A Voce Nation Feature Interview with Marketing Powerhouse Procter & Gamble (Part 2)

In this second part of our two-part series, Voce Nation chats it up with P&G big wig Jeff Weedman and his associate Jack Dierkes about how the $70 billion consumer giant has embraced influencer marketing:

Voce Nation: I’d like to go back to the focus group you talked about. Did you have trouble selling that internally? A lot of people in PR are having trouble with these non-traditional campaigns because, as I said earlier, some people get it and some people don’t. Was there resistance there? And what kind of results have you gotten to prove your case?

Jeff: In reverse order, the results we’ve gotten are pretty phenomenal, both internally and externally. On tremor, we made that capability available to select outside companies and there was significant uptake there. Now, what is intriguing is that we don’t have many P&G brands that are focused on teenagers within P&G. So at one point, we were selling more of this capability externally than we were internally. And moms are my next center of the plate for P&G products, and that’s why the enthusiasm around our moms ‘vocal point’ panel capability is so high.

I think it is fair to say that this is not a student body lap and we are not going to run away from the media. People still watch American Idol. They still listen to the radio. And there still are an awful lot of magazines to read. We are not going to walk away from those; this is about how we are going to augment these capabilities. And I think, like any business, there are early adopters and others to follow

Voce Nation: I realize you may not be able to provide specifics, but generally speaking, what kind of results did you receive? What were the first signs that it was working?

Jack: I won’t give you the specific percent increase/business growth, but needless to say, Procter measures everything. We are a very data driven company, and every time we ran a program, we got a control and measured the results of any program against that control - and the results were significant. Such that we are getting customers coming back for repeat business, both internal and external customers.

Voce Nation: Is there an online component to these programs?

Jeff: I think the fact is that ‘Tremor’ and ‘Vocal Point’ both use a lot of online capability. We also have a separate group on P & G that is focused on online advertising, and making sure that the website is user friendly. But my guess is that is not what you were looking for.

Voce Nation: I’m asking more about the Social Media side - user groups, blogs etc.

Jeff: Yes, but I think it is fair to say that people running our ‘Tremor’ business fully recognize that all is not done in cyberspace. There has to be a non-virtual, real-time communication. There are programs available, but it’s not one sided. It is not one single type of channel making this work, i.e. cyberspace. I don’t know about you, but my parents are in their 70’s and email is their reality. I bet you can talk to your dad about cars online and you will also meet him for Sunday dinner. You cannot only deal with one channel of communication with your dad, and similarly, P & G needs to use all the channels possible, not just one.

The messages that are being delivered by word of mouth are written against the same strategies that are seen in television or in print. The delivery of the message and how it is said, is relevant to that particular listener. Voce Nation:. So P&G is kind of the marketing benchmark, eh? In the marketing world, many companies silo their programs - “here is the PR budget, here is the advertising budget, here is the website budget” etc. Of course there are key messages that are consistent throughout, but to tie this all together in a simplified manner is amazingly difficult to do - sounds like you have figured out a way to do this effectively.

Jeff: I think it’s essential because all you get otherwise is combination of a bunch of different things, as opposed to the multiplicative effect of having those work together for you.

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