Promotions Strategy for Tide

"P&G has changed its promotions strategy for Tide. Explain why, describe the changes and analyze how doing so might confer a competitive advantage."

Product promotion is a type of corporate communication that uses various methods to provide information to targeted audiences that will assist them in making decisions to purchase a product or service. An organization unfamiliar with product promotion might assume that when a person is talking about promotion they are talking about advertising. The truth is advertising, though it is the most visible and best understood method of promotion, is only one of the four methods involved in product promotion. The four major methods involved with product promotion are advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling. P&G’s decision to change its promotion strategy for Tide is giving them a competitive advantage over their competitors.

Advertising is one way communication with the customer that involves paid promotions using mass media outlets to deliver the marketer’s message about their products. With the advent of computer technology the internet is also becoming an outlet for marketers to advertise which allows customers to provide quick feedback. Sales Promotions are incentives such as retail coupons with expiration dates that encourage customers to respond by a certain time. Public Relations are a promotion that relies on publicity from other sources such as the news media to favorably mention their product. Personal Selling involves personal contact between company representatives and their consumers to gain personal information on the type of product they are looking for (Christ, 2008).

The reason Tide’s new promotion strategy is allowing P&G to gain a competitive advantage is, because they have changed it from a mundane stain-fighting message to advertising the relationship between a woman and her laundry. Their new promotion strategy is to reestablish bond between customers and their entire brand, no matter how mature or mundane. They are doing this with new ads that dismiss the notion that laundry detergent is a mere commodity but a way of life. P&G felt like they needed a promotional strategy that would speak to consumers eye to eye rather than relentlessly driving product benefits. The messages they are trying to send out with their new ads are Tide will take care of the laundry while women focus on the important things (Berner, 2006).

Not only are they advertising the relationship their laundry detergent has with there customers, but they are going to the field and talking with women about their detergent. Their personal selling techniques involve following women as they shop and run errands and sitting in on bull session where they talk about their lives. They also went to Kansas City, MO and Charlotte,