Procter & Gamble adds a new brand to its existing portfolio

Procter & Gamble is still going on with it strategic acquisitions in order to strengthen key areas of the business. In this regards, Procter & Gamble has agreed to buy the global air-care brand Ambi Pur for $470m from Sara Lee Corporation.

This acquisition of Ambi Pur strengthens P&G's global leadership in home care and specifically air care by extending the reach into new markets and strength the it's position in existing ones.

Ambi Pur which is a market leader in the Air-Care products in a lot of European countries will bring new innovative products to the existing Air Care portfolio of P&G. These technologies include car air fresheners, battery-powered air fresheners, toilet rim blocks and various non-energized air fresheners. P&G will now be able to leverage these additional technologies into it's existing brands in order to innovate and reinvigorate it's current brands.

Ambi Pur generated annual sales of approximately €260 million in the year ending June 2009.

Very Innovative Stealth Marketing Campaign...you must read!

I was sitting at home in front of my laptop and I was searching for innovative marketing campaigns when I came across the new advert series by Procter & Gamble...It is a very unusual campaign for Procter & Gamble and in fact from what I could find it was only launched of a blog....maybe to test people's reaction to it.

I found a blog featuring a series of short short films about a schoolboy who one day wakes up with "girl parts" instead of "boy parts". The videos show you the problems this guy faces in adapting to the menstruation cycle and finally when the D-Day arrives how this guy deals with the issue. I was quite amazed at this viral campaign and continued to search for the marketer behind this stealth campaign when I found it was none other than Procter & Gamble's Tampax.

Since April Procter & Gamble has been quietly promoting Tampax tampons through the blog www.zack16.com, which features a series of regularly updated short films, starring Zack Johnson.

As of this week, the most viewed of nine online videos produced had been seen fewer than 6,000 times on YouTube, though it's had a few thousand additional views on such sites as StupidVideos.com. The fictitious Mr. Johnson also has a Twitter account, @ZackJohnson16, with 949 followers.

Big Companies Start Feeling the Pinch - P&G is no exception

While reading articles about the current economic situation around the world I came across a lot of articles listing companies which were said to be recession proof as the products they sold have become part of everybody everyday life and hence it was impossible to live without. One of these "recession proof" companies was said to be Procter & Gamble

However this week the 3rd quarter results were release and to everybody's surprise even this P&G saw a decline in it's profits. This consumer products giant has turned a profit of $2.6 billion during the quarter, but this represented a decline of 4 percent compared to last year's figures. Although this could be seen as quite negative, the power of the brands that P&G owns has made it possible for the company to beat Wall Street's expectations in terms of profitability. Products such as Pampers, Tide, Crest and Gilette have become an essential part of most people's life and although going through a difficult economic people still find it difficult to replace these products with "comparably similar" substitute products.

P&G's products have a global reach as they are available in more than 150 countries. saw its net sales drop across all of its product categories during the quarter. The reason for a drop in profits has been attributed mainly to the strong dollar. Its strength meant that when P&G converts currency from products sold overseas, it gets fewer dollars in exchange. This has cut into P&G's profits. Coupled with this, there's the global slowdown and also another strange fact... P&G raised prices on many of its products, to make up for the impact of the strong dollar.

The increase in prices, although did not significantly effect the sales to consumers due to the relative inelastic nature of demand for P&G's brands, this has affected the orders made by retailers and distributors. These are delay ordering new shipments to cuts the cost of stocking up as they reduce their reorder levels as everyone's trying to operate with less stock.

Although P&G have reduced their full year forecasts, it is still believe that the strong brands it owns will shield this company from the full effect of the recession while at the same time placing it in a good position to return to growth once the economy start growing again.