"Non-measured" media get P & G nod

When Procter and Gamble, one of the world's biggest consumer marketers, gets a cold, the magazine industry gets pneumonia. So that slight chill you may have felt yesterday was when it was announced that P & G said it was going to increase its spending on marketing, but not necessarily in "measured media" (one of which is magazines).

A story in Advertising Age says that the company's priority is sales goals and it is willing to give up margin to sustain and build volume, as outlined by Chief Financial Officer Clayton Daley.

He said if P&G can meet its double-digit earnings-per-share growth goal "with more sales growth and less margin expansion, that's OK. ... I don't want to imply that we are going to do anything to try to hold back sales growth."

Chairman and CEO A.G. Lafley signalled a shift toward the internet and "nonmeasured media."

"If you step back and look at our [marketing] mix across most of the major brands, it's clearly shifting, and it's shifting from measured media to in-store, to the internet and to trial activity,"

Ad Age said that if first quarter indications were borne out throughout 2007, measured spending (publishing, TV, radio) might be cut by 17.5%.