Stengel “Retires” to a Higher Calling

On Monday, November 3, a recent legend in the marketing world, P&G Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel, retired from the client side. He is joining the client-service side for the first time in his life, and he’s joining a handful of us who are trying to take marketing to a higher level.

Stengel’s website and a Wall Street Journal article describe his new vocation—to help companies other than P&G succeed through “purpose-based marketing.” Through our work with P&G as a client, we’ve had a chance to see inside Stengel’s model of Brand Purpose. It’s an incredibly powerful new way of looking at brand building, based on P&G’s best brands, as well as best practices from some of the most valuable brands outside the company’s walls.

I cannot share this inside perspective here, but I can point you to a recent speech by Stengel at the University of Cincinnati. In one of his last appearances as a P&G leader, he spoke of his learnings from a lifetime of building purposeful brands, and alluded to the lessons he plans to share. Some of my favorite quotes and examples included:

• “Our studies show that brands with the most market trust have the highest marketing share.”
• Tide’s Clean Start program, which provides laundry services for victims of natural disasters, had a “far greater lift” in business impact than traditional advertising, and significantly raised key equity measures.
• Spend time with consumers, not just asking them how they use your products, but how they spend their lives, and figure out how you can positively impact their lives.
• “Every employee must live the ideals of the (purpose-driven) brand.”

As I alluded to above, Stengel is not only joining a legion of ex-P&Gers, but he is joining a small group of people and organizations that are trying to define what we choose to call Marketing with Meaning. I’ve actually had the chance to personally share Marketing with Meaning with Jim, and we found a good synergy between the two concepts. Brand Purpose is primarily based on how a brand redefines what it stands for—its driving purpose in society. Marketing with Meaning picks this up by helping Purpose Brands communicate with their customers in a new way—one beyond interruption that helps achieve its purpose. Drew Neisser, of Marketing as Service fame, makes a good point that we all have a common belief in purposeful brands, but that agencies are needed to bring the purpose to life.

Interestingly, in March 2007, just as I was putting together the full Marketing with Meaning concept to share with clients, Stengel spoke at the AAAA conference and said words that struck me:

What we really need is a mind-set shift… that will make us relevant for today’s consumers.  From ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships.”

Jim’s words convinced me that we were onto something with Marketing with Meaning after all: If the largest marketer in the world (and the one who perhaps succeeded more with “telling and selling” than anyone) saw the need for change, the rest would not be far away.

We’ll keep watching and partnering with Stengel as he joins the mission to make marketing more meaningful. It should be a even more successful ride with him onboard.