Jim Stengel oversees the world’s largest corporate advertising budget — the $7.9 billion The Procter & Gamble Company will spend in 2008 to market and promote its extensive portfolio of consumer products. That kind of buying power may differentiate Stengel from many of his CMO peers, but his outlook for the next five years is still tempered by some of the same concerns. “You see the consumer confidence rating as well as I do,” he says. “They are sinking to the lowest level in 25 to 30 years.”
So what’s a marketer to do? Stengel points to the growing importance of two traits: value and agility. “Certainly, the first one requires us [marketers] to be very close to the consumer and offer good value in these turbulent times,” he says. “The goal is to ensure that our brands represent the right value for consumers. If they don’t, we lose. This whole area of value is a really important trend over the next five years.”
The ability to be agile could be the difference between thriving and surviving in light of the business-model changes Stengel foresees. “There is tremendous change happening in our industry,” he says. “Those that will survive and thrive are the ones that are in touch with the changes, are externally focused, are agile, and are ready to shift their business models and their ways of working. Companies that are not are going to suffer.”
(As appeared in The Advertiser)
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