WFA Global Marketer of the Year 2018 nominees: P&G's Marc Pritchard - 'create conversations'

The WFA caught up with Procter and Gamble's (P&G) chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard. He spoke about the key events of the past 12 months, including his efforts to incorporate citizenship into its behaviour, his efforts to build new forms of lean innovation and work to restructure the balance between internal teams and external agency responsibilities.

Pritchard is inspired by the "hands-on-the keyboard" mentality of lean startups, admitting P&G want to decrease the amount of work it outsources to suppliers and agencies so it can forge a more direct relationship with consumers.

P&G's skincare brand, SK-II, is Pritchard's "best example" of this, and it is using it as a model for all its brands.

"It literally has a brand entrepreneur in the centre that works with a hacker or data scientist, a hustler which is a demand creator and a hipster, which is a designer and a creative, and they all connect with whoever they need to externally."

One work Pritchard says he's particularly proud of is 'The Talk' which won the 'outstanding commercial' award at the Emmys, last September. The premise of 'The Talk,' which was created by BBDO New York, is to show the world a variety of situations where a conversation arises in which black parents have to convey to their children the prejudices they will face in life.

Discussing how impactful 'The Talk' was, Pritchard said: "This created a conversation We took some heat for it, but we stuck with it because it was important for us to create conversations - conversations lead to understanding. Understanding leads to empathy, and empathy leads to action."

Watch the full interview with Pritchard above. You can vote for him, or the other finalists for the WFA Marketer of the Year Award, here.