Marc Pritchard, the chief marketing officer at Procter and Gamble, is a very smart man.
In an August 9 story in Wall Street Journal, Pritchard said, “We targeted too much and we went too narrow.”
The headline above that story read, “P & G to Scale Back Targeted Facebook Ads.”
Pritchard said P & G won’t cut back on Facebook spending and will continue to employ targeted ads where it makes sense, such as diaper ads for expectant mothers, but for most of its products P & G will return to marketing to the unwashed and unfiltered masses. To give one example of what P & G has learned, the WSJ story said P & G “tried targeting ads for its Febreze air freshener at pet owners and households with large families. The brand found that sales stagnated during the effort, but rose when the campaign on Facebook and elsewhere was expanded last March to include anyone over 18.” P & G didn’t change how much they were spending on Febreze ads. They just began reaching a larger number of untargeted people (Adults 18+) instead of paying a premium to reach the so-called “right customer.” And sales rose.
God bless Americans 18+. We love’em. Marc Pritchard loves’em.
And Marc Pritchard is a very smart man.
