P&G (the world’s largest marketer) plans to reduce marketing
budgets after it was becoming increasingly clear that rising ad costs were adversely effecting
margins and that they can deliver more effective and efficient marketing programs through lower cost mediums such as digital.
To quote P&G CEO
Robert McDonald:
There are just so many different media available today and we're
quickly moving more and more of our businesses into digital…[i]n the digital
space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return
on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is
there, can be much more efficient.
Could this be the event that finally breaks the 50+ year hegemony
of the TV and traditional media advertising model? We’ll see. As I
have posted previously the budgets of most marketers are significantly out of
alignment with the media consumption habits of consumers.
That said, paradigm shifts can take time but once
they occur the rules of the game can change pretty swiftly. A move by a market leader like P&G
might be the finally push needed to reach the tipping point.