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 Procter and Gamble, one of the Middle East’s very largest advertisers, plans to continue upping its regional ad spend by 7-10% a year even during the recession, as the company as a whole looks to double its global business, according to a report in The National.
Quoted in the paper, P&G’s Yassin Al Attas, general manager for external relations for the Arabian peninsula and Pakistan (there’s a mouthful), said of the firm’s advertising strategy: “There has not been a drastic drop or a significant change in our media spend.
“In fact, [the recession] has created a very affordable environment for us, because to some extent the rate has come down on certain channels, which provided for us a scale that we are leveraging big time. At the same time, we are investing and trying different media, be it digital, outdoor, PR or internet.”
This should be reassuring news for media outlets relying on Procter’s FMCG-y advertising goodness for their livelihoods – although no doubt there will be some who are disappointed that “doubling the size of the company” does not equate to “doubling the media spend”. Still, give it time.
It’s also nice to see Al Attas reference other media channels such as online (yay) and outdoor as possible areas of attention for P&G. How much this is a real move to try something new, and how much it’s just lip service we’ll be interested to see.
What Al Attas did suggest is that any digital spending won’t come out of P&G’s existing – and (relatively) vast – TV budget. Al Attas added that the firm uses this budget as a means of encouraging competition among channels.
“The strategy that we have is to continue building the capabilities of the other channels, so that we can create competition in the markets. We don’t put all our eggs in one basket,” he said, quoted in The National.
The paper’s report suggests the firm will be focusing much of its regional attention on neglected markets, particularly Pakistan and Yemen.
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