Marc Pritchard is chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble
By Dan Hodges CANNES, France – Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble, has led the consumer products goods giant’s marketing efforts since 2008. He believes in brand building for P&G's portfolio of brands that generated nearly $71 billion in annual sales worldwide. Mr. Pritchard, speaking last week at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, opened his speech highlighting a number of industry issues such as the viewabilty of advertising, content marketing and click fraud, along with endless load times. “Consumers are voting with their fingertips and turn off that which is not working,” Mr. Pritchard said. “I am defiantly using the word ‘advertising’ to describe what we do. “Advertising is a noble and beautiful craft, but advertising has a terrible reputation, maybe that is why we are trying to re-name it content,” he said. “Much of what we call as content should remain in a box.” Crap shoot The executive referred to the “content crap trap,” in which some content created should never be opened. “Don’t ever be seduced into the content crap trap just to get something out,” Mr. Pritchard said. “I am not passing judgment, as we are all guilty as charged.” Mr. Pritchard went on to show a clip of a four-and-a-half-minute viral video as an example of the “content crap trap.” Again, “advertising reaches millions of people around the world each day and has the ability to change behavior,” he said. “It is a noble business and belongs in the hands of serious professionals.”
Dan Hodges is managing director of Consumers in Motion