CINCINNATI - It’s a feel-good campaign about female empowerment. But Procter & Gamble Co. is confronting one of China’s thorniest social issues in its latest rollout of “Like a Girl.”
Since its 2014 inception, the award-winning series of ads for P&G’s feminine hygiene brands has urged pre-teen girls to challenge gender stereotypes and follow their dreams, even when pressured to quit.
P&G’s Whisper brand is now using the campaign “to reach rural girls who are left behind when their parents leave to work in urban centers,” Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller told Wall Street analysts Feb. 24. “Whisper is providing these young girls with their first period protection and in-school classes to help them enter puberty with confidence.”
Experts say P&G is tapping into some powerful sentiments with its latest twist on the “Like A Girl” campaign, a strategy that could prove both risky and rewarding.
“It’s nice when companies are using what they sell to help with real problems,” said James Loveland, assistant marketing professor at Xavier University. “We’re not just trying to create a product. We’re also trying to do good with that product.”
But Loveland adds “there is a fine line between political activism” and alienating your audience. By focusing in such a hot-button issue, “the opportunity for a cultural misstep is very high.” P&G said it has received positive feedback from Chinese consumers and retailers so far.
China has an estimated 61 million “left behind” children in rural villages, according to a 2013 study by the All-China Women’s Federation. The country’s rapidly industrializing economy has caused parents to take factory jobs in the city – leaving their children home alone for weeks at a time.
Whisper zeroes in on the problem with a tear-jerking ad featuring young girls missing their mother as they cope with their first period. Moeller played the ad for analysts at the Consumer Analysts Group of New York investor conference.
“Whisper generated 9 billion consumer impressions in China in the first month of this campaign,” Moeller said. “Twenty of the top retailers - representing 50 percent of category sales - activated the campaign in-store and online. Further support for the campaign is expected in month two with a media event in Beijing.”
For P&G feminine-care marketers, the new “Help a Girl” theme is just one more twist on a campaign that’s already a blockbuster hit. P&G spokeswoman Jennifer Corso said the original ad has generated more than 550 million views and 25 billion impressions, which refers to the number of times a consumer is exposed to a brand's marketing message.
It has won more than 200 awards, inspired its own line of Girl Emojis and was deployed in more than 40 countries worldwide.
“Always has created real societal change,” Corso said. “When we started the original #LikeAGirl campaign in 2014, only 19% of women had a positive association with the phrase. But today – less than 3 years later – “like a girl” means amazing things! It’s a statement of strength, and purpose, and determination.”
It’s not the first time that P&G tackled a tough topic in China with an inspirational message of female empowerment. Last year the skin-care brand, SK-II, debuted a four-minute ad that explored the social pressures faced by unmarried women over the age of 25. They’re called Sheng Nu, or leftover women. The campaign has generated nearly 2.4 million views on You Tube.
But these signs of success do not eliminate all risk that P&G could offend Chinese consumers or government officials with a campaign about “left behind” children.
“I can imagine some local official is going to say, ‘Who are these foreigners coming into my region wanting to make this an issue?’ Their defensive posture is going to be, ‘We don’t have this problem,’” said Jin Kong, chairman of the Greater Cincinnati Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
Kong is an attorney and U.S. Army veteran whose family left Beijing for Cincinnati when he was 12. He works with Chinese companies exploring Midwest investments, so he’s still tuned into cultural trends in China. And he thinks P&G is smart to focus on female empowerment.
“There has been this huge push in China to overcome the traditional notion of a woman’s role in society,” he said. “I think P&G is piggy-backing on just general sentiment that times are changing. Women are doing a lot more for society in China than they’ve ever done.”
From a marketing perspective, P&G’s “Like a Girl” campaign theme sets the brand apart from its rivals, said Loveland, who holds a PhD in marketing from Arizona State University and conducts research on branding.
“If you look at the ads that have been in that space, they put a tampon into a beaker, dump water in it and flip it over,” Loveland said. P&G is taking “a much more nuanced approach and it captures something that people actually care about.”
