P&G scraps marketing titles

Warc, 2 July 2014

CINCINNATI, OH: Procter & Gamble, the FCMG giant and the world's biggest spender on advertising, has removed the word marketing from job titles and organisations in order to focus on brands.

Thus, as of yesterday, July 1st, marketing directors have become brand directors while the marketing division has been renamed 'Brand Management' in a move designed to create "single-point responsibility for the strategies, plans and results for the brands" according to a company spokeswoman.

The change is intended to "unify brand-building resources to focus on delivering better brand and business results, clarify roles and responsibilities to make faster decisions, and simplify our structure to free up time for creativity and better execution," she added.

Removing the word marketing from titles does not, of course, remove it as a function. The Brand Management division will now cover four areas, Advertising Age reported: brand management (previously marketing); consumer and marketing knowledge (previously market research); communications (or PR/external relations); and design.

The restructuring was first signalled back in February when chief executive A.G. Lafley told an investment conference the company had moved away from a successful brand management system that kept teams together in favour of one that rotated managers to different parts of the business.

"We were enamoured with the General Electric and P&G development assumption that general management is fungible and functional management gets developed by moving around every two or three years," he said then.

Data sourced from Advertising Age; additional content by Warc staff