P&G : Proud Sponsors of Moms……

It struck me as a weird  catchphrase to use. Proud sponsors of Moms?? What are they sponsoring Moms for? A trip to Hawaii or Vegas? I didn’t know, so finally decided to figure it out.

P&G, the largest is the largest multinational manufacturer of personal care and household cleaning products, laundry detergents, prescription drugs and what not. P&G products are present in almost every country of the world and form an indispensable part of the lives of millions of people. With just 100 days remaining to the start of the London 2012 Olympics, P&G launched their global “Thank You Mom” campaign. Well aware of the fact that the decision makers of household products is the “mother”, and with the world eagerly waiting for Olympics to start off, P&G planned to leverage both these situations and came up with the biggest campaign in their 175 year history.

With a series of around 25 ads, P&G advertised the contribution and sacrifice of mothers by showcasing the Olympic champions, right from US to Australia, Africa to India, and of course, their mothers. They made sure that the advertisement retained the native language component (they did not mind subtitles…..) and ‘connected’ with the multilingual audience that P&G targeted through social, online and offline advertisement. And they sure did connect…..

Here’s one of their adverts:

The P&G Campaign “Thank You Moms” – India version

A small organisation named Zizo helped P&G make it possible. The Zizo Group (www.thezizogroup.com) was started in 2006 and visiting their website was a fun experience. It seems to be a very value driven organisation, and use adjectives like “honest”, “inspired” etc. to describe themselves.

It made one fact very clear to me. E-marketing, however easy or hard it might seem for an organisation, still requires companies to come close and work together. It was surprising to find how dependent P&G was on Zizo (when you actually compare the 127,000 employee strong P&G to 11-50 workers at Zozo)…and inspiring that a small organisation can do wonders. This is the reason why millions of companies, with the expertise of branding, video-making etc. are budding, both in developed and developing countries. This symbiotic relationship between the big names and the start-ups is bound to continue for at least a few years now!