How the P&G side-by-side demo has endured (except in one surprising place).

I wrote my first TV spot for Procter & Gamble in 1982. It was for a ‘fragrance upgrade’ on Head & Shoulders. (" ... so much more than a dandruff shampoo" was my breakthrough creative thought on that one.)

The then ECD of Saatchi had convinced me to shelve my award-winning radio writing streak and give P&G a go because the legendary John Salmon of CDP had worked on it, (cough, sotto voce) once. The way I saw it, who wouldn't jump at the chance to work on and learn from the world's biggest advertiser and the agency's most valuable client?

Plus, they made a shed load of TV commercials every year. On film.

Back then, P&G was considered a dead-end for serious creatives because whatever you came up with had to have a cutaway ‘demo’ sequence. Every storyboard simply left a blank three-frame gap in the middle labeled ‘Demo TBD’. We literally wrote around it.

These demos took one of three forms: A side-by-side against another ‘leading brand’, an ‘X Factor’ (2X Stronger, 5X Faster, 10X Cleaner, etc.), or a swirling-in-limbo representation of ‘magic’ ingredients in action.

Every spot had one. Some would get two and, on rare occasions, all three. The legendary demo ‘triple-whammy’.

As no spot with a cutaway demo has ever won a major advertising award, (go on, I challenge you to find one) most creatives fought, unsuccessfully, to keep them out of the cut and themselves off the business. A very senior creative once told me that working on P&G was a career-ending move. He was right. My career at Saatchi ended after just 35 years.

Fast forward to the new millennium.

A couple of weeks ago I caught back-to-back commercial breaks on cable made up entirely of Procter & Gamble ads. That would be around 10 consecutive spots covering almost their entire portfolio: Detergents, Moisturizers, Shampoos, Cleaners, and Diapers.

You guessed it.

EVERY SINGLE ONE HAD A CUTAWAY DEMO.

Nearly forty years later and the only things that have really changed are better production values, a welcome increase in casting diversity, and the creation of a weird parallel universe where only men now do the laundry.

Despite the massive proliferation of new media opportunities, the digital revolution, P&G going to Cannes every year (sorry folks, that was partly my fault), purpose-driven brands, and so on, Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s biggest and most influential advertisers, is STILL running the same claim-based, superiority-driven, demo-heavy TV spots they ran half a century ago. They clearly know something the rest of the business doesn’t.

So, what’s new?

It was two other pieces of P&G related news that really got me thinking.

First, they issued yet another quarter of stellar growth figures, despite COVID. So, we can safely say that this style of advertising – derided and scorned by the glitterati of the industry as embarrassingly uncreative, insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, and churned out by agency hacks – actually works. In short, it builds brands, sells product, crushes the competition, and generates huge shareholder value. Every CEO, CMO & CFO’s dream.

It ‘works’ (verb) not to be confused with ‘the work’ (noun) which is how agencies pompously define the clever, self-referential, decidedly non-demo, small logo stuff which is deemed ‘creative’ enough to put before the awards-bubble judges huddled in the hallowed halls of the Palais.

That brings us to the Tide Superbowl ad released this week.

Tide is P&G’s flagship. It has been in the Superbowl several times. This year, it features Jason Alexander from Seinfeld. It's quirky and funny, but it does not feature a cutaway demo sequence. What? No demo?

So, let’s get this straight. 99% of P&G’s TV budget goes on hard-hitting demo-based ads, but the really big one, is strangely toothless. Also, mom is doing the washing this time, so I guess Dad gets one day off to watch the game.

If you believe – correction, KNOW - that demos make an ad more effective and you have literally mountains of data to back it up, why not put one in your most high profile TV commercial?

The answer is simple: it wouldn’t look good beside all the mega-hyped, tear-jerkers and rib-ticklers from the likes of Micky D’s, Bud, and Amazon, would it? In short, it would be embarrassing. After years of doggedly sticking to the principles that made it a marketing powerhouse but a creative outcast, it seems P&G has succumbed to the heady allure of those elusive shiny statuettes and USA Today Top 10 Superbowl Ad lists.

This seems to be the new plan:

Quietly put the vast majority of your spend into the things that ‘work’ which relentlessly build your individual brands while hiving off a tiny fraction of the budget into ‘the work’ which builds your corporate reputation as a progressive, creative, dare I say, hip advertiser who can proudly share the stage with the Nike, Apple and all the other Madison Avenue darlings at those endless awards ceremonies, conferences and back-slapping gabfests.

So, while the advertising industry is applauding the ‘bravery’ of Jason Alexander talking sweatshirts, Gillette’s Toxic Masculinity, and Always' Strong Like A Girl, the great unwashed are bravely sitting through ad after ad of residual dirt on tee-shirts under UV light, stains lifting off fabric in macro close-up and droplets of Febreze trapping sock odors.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The marketing equivalent of three-card monte.

Yes. One thing has definitely changed since I started working on P&G all those years ago. They’ve learned to play the game the rest of the industry has been playing for years. 

But the competition should beware, P&G always plays to win.