Cases Study Reinvigorating Branding at Procter & Gamble Procter & Gamble has been a leader in marketing for much of its 160-plus years of existence. It has been referred to as the single greatest marketing company in the world. Already the worlds largest consumer packaged-goods company, P&G became even larger with the $57 billion acquisition of Gillette in 2005. Despite its overall success, P&G has struggling to maintain its leadership status due to the dramatic shifts taking place in marketing. In order to adapt to these changes, P&G is trying to blend the best of their old practices with new practices to create a modern blueprint for successful brand management in the coming years. The priorities of P&G in recent years are described in the following sections: Streamlining its product portfolio: P&G has been aggressively pruning its product portfolio and also re-evaluating its presence in many businesses. For example, it decided to divest many of its beauty brands including CoverGirl, Clairol, and Wella by selling these brands to Coty. By divesting these brands, P&G was able to rid itself of those categories where they felt challenged to develop winning strategies, which represented a drag on its profitability and growth, thus, allowing it to be more focused and nimble with other, more promising categories. Driving innovation and new products: New product development continues to be an important focus for P&G. While it has been credited with highly successful innovations such as Head and Shoulders new Smooth and Silky 3 Action Formula and Tide PODS, P&G has also been successful in innovating in smaller categories. For example, Febreze odor eliminators became a member of P&Gs billion dollar revenue club based on innovating in a relatively small product category.

1) Evaluating the brand architecture, P&G tends to design different Individual brands rather than promoting under corporate brand:

i) explain the function and advantages of this strategy. (15 marks)

ii) according to Figure 12-3 in the text, identify Special Roles of Brands from any THREE brands in the case or any other P&G brands. (15 marks)