• Advertising Age, Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:45 AM

Facing flat market shares and growing investor pressure to cut costs, Procter & Gamble Co. plans to eliminate about 1,600 "overhead" or non-manufacturing jobs, including some in marketing, and is banking on digital marketing to help contain media spending long-term, executives said on the company's earnings conference call today.

The move follows an announcement earlier this month that P&G would outsource to brokerage firms in-store merchandising work covering about 2,700 employees, most of them part-time, and expands a program put in place for some categories two years ago.

It's unclear how many of the merchandisers will move to the firms taking over the work or how many of the 1,600 cuts will involve involuntary separations. That reduction affects about 3% of P&G's non-manufacturing workforce of about 50,000.

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