Neither William Proctor nor James Gamble would have stayed in
Cincinnati at all if it were not for medical problems. They might
not have become partners in the firm of Proctor and Gamble (P
& G) if they hadn't married twin sisters.
But they did and 125 years ago this month they launched a product
that would launch them onto the national stage. Ivory Soap became
one of the first national brands and one of the most enduring
brand identities in history.
The move to brands was on in 1879. Americans had become a mobile
people, surging West, to new locations where they didn't know
the merchants. They'd buy new brand name goods, but only if they
trusted the manufacturer.
James Norris Gamble, a son of the founder, set out to offer folks
a distinctive soap that looked pure and that was pure. It would
look pure because it was white. But purity still needed to be
demonstrated before people would buy.
In order for soap to be 100 percent pure, the ingredients would
have to be only fatty acids and alkali. P & G sent samples of
Ivory out to college chemistry professors and independent laboratories
for analysis. One chemist's analysis was in table form with the
ingredients listed by percentage. The pure ingredients were 99.44
percent and Ivory had an advertising slogan.
In 1882, P & G launched one of the first national advertising
campaigns, centered on Ivory Soap. They had a unique product and
a slogan that was memorable.
P & G has always been among the first to use new marketing techniques.
Ivory Soap was the subject of one of the first full color print
ads in 1896. When radio came along, Ivory Soap began advertising
on radio. In 1937, just five months after the introduction of
broadcast television, the first Ivory Soap ad appeared during
the first televised major league baseball game.
Marketing isn't just about advertising and promotion. It's also
about making sure that you have enough product and that you can
get the product to where it's needed.
P & G became one of the first companies in America to invest
in continuous process production machinery to be sure they could
make enough soap to meet demand. By the start of the national
campaign, P & G could produce more than 200,000 bars of Ivory
Soap a day.
Distribution is important, too, and so, in 1919, the company
began a costly and audacious move to take over its own product
distribution. To make that work, P & G needed to sever ties with
wholesalers and set up an entire system of sales offices, warehouses
and transportation. It took about four years.
Throughout its history, P & G has kept the same slogan and value
proposition for Ivory Soap. But they haven't done it entirely
on faith. P & G set up one of the first market research departments
in American business in 1924. D. Paul "Doc" Smelser sent out teams
of interviewers to find out how people bought and used products
like Ivory Soap.
Then, in 1931, came one of the most important marketing innovations.
Richard R. Deupree was the president then and he loved one page
memos. On May 13 he received a three page memo from a fellow named
Neil McElroy that would change the way P & G did business.
McElroy had come to P & G right from Harvard and he was working
on the advertising for Camay soap. He suggested that Camay (and,
by extension every other P & G product) would do better if it
had a single person responsible for everything to do with the
brand and a dedicated support team.
President Deupree liked the idea. It developed into the famous
P & G system of brand management. Every CEO of Proctor and Gamble
after Richard Deupree, starting with Neil McElroy, came to the
job with brand management experience.
But the brand management concept has extended far beyond P &
G itself. It's been copied by companies around the glove and studied
in marketing programs. And it's spun off brand management alumni
that have gone on to success elsewhere. Jeff Immelt of GE, James
McNerney of 3M both started worked on Ivory. Meg Whitman and Steve
Case are also brand management alums.
With all the changes in the world and Proctor and Gamble, though,
Ivory Soap is still, "99 44/100 percent pure." It still floats.
There's a lesson in that for marketers.
Top of page
The official
story of Proctor and Gamble on the Web.
The official story
of Ivory Soap from the Ivory Web site.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has numerous
advertisements and other items from Ivory's past on its Web site.
The
Ivory Project: Advertising Soap in America 1838-1998.
Take a course on innovation and you're likely to hear about how
Ivory Soap was the result of an accident. That's not exactly true.
The company has been developing a pure, "White Soap" and actually
begun production of it. One day a workman went to lunch, leaving
the soap mixing machine running. The soap he found on his return
had lots of air in it. It floated. The soap was shipped to customers
who wanted more. P & G decided that Ivory soap should, indeed
be manufactured so that it floated.
The bottom line is that the
pure "White Soap" was a corporate development project, but the
floating characteristic was the result of an accident.
Soap
Opera : The Inside Story of Procter & Gamble by Alecia Swasy
is an expose by a Wall Street Journal reporter. If you're looking
for the dirt on P & G, this is the book. If you read this book,
though, don't make it the only one. The book is heavily centered
on the 1980s and early 90s when a lot was happening at P & G that
simply isn't characteristic of the entire company history.
Rising
Tide : Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter & Gamble
by Davis Dyer, Frederick Dalzell, and Rowena Olegario seems to
come from the other side of the fence. It concentrates more on
the marketing history than anything else and had the advantage
of being written ten years after Swasy's book.
Proctor and Gamble has been featured in many popular business
books, going back to In
Search of Excellence.
The company is one of the enduring companies studied in Porras'
and Collins' excellent Built
to Last.
It's also one of the companies profiled in American
Business, 1920-2000: How It Worked by Thomas K. McCraw.
20 July 2004
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