Rewiring Programmatic Media for Inclusivity

At AdExchanger’s recent Programmatic I/O conference, I had the honor of sharing how P&G is constructively disrupting ourselves and the industry by rewiring programmatic for inclusivity. The topic has perhaps never been timelier. In recent years, COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd and others have redefined our society, our beliefs and our everyday habits and practices. Together, brands and advertisers can spark meaningful change by being a force for growth, and a force for good.

Through our marketing efforts, including our programmatic strategies, we have an opportunity to bring more multicultural people into the fold, from diverse-owned SSPs and publishers to content creators. We can also connect more authentically with multicultural consumers.?And in this moment, that has never been more important. Here’s why:

40% of the U.S. population is made up of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native and Indigenous Americans according to the 2020 U.S. Census.?

For too long, our industry has separated multicultural marketing from the rest of marketing. We conduct our research on a representative base that is usually skewed to over-represent Caucasian demographics. We rely on national averages to benchmark general market buys. And the individuals we feature in our brand content often don’t reflect the population we are serving. All of this results in gaps in our brand market share.

In the past year, more than half of P&G’s sales growth in North America came from multicultural consumer segments. We hold the #1 or #2 market share positions in nearly all of the 10 categories in which we compete among Black, Hispanic, AAPI and LGBTQ+ consumers. Our market shares are in line with national averages, but when?we took a closer look, we discovered that several of our brands with multicultural market shares are below the national average.?

We call this the “multicultural share gap.”?

We have an opportunity to win with multicultural consumers by closing these gaps. For example,?if we were to close our current share gaps to be even with the national average, we could see more than $500 million in extra sales annually.

The only way to achieve this goal is through superior brand experiences with superior?reach,?relevance,?resonance and?representation?in our advertising and media execution. Now is the time for brands to step up for more inclusivity in media.??

Brands Have the Power to Be a Force for Change

According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, business remains the most trusted institution, ahead of government, non-government, and media. Nearly?60% of consumers buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values, and the actions those brands take to address relevant social and environmental issues.

Brands have the power to be a force for change in society. We need to demonstrate that we share consumers’ values and understand issues that they are facing day in and day out. And we need to connect with them in an authentic, helpful way. That means that it’s not enough to talk about it. We need to be about it. From the campaigns we create, to the conversations we have, and through our business practices, we need to demonstrate our commitment.?

Through our programmatic strategies, we?can?demonstrate our commitment to diversity and inclusion. By doing so, we can earn the trust of our consumers at a time when this is more important than ever.

At P&G, we believe that we have a responsibility to lead the charge for inclusivity. Because it’s no secret that we’re a large presence in the world of media and advertising. We compete in 10 categories across 65 brands. Our portfolio is focused on everyday use products where product performance matters. We touch nearly 5 billion consumers daily. We operate in more than 70 countries, and our brands are sold in more than 180 countries.?Combine these stats with the fact that P&G is the world’s largest advertiser and programmatic media is our largest spend pool, and it becomes very clear that our actions have the potential to make a huge impact.

Fixing the Broken Pipes of Programmatic

Programmatic gives us the ability to achieve mass reach with greater precision. It also gives us control over how our ads are seen and placed with context for more relevancy and resonance. For example, our brands are building multicultural ‘smart’ audiences and sending these audiences to Private Marketplaces within our DSP. We currently have more than 60 PMPs that are grouped based on audience, publisher and inventory requirements and assigned to our brand campaigns. This gives us access to hundreds of multicultural publishers resulting in greater reach, relevance, resonance, and representation.??

But we’re not stopping there.?

We’re looking at all the broken pipes within the programmatic ecosystem, and we’re making fixes along the way that promote inclusivity.?

For example, we’re asking our strategic partners, like The TradeDesk, to plug in multiculturally owned SSPs like Reset Digital and curate inventory to multicultural publishers, including Black-owned.?

We’re also building tools to create multicultural ‘smart’ audiences, with the objective to reach 80-90% among each individual consumer group – including Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islanders and others – and applying them to our programmatic campaigns. This increases our reach, resulting in brand growth.?

