Rob de Groot: "It’s a good set of results that we’re happy to give to the outside world. It is something to be glad about. It’s also confirming the strategy that we’ve had for the last 10 years. It’s a very focused strategy. We have 17 power brands that we focus on as a company. [Eleven of those 17 power brands are in North America, including Clearasil, Calgon and French’s.] And it’s very focused on those power brands and fueling those power brands with investments. It’s something we’ve done differently than other players, which is to continue to invest and focus on our [core] brands in tough times.
The Strategy is two parts
- The first is innovation and
- The second is investment, or money to communicate to consumers.
We’re moving away from a world where we split marketing and sales and trade. We’re talking very much about our consumers and they have different touch points with which they get their information from: There is TV, Internet and in-store, of course.
One of the things we started a few years ago is to communicate—360 degrees, as we call it—with consumers and we try to touch them at different moments of the day at different moments of their life. And so, our investment towards the consumer has been more multi than single point and the number of connections we have with consumers is much higher than before.
