNG committed to diversity and
they're easy, breezy beautiful cover Girl campaign New Talent brought
(42:42):
fresh ideas to the brand two. Smart people can stretch
their skill set and become invaluable assets in today's workplace.
At P and G, this approach is part of how
they think about every employee's potential. Three. Follow the consumer
and what influences them. When Mark looked at the reach
and power of audio, he saw an opportunity for growth
(43:03):
that really paid off. He's had five straight quarters of
record growth in his business. Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which
(43:24):
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill
Plax and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor
Ryan Murdoch, and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel
Mango and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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