Word: procter
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...only time he loses sleep, says A.G. Lafley, is when he thinks a competitor might beat him to a hot new product. And Lafley is sleeping pretty well these days. The soft-spoken, silver-thatched CEO is leading consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble from one hit to another. Crest's battery-powered SpinBrush for dental care and its Whitestrips for tooth brightening have helped Crest global sales grow 50% in the past two years--a surge unheard of for such a big, mature brand. That kind of innovation has sent P&G's profits into double-digit growth and made...
...Lafley last year made P&G's biggest acquisition ever, paying $5 billion for Clairol's hair-care business. The beauty and health-care sectors together account for about a third of P&G's $40 billion in annual sales and could reach 40% within the decade. Most of Procter's next generation of billion-dollar brands will probably come out of this area, which includes Olay skin care, Cover Girl cosmetics, Clairol Herbal Essences shampoo and Actonel osteoporosis prescription medication. Two of the most recent ones to join the elite club are Crest and Iams, the high...
...with and learning from outsiders. One of Lafley's chief lieutenants, global-marketing officer James Stengel, occasionally meets with his peers at a range of other companies, from Kraft and Nestle to Toyota and Gucci, to keep abreast of new marketing trends--something that would not have happened at Procter just a few years ago. "In the old days, they kept us almost entirely in the dark," says Tom Kelley, general manager of leading design firm IDEO, which is studying people's bathroom-cleaning habits...
...female sexual dysfunction--the relatively small, billion-dollar pharmaceutical division is still a major question mark. As Duke University business professor Kevin Schulman argues, consumer products and drugs "have very different product life cycles. Compared with P&G's core business, pharmaceuticals is very risky." Some observers think Procter should stick to the over-the-counter business, leveraging its marketing savvy and retail relationships to help bigger pharma companies roll out nonprescription versions of their drugs, as it is doing with Astra Zeneca for its heartburn medication, Prilosec. Fortunately, at least for the moment, Lafley shouldn't have much need...
...launch of new talk shows hosted by Isaac Mizrahi and Carrie Fisher, respectively, women's cable network Oxygen has dispatched ice-cream trucks to cruise the streets of New York City and Los Angeles and give out specially labeled popsicles and vitamin waters touting the coming broadcasts. Procter & Gamble sent out a trailer of elegant, air- conditioned Porta Potties, complete with hardwood floors and aromatherapy candles, to state fairs last summer to extol the virtues of Charmin toilet paper. Bottled-water producer Evian paid to repair a run-down public pool in the London neighborhood of Brixton and tile...