Google, P&G swap workers

At Procter & Gamble Co., the corporate culture is so rigid that employees jokingly call themselves "Proctoids." Google Inc. staffers wander the halls on company-provided scooters and brainstorm on public whiteboards.

This odd couple thinks they have something to gain from one another - so they've started swapping employees. So far, about two-dozen staffers have spent weeks dipping into each other's training programs and sitting in on meetings where business plans get hammered out.

Closer ties are crucial to both sides. P&G, the biggest advertising spender in the world, is waking up to the reality that the next generation of laundry-detergent, toilet paper and skin-cream buyers now spends more time online than watching TV. Google craves a bigger slice of P&G's $8.7 billion annual ad pie as its own revenue growth slows.

"We're trying to open the eyes of our brand managers," says P&G's Stan Joosten, whose title is "digital innovation manager," a job that didn't exist until last spring.

Google already controls 74 percent of so-called "search term" advertising spending, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. So persuading deep-pocketed advertisers to shift away from TV to instead showcase their brands, say, on YouTube, Google's video-sharing site, is critical.

The rapid spread of high-speed Internet access "has been the biggest disruption to marketing," says Rob Norman, CEO of WPP Group's media-buying firm, GroupM Interaction Worldwide. A key factor, he argues: TV-watchers are passive viewers. But Internet-surfers are tougher to reach because they take a more active role in what they choose to view.

As the two companies started working together, the gulf between them quickly became apparent. In April, when actress Salma Hayek unveiled an ambitious promotion for P&G's Pampers brand, the Google team was stunned that Pampers hadn't invited any "motherhood" bloggers - women who run popular Web sites about child-rearing - to attend the news conference.

For their part, P&G employees gasped in surprise during a Tide brand meeting when a Google job-swapper apparently didn't realize that Tide's signature orange-colored packaging is a key part of the brand's image.

One of the first results of the collaboration between the two companies was an online campaign inviting people to make spoof videos of P&G's "Talking Stain" TV ad and post them to YouTube.

This "never would have happened" previously, says Stengel, who left P&G last month to start his own firm. It's "something (P&G is) really wrestling with: How does a brand morph from one-way to two-way communication with the consumer?"

A big hurdle for Google is that many big advertising agencies, which design campaigns for P&G and other giant firms, often don't make online strategies a priority.

"The worst answer you can hear from an agency is, ‘Don't worry, we have a group to handle interactive,'" said David Bell, a Google consultant, during a session with some P&G job-swappers at Google's New York office. "Interactive isn't a group, it's everybody's job," said Bell, who himself formerly headed Interpublic Group, a major advertising-business holding company.