Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer, Procter & Gamble, listed five ‘timeless lessons for building brands through creativity’ on day two of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Before he listed them, he spoke about how the company doesn’t believe in life cycles and stated that it looks at moments from the past when looking towards building brands for the future.

Pritchard stated how the world remains volatile and is termed ‘unprecedented’ but at the same time, one doesn’t need to complicate things with all the chaos around.

He added a couple of caveats before the lessons.

“Creativity will be recognised this week during the Lions. But the work that I’ll be showcasing during this talk won’t win awards. But these campaigns helped build household brands that serve customers every day. And that’s difficult. We are proud of these pieces of work because it has helped build brands and grow sales for us. And that’s what ultimately matters,” he said.

The second caveat was around AI.

“I won’t talk about AI. I’m sorry about that,” he said before acknowledging it's ‘important, exciting and game-changing’.

“Our brands are partners are talking about it and using it. AI is doing what other technology has done in the past. But the heart of brand building remains humanity, and we celebrate the love, the jobs and creativity,” said Pritchard before unveiling his five lessons.

Know your consumer better than anyone

Pritchard stated how he moved from a career in finance to marketing and quickly realised that when someone asks a question about a consumer, the marketing team should have answers.

“Which means you need to have deep insights. Not just observation of their behaviour. One insight we had was that 70% of the consumers are dissatisfied with the cleaning on their detergent. This insight was pretty good. It inspired the team in France to dig deeper and understand the lengths they would go to ensure their clothes would be clean,” he said before showcasing the first piece of work that interested him.

He added, “In Spain, the team discovered an insight, that people believe they have to wash a stain at that very moment, no matter where they are when they dirty it.”

Fall in love and stay in love with the craft of advertising

Emphasising the word advertising, he laid out the definition of it.

“A form of communication used to bring attention to a product or service to persuade someone to take action,” he said.

“So, it should make consumers take an action, which is to buy it. We didn’t hear the word content and I’m not a fan of that word,” he added.
He went on to reveal the definition of ‘content’ according to Google.

“The first definition is – in a state of peaceful happiness. Then, the second is – the things that are held or included in something. And the third definition is – information made available in a website or other electronic medium,” he said.

He added, “This word has hijacked the word advertising. It’s easy to produce. Consumers deserve the highest level of advertising craft. It was entertaining and fun but didn’t reflect the effectiveness of it. They launched the most luxurious act of it. It led to double-digit growth. One shouldn’t get lured into the content bit. Advertising is intended to encourage customers to turn to our brand.”

Build memory with advertising

Pritchard stated how brands grow by attracting buyers. And advertising for that has to be remembered.

He said, “Advertising helps build memory. You need to build attention for 10-30 seconds or more. Think long-term brand campaigns and not short-term media campaigns. The long-term campaigns are creative transformation of an insightful and memorable idea that consistently expresses the brand’s benefit, the points of superiority and recognisable assets across time and across all forms of the relevant communication.”

An example of this was the Head & Shoulders campaign.

“There’s a reason this is the straight third year I’ve shown this campaign at Cannes. Consistency is important and it takes that to make a campaign work. Repetition is needed for ideas to wave in. People don’t get tired of campaigns. It’s required to stand out and be remembered. Have the discipline and courage to be consistent with advertising to help it wave in with consumers,” he added.

Build enduring creative relationships

The fifth point he spoke about was the importance of long-term relationships.

“The best creativity comes with the best relationships. This is a lesson I cherish. You need to tap into the universe to extract ideas. The greatest joy of my career has been working with great creatives. You may not know the people behind the work, but they are the MVPs (most valuable partners) and that relationship is pure gold. Put your trust and I guarantee you magic will happen.”

The example he showcased for this was Old Spice.