After spending the first couple years of his tenure falling short of expectations, Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald now sees a big ray of sunshine — in the form of P&G's second fiscal quarter earnings report. Earnings and sales were well ahead of forecast thanks to the chief's recent aggressive actions to boost brand performance and cut costs.

Consumer and retailer response to new products such as Tide Pods and a high-price version of Pantene shampoo has been promising. P&G said it held or grew market share in businesses representing nearly 50 percent of sales in the October-December quarter. In the U.S. market, it met that pattern in businesses representing nearly 60 percent of sales.

The case of Tide Pods, an important new product, is an example of what P&G is aiming for. Marketing has been able to persuade some customers, even cost-conscious ones, that the premium-priced innovation, which is coming up on its first anniversary, is worth the higher outlay.Continue reading...

Apple reportedly working on a lower-end iPhone.

H&M reveals launch plans for & Other Stories store brand.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos doesn't care about profit margins.

American Airlines upgrades international travel.

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Audi A7 self-driving autopilot car goes for a spin at CES.

Beauty brands including Philosophy try oxygenating products.

Best Buy's former CMO lands at LivingSocial.

Boeing sees formal probe of Dreamliner.Continue reading...

Leveraging its design chops in a whole new way, Target is launching a new multi-faceted marketing campaign behind its CPG products with a decidedly unique twist.

"The Everyday Collection" by Target isn't its latest limited edition designer collaboration. It's a minimalist campaign touting — wait for it — groceries, from cake mixes to laundry detergent, prenatal vitamins to cuts of steak. It's also applying its acknowledged sensibilities in fashion and design to promoting the, let's face it, more mundane SKUs in its inventory on behalf of its brand affiliates: consumer packaged goods.Continue reading...

Tide Pods are providing a robust helping of good news for Procter & Gamble in a year when its brands, products, strategy and even CEO have been taking a beating.

The company is projecting $500 million in first-year retail sales for pods, according to Ad Age. That's a major feat, given that of the 1,500 new consumer-packaged-goods launches tracked by SymphonyIRI in 2011, only 21 percent reached one-year sales of even $50 million.

Hungry for a big win at a time when nearly everything about its long-running formula for victory has been questioned, P&G has seen Tide Pods become a relatively rapid success since launching in February with a colorful campaign — with a few speed bumps along the way.Continue reading...

Apple and Android dominate mobile-platform impressions while Apple reports strong sales of iPhone 5 in China and talks with Foursquare about data-sharing deal.

GE plans to buy Avio Italian aerospace group as CEO perceives an "investment pause" in some industries over economy.

Walmart takedown by New York Times continues with searing update on Mexican bribery scandal.

Freedom Group, parent of Bushmaster rifle used to kill Connecticut kids, will be sold by owner Cerberus.

AOL gives all employees $1,000 year-end bonus.

Billabong gets another takeover bid.

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Procter & Gamble invented modern marketing, some would argue, in its 175 years. And now the company is hoping to reinvent it by leveraging digital assets, boosting marketing productivity and more narrowly focusing on the company's key brands in their most important markets.

As the company continues to come up off the mat from its criticized performance earlier this year, CEO Bob McDonald hasn't let his foot off the gas — or let up on his determination to continue to overhaul P&G so that it doesn't get caught flat-footed again.

During an analysts' presentation last week, McDonald said that P&G plans to cut more than twice as many non-manufacturing jobs as it already had planned, a further sign that McDonald continues to heed analyst and investor criticism over the company's bloated cost structure.Continue reading...

Depending where you were, you may have celebrated Halloween on Oct. 31st. At Procter & Gamble, they've been celebrating the company's 175th anniversary.

That's right: P&G – mother of such consumer packaged goods icons as Tide, Pampers, and Comet, among others – is now 175 years old, but a look back at the company's history reveals that the whole endeavor might not have started if an errant flame and a rapscallion hadn’t done their dirty work all those years ago — or if an opinionated father and father-in-law hadn't intervened.

Or put another way, Mr. Procter's failures in England led to P&G's global success today — and Procter took a Gamble that paid off.Continue reading...

It was embattled Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald's turn today to describe what he sees taking place at the CPG behemoth now and in the future, as he assured shareholders at the company's annual general meeting in Cincinnati that "we're confident we're doing what's right and necessary to achieve [our] objectives, now and for the long-term health of our business."

McDonald pledged that P&G is focusing on the company's 40 largest businesses, 20 top innovations and 10 most important developing markets as well as its $10-billion productivity program to drive future growth. "Our plan," he stated in a press release after the meeting, "is decisive, simple and focused. Grow our core and win with innovation fueled by productivity."

The CPG executive has been taking more heat than any other recent P&G CEO because the company lately has stumbled in meeting its growth objectives, has been shown up by competitors, and seems to have fallen off in innovation compared with a few years ago, when an emphasis on new products, new features, line extensions and new brands was propelling Procter & Gamble to record growth.Continue reading...