“We don't give lip service to customer understanding. . .”

“At P& G, where to play choices start with the consumer: Who is she? What does the consumer want and need? To win with mom, P& G invests heavily in truly understanding her— through observation, through home visits, through a significant investment in uncovering unmet and unexpressed needs. Only through a concerted effort to understand the consumer, her needs, and the way in which P& G can best serve those needs is it possible to effectively determine where to play— which businesses to enter or leave, which products to sell, which markets to prioritize, and so on. As current CEO Bob McDonald explains, ‘We don’t give lip service to consumer understanding. We dig deep. We immerse ourselves in people’s day-to-day lives. We work hard to find the tensions that we can help resolve. From those tensions come insights that lead to big ideas.’ 2 Those big ideas can be the basis of a powerful where-to-play choice.”