AdWeek: P&G Reviews $2.5 Bil. in Media Planning
MediaPost: Seeking To Wean Itself Off TV, Print, P&G Initiates Com Planning Review

Procter & Gamble launched an agency planning review, which calls for the "redesign its media planning agencies into communications planning agencies." Acknowledging its concerns over waning audiences and increased costs of traditional media, P&G will ask agencies to re-create themselves to embrace a broader range of consumer communication. An early adopter of media optimization, P&G's agency request for a broader approach to consumer planning, which, in essence, would include anything a consumer comes into contact with, asks agencies to rely less the traditional "tonnage" approach to media and more on "non-media" approaches such as product integration, video game advertising, package design, SMS marketing, IM advertising and musical tour sponsorships.

While this harkens back to many of the pontifications we have heard before from P&G on its desire to "revolutionize" its approach to marketing, this time, albeit slowly, it might stick. The key will be its resolve to fire or demote brand managers and agencies that stand in the way. Agencies and media shops are averse to change, but a two billion dollar media budget gets attention quickly. Were P&G to start awarding innovative companies - mostly firms it is not dealing with currently - with large budgets, change could be swift.