P&G is big enough in the region to innovate and create

Dubai: To be a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) must be a terrible thing. You're chief of everyone else's job. That's certainly how the head of marketing at Procter and Gamble (P&G), Jim Stengel, sounded during the IAA conference.

"We must embrace change," he said, a message regularly delivered by CEOs, consultants and HR 'professionals'.

"We must put people at the centre of the business and let them act on their dreams?; we must truly understand the customer."

Obvious, clichéd..? Well? it would be were it not coming from Procter and Gamble, one of the handful of companies which actually follows through and makes this successful.

Worldwide P&G really does understand the customer. Unfortunately we could not gauge how up close and personal they are with customers in the Middle East P&G does not break down its figures geographically.

In an interview after his speech P&G's CMO would not tell Gulf News how much profit the company earns in the region, nor how much it spends on marketing "for competitive reasons".

As a proxy the company employs around 800 personnel in the Arabian Gulf from 100,000 worldwide. The company is big enough here, and has been doing business long enough, says Stengel, to understand the region's "multiple customer profiles."

From those multiple profiles there are, fortunately, some common themes. "Family and a focus on culture and religion," differentiates the Middle East from others no matter where you are in the region. P&G has taken this knowledge and used it in the way the company talks to consumers.

"In the Pamper's ad, for example, the father was involved in helping to choose which brand to buy in the supermarket. That would not have happened elsewhere?"

As proof of its investment into the region, Stengel points to the marketing innovation coming out of the Middle East.

"P&G is big enough here to be able to innovate and be creative."

Earlier P&G's CMO closed his speech to the IAA by praising His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. What has been built here is incredible, said Stengel. "It really is an amazing, hugely motivating place".