• Bloomberg/HarvardBusiness.org, Monday, October 19, 2009 10:41 AM

Scott Anthony retells a back-to-basics-but-nonetheless-instructive anecdote gleaned from Melanie Healey, the group president of North America for Procter & Gamble, at a conference he moderated last week.

In the 1990s, Healey was a P&G brand manager in Brazil responsible the Hipoglos brand of diaper rash ointments. The problem was that the product had 99% household penetration. So, "Healey did what good P&G people do -- she went out to talk to consumers to find out what they thought about the product, the problem it addressed, and so on," Anthony writes.

It turns out that consumers weren't using Hipoglos until rashes started to appear on babies' bottoms, which not only was too late from a prevention angle, it also was unhealthy to P&G's P&L. In other words, "Consumers weren't actually realizing all of the benefits of the product, resulting in cranky babies and sleepless nights."

Suffice it to say that both parent and P&G brand nurturers slept better once a new ad campaign changed consumers' perceptions of the product.

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