Inside, Outside, Systemwide: Driving Growth While Doing Good

Our role in marketing has forever changed.

Environmental and societal disruptions, along with consumer expectations, are compelling us to reinvent brand citizenship to become a force for good in society and a force for growth in business.

This may be our biggest challenge ever. It demands novel solutions to complex problems inside and outside our companies, as well as systemwide changes for lasting impact.

But many marketers ask, how do we navigate?

With all these pressing problems, where do we start?

I’m often asked, can doing good really lead to driving growth?

The answer is yes because at Procter & Gamble we believe citizenship must be BOTH a force for good AND a force for growth.?Doing good must lead to driving growth and driving growth in turn enables doing good – creating a virtuous and sustainable cycle.

Citizenship must also be built-in, not bolted on. It can’t be separate. It needs to be part of how we operate and part of our strategies to help us widen the superior performance advantages of our brands, improve productivity, strengthen our organization, and lead constructive disruption across the value chain.

We also believe citizenship must begin with action – not headlines. As marketers, we love telling people all that we’re doing, but it’s best to start with action – because it’s the right thing to do and builds credibility and trust. Our actions are visible through our Community Impact work which includes our longest-running effort - P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program: https://us.pg.com/community-impact/

Our work doesn’t stop there, our commitment to systemwide change is illustrated in what we’re doing within our top Citizenship priorities – Environmental Sustainability and Equality & Inclusion.?

Our operations impact the environment – from raw materials to retailers – we use energy and water and generate waste. We’ve steadily reduced the impact over the past decade, but we must do more, which is why we committed to working to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 in our operations and supply chain. This is important, but only part of the solution. When consumers use our products in their homes, energy and water are used, and waste is generated – leading to greenhouse gas emissions. Consumers want to do more to be sustainable at home but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. That’s where our brands come in.?We have a unique opportunity to deliver the best performance in environmentally sustainable ways that create growth and value. This inspired our program called “It’s Our Home” – launched on Earth Day.

Our ambition is to also help achieve an equal, inclusive and better world that drives growth and value for all. As the world’s largest advertiser, we’re committed to using our reach and voice in advertising to eliminate bias and racism and promote equality.?Equality is limited by bias, and the portrayals of people in advertising affect perceptions of how people see each other and see themselves. So, we’re committed to portray all people accurately and authentically.?

We’re deeply committed to action that drives systemwide change. For example, Olay is addressing one of the systemic causes of bias and exclusion with #DecodeTheBias.?The campaign builds awareness of how data, computer code, and AI reinforce exclusionary beauty standards and exclude women of color. The path to a more diverse definition of beauty, elimination of harmful bias, and advancement of equality requires greater inclusion in the field of computer science. Olay’s goal is to help create a digital world that is more representative, doubling the number of women, and tripling the number of women of color in STEM careers by 2030.?https://www.olay.com/decodethebias

We’re also taking systemwide action to achieve equality and inclusion throughout the creative and media supply chain. This commitment starts with equal representation – an ambition that every link in the chain across marketers, agencies, production crews, and media companies at every level reflects equal gender representation…and representation of race and ethnicity equal to the population. ?

We’ve launched “Widen the Screen” an expansive content creation, talent development, and partnership platform that enables increased representation and inclusion of Black creators across the advertising, film and media industry. This effort helps to address the issue that today, according to a recent UCLA study, fewer than 5% of all directors and production crews are people of color.?https://us.pg.com/widen-the-screen/

The program is founded on a call to action to “widen the screen, so we can widen our view” by portraying the full spectrum and richness of the Black experience – not simply reinforcing commonly held stereotypes of struggle, trauma, or excellence. Through Widen the Screen and our partnerships with 8:46 Films and Queen Collective, we’re opening doors for emerging Black women directors and experienced Black Creatives through mentorship, production support and distribution.

Finally, we’re also addressing another systemic inequality - the fact that less than 1% of U.S. media spending is with Black-owned media companies.?P&G’s goal is to not only be the number one spender among Black-owned media, but to significantly expand the size of the ecosystem to enable investment more in line with the size of the population.?This requires many systemic interventions.

We have a dedicated internal team that works with our agency partners to identify and make direct deals with top partners.?We’re enabling programmatic media buying for companies – to unlock spending automatically.?We’ve doubling spending in the past two years, and our aspiration is to double again, and then double again.?But achieving this level of investment requires making the ecosystem significantly larger.?

That requires investment to produce more programming content, build larger audiences, and create additional ad inventory for brands to buy. We’re taking additional systemic action by offering, for FREE, the Queen Collective and 8:46 Films to Black-owned media companies to create programming, audiences, and ad inventory.?We’ve established a substantial Partnership Development Fund that is being made available to partner with Black-owned media companies to create new content and further build the ecosystem.?This is just the start, and we will not stop.?We’re committed to widen the screen, to widen our view, and widen opportunities.

Investment in these companies not only creates more relevant, resonant and effective media to build our brands, it helps contribute to economic inclusion which means more purchasing power and market growth – the very definition of being a force for good in society and a force for growth in business.??

So that’s a snapshot of our roadmap to reinvent brand citizenship, guided by these principles.

• Be BOTH a force for good AND a force for growth.
• Ensure efforts are built in, not bolted on.
• Start with action, not headlines – and follow the roadmap to take action inside, then outside, then systemwide.??

Each of us can make a difference individually through our brands and companies.?And together, we can drive significant growth and do a lot of good.?

Learn more about our journey here: https://us.pg.com/who-we-are/