The Hindu Business Line : ‘Intuition is necessary to copy on data.’

On his fourth visit to India, Bernhard Glock, President of World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and Vice-President (Global Media and Communication), Procter & Gamble, was here to attend WFA’s AGM as well as address the Global Summit organised by ISA and WFA on ‘Effective Consumer Engagement’. Impressed with the strong local connect in Indian advertising, the P&G veteran spoke of some of the challenges facing media spends and measurement of ROI in today’s fragmented media and how important it is to have consumer understanding under such circumstances.

Glock started his career with Procter & Gamble in 1985 as Market Research Assistant, (Fabric Care, Diapers & Beverages) in Germany and later moved on to being Manager in 1991. In 1998, he rose to become Director (Media) for various regions spanning Europe, Asia and Africa. Glock outlines some of the issues in engaging the consumer in a freewheeling interview with Brandline. Excerpts:

Just how difficult has it become to engage the consumer with so much media fragmentation happening?

It is not easy or else we would not be here. There is media fragmentation in every market and the challenge for the advertiser is to truly understand the consumers and what they want, what is relevant to them and in which context. Then we must come back to those consumers with the right brand proposition, engage them, embrace them and give them the chance to experience your brand.

What is P&G’s current media strategy and how does it differ across markets?

We believe in putting the consumer first. In fact, we make an enormous effort to understand the consumers, define them clearly and then come back to them with integrated communication at a place and time when they are receptive to it. We build this around ideas by working intensively with our agencies building it around the right brand proposition. We want to move more towards brand experience and brand engagement with consumers more than ever before.

But I would not call this our global strategy although the thinking is always the same in every market in the world to put the consumer first. The activities undertaken to understand the consumer will remain the same from China to Argentina to the US and the UK. We have local closeness with the consumers.

To what extent is intuition responsible for engaging the consumer compared to all the number crunching done as part of research in media?

A great person with great intuition who ignores data would end up taking the wrong decisions. However, a great analytical person living in a world of data but with no intuition will also fail. So it is a combination of getting to know your market as intuition is necessary to copy on the data and to really understand what works with local consumers.

What is P&G doing to orient its managers towards its consumers?

We have intensive training programmes around the world where we get our people to go out to the stores and accompany consumers and observe the way in which they select and buy their brands. We believe in watching and learning about the world of our consumers.

To what extent is compensation of your agencies linked to sales and is that model actually working for P&G?

We are rewarding the ad agencies with a percentage of our sales growth. This has been working fine for us although we are constantly looking at ways on how to improve upon this compensation structure. In fact, we are constantly looking at ways to improve the compensation for our agencies and look at changes which could be made so that we are prepared for the future.

What is P&G’s annual ad spend and how important is measuring ROI for all your investments?

Advertising Age has quoted our ad budget at $8.5 billion and we believe in treating media as an investment. In fact, we do strict analysis of how our money works and whether it is getting us returns. I am a strong believer in ‘what you put in, you get out’. If you have the right input in understanding your consumers you are bound to get returns. Whether it is enough for the investment undertaken is something we have to ask ourselves.

How easy is it to translate your consumers’ insights across different markets around the world?

The beauty of being a global company is that we can test in different countries and re-apply the same in many other countries. So whenever we see new developments coming up anywhere, if it is significant and has the potential, we do test it in other markets. However, what we focus is on consumer truth and experience and if we find those basic ideas, can travel across the world. In fact, we are asking ourselves what can travel easily vis-a-vis what is different in every market. And if we look for similarities and ideas which can travel, we indeed re-apply similar strategies in different markets.

We have global business units and big global brands but we always believe in learning locally. When something works fantastically in a particular country, we immediately apply the same across the world.

What is your wish list for the industry at large?

For the industry we hope we can embrace the change which we all experience in a way in which we advertisers have a trusted relationship with customers. This is one of our key priorities at the WFA as we want to regain the trust worldwide. As for P&G, we would try our best to meet our customer’s needs and as we say our vision is to improve the daily life of our consumers.

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