Wednesday, September 12, 2007

'Fortune' talks to P&G's Jim Stengel

Fortune has posted three short videos of an interview the magazine's Geoff Colvin did with Procter & Gamble CMO Jim Stengel. You can see them here, here and here, and read a text version--which talks about what he thinks of ad agencies--here. There's no extremely new ground in any of this, but, hey, I make it a habit to listen to guys who command $6.7 billion ad budgets. Also in the current issue (which has Ralph Lauren on hte cover): an interview with Ogilvy & Mather CEO Shelly Lazarus although, inexplicably, there's no link to it. Is it because she talks about the success of P&G rival Dove?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You tangentially touched upon the issue of conflicts by mentioning Dove vs. P&G (both accounts are housed at different WPP agencies so I'm taking the opportunity to jump in and talk about the absurdity of the "confict issue." For the most part today's creative agencies no longer function as fiduciary agents for their clients which was the main reason for setting up conflict "rules." Secondly, it's laughable when you consider the conflicts that exist among investment banking firms, law firms (just think about Davis & Gilbert who is WPP's main law firm BUT also handles advertising clearances - and frequently employment issues - for most of the other agencies that fall under the auspices of the other holding companies) and, yes, the other marketing disciplines...direct firms, PR firms, corporate identity firms, etc. are not subject to the same client conflict scrutiny that creative agencies are. The industry needs to hang a bit tougher and push back a bit on the issue of conflicts. (An issue for the 4A's perhaps?) Agencies should not allow themselves to be quite so bullied in this regard. Of course, then you have "personal situations" like SC Johnson not allowing Reckitt to exist even within the same holding company environment...but then, that's stuff based on personal grudges that is worthy of novels and inclusion in movies....