With ten countries representing 85 percent of profits, P&G had to focus on winning in those countries. We asked where consumers expected P&G brands and products to be sold, that is, mass merchandisers and discounters, drugstores, and grocery stores. Core became a theme in innovation as well. P&G scientists determined the core technologies that were important across the businesses and focused on those technologies above all others. We wanted to shift from a pure invention mind-set to one of strategic innovation; the goal was innovation that drove the core. Core consumers were a theme too; we pushed businesses to focus on the consumer who matters most, targeting the most attractive consumer segments. Core was the first and most fundamental where-to-play choice—to focus on core brands, geographies, channels, technologies, and consumers as a platform for growth.

Strategy as Winning – A.G. Lafley:

By the time of my election to CEO in 2000, most of P&G’s businesses were missing their goals, many by a wide margin. The company was overinvested and overextended. It was not winning with those who mattered most—consumers and customers. When I visited all our top retailers in my first thirty days on the job, I found that P&G was their biggest supplier but nowhere near their best supplier. Consumers were abandoning P&G, as evidenced by declining trial rates and market share on most of our leading brands. I was

determined to get P&G’s strategy right. To me, right meant that P&G would focus on

achievable ways to win with the consumers who mattered the most and against the very

best competition. It meant leaders would make real strategic choices (identifying what they would do and not do, where they would play and not play, and how specifically they would create competitive advantage to win). And it meant that leaders at all levels of the company would become capable strategists as well as capable operators. I was going to teach strategy until P&G was excellent at it. I wanted my team to understand that strategy is disciplined thinking that requires tough choices and is all about winning. Grow or grow faster is not a strategy. Build market share is not a strategy. Ten percent or greater earnings-per-share growth is not a strategy. Beat XYZ competitor is not a strategy. A strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of where-to-play, how-to-win, core capability, and management system choices that uniquely meet a consumer’s needs, thereby creating competitive advantage and superior value for a business. Strategy is a way to win—and nothing less.

It is tempting to believe that strategy in general, and where-to-play and how-to-win choices in particular, are needed only for outward-facing functions—those folks who interact with external consumers and competitors. But every line of business and function

should have a strategy—one that aligns with the strategy of the company overall and decides where to play and how to win specifically for its context. At P&G, corporate functions are all tasked with crafting their own strategies in this way. Joan Lewis, global consumer market knowledge officer, explains: “Where to play and how to win has been a very important framework for us. Organizations are often good at one or the other without realizing that they’re two different sets of decisions. At one point, we weren’t as disciplined about our where-to-play choices. It was everywhere anybody needed consumer insight or anywhere we thought it could add value. Just like a business dilutes its focus and in turn its growth potential when you try to do too many things at a time or do things that are further away from your core strengths, we were relatively diluted in the nature of the impact we could have.

At P&G, it boiled down to three themes that would enable the company to win, in the places and ways it had chosen, regardless of the details of individual differences between businesses:

• Make the consumer the boss.

• Win the consumer value equation.

• Win the two most important moments of truth.” (Lafley and Martin, “Playing to Win”,

p.141)

“The first dictum, that the consumer is boss, was a reorientation to the company’s aspiration—to improve the lives of consumers. We wanted everyone focused on the end consumer in all aspects of the business: in innovation, branding, go-to-market strategies, investment choices, and so on. We wanted to be clear about just who the most important stakeholder is and always should be. Not shareholders. Not employees. Not retail customers. But rather the end user: the people who buy and use P&G products. The second crucial theme was to win the consumer value equation. This quickly and unambiguously defined the way that P&G would win: by opening up a bigger gap between

the value it offers to consumers and the cost of delivering that value than competitors’ gaps. This meant providing unique value to consumers (through brand differentiation and innovative products). And it meant maintaining a cost position that would let P&G offer that value to the consumer at an attractive price and still make a healthy profit. This edict turned everyone’s attention toward the where-to-play and how-to-win choices that create sustainable competitive advantage through differentiation.

So, given that P&G needs retailers to stock Gain, the company needs to offer a compelling value proposition to retailers, or the end consumer will never see the product. Wherever there is an intermediary channel between the firm and the end consumer, that

intermediate customer and what it values must be understood.