Procter & Gamble’s advertising targeting African-Americans has paid off

By Cliff Peale
Cincinnati Enquirer
(February 25, 2007) When Procter & Gamble Co. rolled out its Tide with a Touch of Downy detergent in late 2004, it included a special advertising campaign targeting African-American consumers.

"Nostalgia Dad" featured an African-American man lovingly cradling his sleeping young son. The ad was designed to convey warmth and fatherly caretaking, and the pair's crisp white T-shirts seemed almost peripheral. It also was designed to counter stereotypes of fatherless African-American households.

"It was very deliberate to have a man with his son," says Najoh Tita-Reid, associate director of P&G's multicultural marketing unit. "It was very deliberate for him to have a wedding ring on."

The heartwarming images are only the latest evolution of a 40-year movement inside Cincinnati-based P&G to try to reach more black consumers. The early efforts - in the 1960s, when racial tensions throughout the country were running high and white faces dominated nearly every commercial message - were not without risks. Today P&G is acknowledged as a leader in creating advertising for black consumers.

"Without question, P&G has to be seen as one of the companies that other companies pattern their behavior after," says Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News in Chicago, which tracks patterns of advertising to black consumers.

Along the way, reputations were made and enhanced. Crest toothpaste used a young Bill Cosby for a television commercial in 1969. In the 1980s, some Tide ads featured the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

In the past decade, the movement has accelerated. P&G spends at least six times more on media targeting black consumers than it did five years ago. And it's constantly adding new ways to reach black consumers - for example a 2004 sponsorship deal with the popular Tom Joyner morning radio show.

Today you'll see Queen Latifah on commercials and Internet sites pitching a Cover Girl line for black women. Angela Bassett promotes the benefits of Olay body lotion for African-American skin. Soon, Tiger Woods will tout the virtues of Gillette razors.

Black spending power is driving much of P&G's strategy. The $68 billion company has pledged to investors that it will add at least 5 percent to total sales every year, and the spending power of black Americans is an important piece of that growth, having reached $799 billion in 2006, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

Procter executives say they want both marketing efforts and employee base to reflect the more diverse face of the 21st century American consumer.

"We need to define diversity broadly and leverage it to the hilt," chairman and chief executive A.G. Lafley said last fall at an internal event. "Being 'in touch' is an attitude. To lead in this kind of environment, we need a balance of business skills and empathetic skills."

Sallie Elliott of North College Hill says Procter's ads and products must meet her personal credibility test: Black faces are not just there for show, and products are made specifically for African-Americans.

"It's imperative that I see African-American faces in those spots. But it needs to be more than that," says Elliott, who was publisher of the former Applause magazine and now promotes the local "Reaching for the Stars" event that honors young African-Americans for community leadership.

"Sometimes, it's like the ad is just whitewashed, not an ad that gets talked about in the beauty shop," she says. "If it gets talked about in the beauty shop, then it's on target."

A new company strategy

Decades before "African-American" became part of contemporary corporate lexicon, P&G was one of a group of companies that realized there was money to be made by targeting that demographic group. Companies such as PepsiCo. and McDonald's made early inroads, and P&G executives say they regarded commercials from Coca-Cola Co. as an example they could emulate.

Pepsi's early efforts were documented recently in the book "The Real Pepsi Challenge," and Pepsi was credited with helping define niche marketing. As early as the 1940s, Pepsi defied stereotypical images of black families and portrayed them in positive and loving ways.

P&G's efforts started slowly - putting black faces in ads and using black celebrities to endorse products. That generally happened in a limited number of brands whose managers took an interest in the subject.

Bob Wehling, P&G's retired top marketing executive who was the brand manager on Crest and produced the Cosby commercial in 1969, says it was clear even then that the African-American and Hispanic populations were growing demographic groups that companies needed to recognize.

After Wehling became a general manager in the late 1970s, he started an ethnic marketing unit that for the first time made targeting non-white consumers an official P&G strategy.

Earlier efforts had including giving out samples of Crest through black churches. But in typical Procter style, it was methodical, building research on demographic trends and spending power and marshaling support internally.

"It's like anything else at P&G," Wehling says. "You start slow and you keep preaching the gospel, and pretty soon people start to pay attention."

While early ads produced a few complaints over P&G's toll-free phone lines, management held firm, says Buddy Tucker, who left P&G last year as director of global media and communications but was head of one of the early ethnic-marketing units in the 1980s.

"I am proud to say that when we received some racist backlash from a small number of consumers over the 800-lines, management stood behind us and remained committed to reaching out to ethnic consumers," Tucker says.

In the 1980s, P&G helped establish a series of Black Family Reunion celebrations nationally. Within P&G, there was a Black Advertising Leadership Team to push the effort.

"The biggest roadblock was just time, time for people to focus on it," Tucker says. "It was the (population) numbers, combined with the cultural differences, that made it such an opportunity, and frankly such a necessity."

After a lull in the late 1990s as P&G reorganized itself internally, it has taken the next step in the last half-decade and started to design product lines specifically for black consumers.

P&G's hiring efforts also reflect its interest in diversity. The company has recruited black marketing executives for years, and in the past 10 years has increased the number of African-Americans in marketing by 25 percent. Promotions to the middle-manager level of brand manager have increased by half.

Tita-Reid herself is one example of P&G's hiring strategy. She is a product of Inroads, the career-development program for high-school students, and first worked for P&G at age 17. Now 34, the graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta with an MBA from Duke University had worked for several years on the Pampers business before moving to her current assignment with the multicultural unit.

She says her career path shows P&G trying to stay in touch with its consumer base.

"I feel like I'm a perfect example that P&G has the insight to hire diverse talent," she says. 'It brings back memories'

Procter's strategy to woo black consumers in the United States is twofold: Research what black consumers want and tailor the products to them.

P&G's research showed that Hispanic and African-American consumers value scents and flavors. That has led to scents in Gain detergent and the flavored Crest Whitening Expressions toothpaste line.

And Olay Definity is marketed as an anti-aging cream to white women but touted for its ability to smooth skin tones for black women, Tita-Reid says. "Products like these, they really make you feel like you're appreciated."

Create marketing programs with a heavy dose of black media and black entertainers.

Alliances with black-owned advertising agencies and a formal alliance with the creators of the Tom Joyner Morning Show has set the stage, and celebrities including Queen Latifah on Cover Girl and Bassett on Olay Quench body lotion soon followed.

P&G's approaches worked with Tide and the fatherly images depicted in "Nostalgia Dad." The marketing campaign included television and print ads but also online music clips and radio spots on the Tom Joyner show.

As a result, African-American consumers started buying a disproportionate share of Tide with a Touch of Downy compared to the general market. But after launching the campaign in Sister2Sister and Jet magazines, P&G found it worked for mainstream media as well.

"The insights worked so well for all consumers that it became a general campaign," Tita-Reid says. "For us, that's a wonderful thing."

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