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P&G Exec. to Marketers: Let Go of Control

Marketers no longer control all of their touchpoints with consumers, and as a result, companies have to learn to “let go,” according to Kent Oldham, Proctor & Gamble’s associate director and GBS consumer view solutions manager.

Speaking at a presentation during the 2006 National Center for Database Marketing Conference in Florida, Oldham said that trust is a key issue in this new world of marketing, writes DM News. If consumers don’t trust you, they won’t open up to you. And all it takes is one negative experience for a consumer’s trust in a company to be destroyed, he said.
While marketers can no longer control every customer’s experience with a brand, they can and should learn from each and every experience, according to Oldham. P&G does this by building marketing mix models and learning what the effective rate of return is on television, print and other media.

The company is also participating in Project Apollo, the joint market research venture between Nielsen and Arbitron which will collect multimedia and product purchase information from a common sample of consumers. That, said Oldham, is another way the company can learn about its consumers via touchpoints.