Once these publishers are plugged in, media dollars will flow through the pipeline if the right audience, programming content and inventory are available. But herein lies the problem. In many cases, the programmatic content among multicultural publishers is limited, which restricts the audiences and reach that are needed for our brands to grow.???

So where do we get this content??We help create it.

Widen the Screen: Showing up for Black Creators

P&G is tapping Black creators and giving them the resources and support they need to tell authentic stories. We then surround these stories with our brand ads programmatically. We call this the soap opera approach (which P&G is well known for creating), and there’s never been a better time to reimagine it once again.?

Take a look at these statistics:

There are huge gaps in Black creator representation in front of and behind the camera. Less than 6% of writers, directors, and producers of U.S.-produced films are Black. Representation of Black characters does reflect the U.S. population but lacks the authentic and accurate portrayal of these characters in film roles. And Black-owned media today represents only 1% of all U.S. media spending.

That’s why we’ve created?Widen the Screen?– an expansive content creation, talent development, and partnership platform that enables increased representation of Black creators across the advertising, film, and media industry. And it expands the Black-owned media ecosystem.?

Our immediate focus at P&G is on Black creators and media companies. The program is founded on a call to action to “widen the screen, so we can widen our view” by portraying the full joy, beauty, and vastness of Black life – not simply reinforcing commonly held negative stereotypes of struggle or trauma.?

Our Widen the Screen model is comprised of three actions - creators, content, and media investment and distribution – each representing what P&G is doing to promote inclusivity in media and advertising.?

Through initiatives like?The Queen Collective?and?8:46 Films, we’re helping to fill the pipeline with more Black creators. So far, we have created more than?500 new job opportunities for our Widen the Screen creators. We’re also empowering diverse creators to produce programming content that showcases the full richness of the Black experience. To date, P&G has invested in the production of more than?30 new, accurate, and insightful Black stories?that resonate with multicultural audiences.?

Our programmatic ads surround these stories, so they also need to resonate and be relevant. That means ensuring that all people are accurately portrayed –?no stereotypes, no objectification, no diminishing. And they need to be portrayed in a real and authentic way, so people see themselves reflected as who they are – which builds trust and ultimately leads to purchase. That requires getting into the habit of discovering and reflecting unique and meaningful insights that are relevant to each individual group.?

From Representation to Resonance: Old Spice

For years, the Old Spice brand featured Black actors in their ads. You may remember ads featuring Terry Crews. It was funny to some, but not to Black men or women, who found the ads somewhat sophomoric and more like “fraternity” humor.?

Both Black men and women wanted to see Black men represented as sophisticated and smooth, not brash and loud. So, we focused on the unique insight that Black men want real benefits like moisturization and the fragrances they prefer in their skin care products, and then we added some fun tension about guys not being so great at sharing their stuff, especially when it comes to personal care products. The result was our?Men Have Skin Too?campaign, which ignited growth among not only African American consumers, but the entire brand. This is the result of moving beyond representation to relevance and resonance.

Increasing Our Reach

It’s our goal at P&G to have 80-90% reach among key consumer groups, and we’ve made the declaration that we want to be the number-one advertiser in Black-owned media. This brings us to the last section of our Widen the Screen model – media investment and distribution.

There is a lack of investment in Black-owned and -operated media today. This translates to a lack of quality content, measurement systems and a lack of inventory channels like CTV. That’s why we’ve made a concerted effort to identify Black-owned and -operated media companies and to increase our investments in media activation and content development partnerships.?

We’re already beginning to see the impact of these investments, and we’re just getting started.?In two years, we’ve doubled our spending. We intend to keep doing so until the percent of spending is more in line with the percent of the population.?And of course, we want to invest programmatically.

Join Us on the Journey

At P&G, we are committed to forge a path forward towards inclusivity, especially in programmatic.?

By empowering Black creators, we create new opportunities for incredible careers.

By sharing the authentic stories they tell, we create content that not only resonates with multicultural audiences, but that widens the view for all people.?

By investing in Black-owned and -operated media, we help all advertisers reach a more diverse audience, and we contribute to economic inclusion, which means more purchasing power, and that leads to market growth.

This is the moment where everything can change. This is the moment when each of us can be a force for growth, so we can be a force for good. We invite you to join us on the journey.?