Procter & Gamble to roll out corporate ads
Consumer product company Procter & Gamble, the country’s biggest advertiser, is to roll out its own corporate ads for the first time in the UK.
From next weekend P&G will begin promoting its own corporate brand having increased its ad spend last year for its 50-plus household products by 33% to £189m.
This is expected to grow again in the run-up to London 2012, with P&G UK and Ireland marketing head Roisin Donnelly (pictured) telling The Independent: "Television has continued to grow year-on-year and during tough economic times we have got more people watching more television for more hours which is very encouraging.
"We really follow our consumer and we continue to do strong television campaigns and they are working very effectively for all the brands," she added, continuing: "I think London 2012 is a great opportunity for the media market generally. Certainly in 2010 we saw a bit of a recovery and 2011 is looking like a good year for the media industry in the UK as a whole."
Mother’s Day (Sunday 3 April) will see P&G launch its "Proud Sponsor of Mums" campaign, created by Weiden+Kennedy and featuring Edith Bowman. The campaign promotes P&G's own corporate brand for the first time in the UK in an attempt to build awareness and trust in its brands, increasing the purchasing intent of customers.
Donnelly said: "People know us as a company but they don't know much about it and they sometimes get confused about what brands we actually produce, so we are starting with low awareness.
"It's not something that is going to happen overnight but if you trust and love one brand and you know the company is making other brands then you will trust them more quickly."
The campaign is linked to P&G's sponsorship of London 2012, with P&G set to run a series of separate campaigns linked to product brands in the run up to the Olympics, some with “individual Olympic athletes endorsing the individual brands” according to Donnelly.