One of the benefits of having worked at Procter & Gamble (I was in marketing for six years from 1997 to 2004) is access to an alumni club of thousands of the smartest business minds in the world. Every two years the P&G Alumni Network hosts a global summit that brings together top leaders from around the world, including a few of the top current leaders still at P&G. Two years ago the event in Cincinnati was outstanding, so long ago I made plans to attend this year’s event in Rome, which was held two weeks ago. I took the opportunity to take the family on a vacation through Italy, which means this post is a little delayed, but I wanted to share some highlights of the sessions from the event.

The theme of the sessions was “improving consumers’ lives long term—a sustainability challenge,” and I found much in common with the Marketing with Meaning idea that I write about weekly in this space. Below are a few of my notes, on a speaker-by-speaker basis:

Fernando Aguirre, CEO of Chiquita Brands International

Chiquita seems to be making very positive moves on the sustainability front, a big plus for a company that uses natural resources heavily and works mainly in developing nations with rain forests, where problems seem to be significant and global biodiversity is in the balance. Aguirre talked about how his company is making several moves to embrace sustainability. For example, it is testing a new cleaning and packing station process that reduces water use from 80,000 to 3,000 cubic meters of water, which, if moved throughout the company’s operations, could save 3.4 billion gallons of water per year.

He specifically shared the case study of Chiquita’s challenge in Europe a few years ago, when cheap imports from questionable companies threatened the company’s sales results. Chiquita chose to highlight its sustainable harvesting practices and secured an endorsement from The Rainbow Alliance. Marketing highlighted Chiquita’s efforts and the Rainbow Alliance’s support, and as a result sales actually increased despite the huge price pressure. In other words, Chiquita’s sustainability positioning helped it differentiate a commodity and retain premium pricing. Because of these practices, Chiquita is now attracting “green” investors. Not a bad value equation case study.

Toni Belloni, Group Managing Director, LVMH

LVMH is one of the world’s most impressive houses of brands. The company is a luxury machine, with more than 60 brands ranging in sales from more than $5 billion to less than $5 million. Belloni oversees the company, but it is a very independent group of brands. He talked candidly about how this makes it difficult to drive a corporate sustainability movement. Another challenge is the fact that his luxury brands often work with very small “mom and pop” craftsmen, so it is hard to force them to live up to sustainability standards.

Nevertheless, the company is making a lot of progress. One example is a much-improved volume forecasting process and model that is helping shift shipping from airplanes to sea transport. The big downside of sea transport is that it can take many weeks longer to move goods. But better volume forecasting and planning can make a big difference. Shipping not only reduces transport costs by 90%, but it also cuts emissions by 80%.

I was very interested to hear that LVMH as a company is focused on the cause of supporting arts and culture around the world. In what is a perfect fit for the luxury brands and their consumer targets, it sponsors more than 30 art exhibitions every year, and created a “Haute Couture Academy” to encourage interest in the field and develop future hires.

Stef Kranendijk, CEO, Desso Group

The Desso Group is one of the world’s largest makers of carpets. A few years ago Kranendijk read the book Cradle to Cradle, a manifesto meant to convince companies that they can improve the world and improve their business results by pursuing more sustainable manufacturing processes. Stef decided to remake his company according to the manifesto, and he spoke about how his company is recycling carpet, using fewer chemicals, and innovating in areas such as office noise reduction. I gave him an advance copy of my book and I hope that he now reinvents his marketing according to my manifesto!

Len Sauers, VP, Global Sustainability, P&G

Sauers was one of the notable attendees who is not yet an alum of Procter. He was a perfect fit to speak in the conference theme of sustainability. He first spoke about P&G research into what consumers are willing to pay for more sustainable products. About 9% say they will pay more, 72% will pay the same or less, and about 17% ignore the sustainability issue altogether.

He went on to describe how the P&G corporate drive for sustainability can result in innovation down to individual products. For example, the company discovered that the Laundry Detergent category had the biggest negative energy impact among all of P&G’s businesses. That’s because a lot of energy is used in hot water washing cycles. This in turn helped drive innovation on brands such as Tide and Ariel that allow for better cleaning in cold water. And by advertising the benefits of cold water washing, P&G is helping to educate consumers on this simple yet meaningful step to reduce energy consumption. In the Netherlands alone, the company’s efforts have helped convince 52% of consumers to wash in cold water versus just 7% a few years ago.

Panel with Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO, WPP), Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi), and Jim Stengel (Former Global Marketing Officer, P&G)

In one of the most disappointing parts of the event because earlier sessions ran very long, this panel of marketing giants was cut short. But there were a few good highlights from these strong voices for our industry.

Sir Martin spent time talking about how clients talk about holistic marketing, but their biggest barrier is actually their own behavior. They cannot seem to overcome the internal politics and silos of their organizations: “The amount of time we see our clients wasting on bureaucracy and infighting is appalling.” I wholeheartedly agree.

Kevin Roberts had some witty and accurate lines about what’s wrong with marketing today and what we need to do to fix it. Some of my favorites:

• “The consumer is still not the boss at P&G; the brand is the boss… Consumers want to participate in building the brand.”
• “It’s not B2B and B2C; it’s P2P—People to People.”
• “Stop talking about touchpoints. Like the expression “counting eyeballs,” that’s not good enough. It’s about creating engagements, and we should measure return on involvement.”

John Pepper, Former P&G CEO and Disney Nonexecutive Chairman

Just days before the event, Procter announced that the CEO baton would be passing from A.G. Lafley to Bob McDonald, and we were lucky enough to have both A.G. and Bob join our event in Rome. What made the moment even more special was when John Pepper, another former P&G CEO, spoke for a few minutes about the success of A.G. and his confidence in Bob. I personally agree with John that Bob McDonald is a great choice for the role. I got to work for Bob when I was on the Tide brand in the late ’90s and found him to be an inspirational leader. (As an aside, on the Laundry floor I was jokingly known as “Little Bob” and McDonald was “Big Bob.”)

After praising Bob, Pepper talked a bit about how Disney thinks about sustainability in its operations and marketing. He made a great point about how “it’s key to record the company’s efforts around sustainability and promote them internally so that employees understand and value the work.” Pepper also talked about how Disney has a powerful ability to encourage sustainability and positive causes through its media channels and parks. Currently there are park exhibits that educate visitors about the need for environmental improvement, and Hannah Montana recently kicked off a Disney Channel effort that encourages kids to play a role in improving the world (see Disney.com/friendsforchange).

Finally, Pepper provided me with my personal highlight of the event. After his session I went up to hand him an advance copy of my book. The first thing he said was, “Well, any time someone gives me a book I have them sign it.” I was very touched to hear this request, which was actually the first time I have ever signed a copy of my book.

This interaction with John Pepper and the P&G alumni event itself reminded me of how special my time with this company has been. P&G took a risk in hiring me out of business school, and gave me incredible opportunities to challenge myself on big brands with big budgets. It trained me well and exposed me to some of the best marketers in the world. Now that I’m on the agency side with P&G as a client, the company has been an important partner for our success and growth as an agency—challenging us to continually take our game up a notch, and treating us with respect and fairness. Procter & Gamble has certainly improved my life and I look forward to continuing to build its business as an alum and agency partner.