• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 26, 2006

"Just let go!" As advertising catchphrases go, I doubt it will ever replace "Just Do It," but I imagine that's exactly what Procter & Gamble chief A.G. Lafley was hoping would happen when he issued version 2.0 of the packaged goods marketer's rallying cry last month during the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference.

The new version of P&G marketing mantra is aimed, of course, at what Cammie Dunaway, Yahoo's chief marketing officer, dubbed the "Consumer 2.0," but sitting in a room jammed full of marketing honchos in Orlando - a golf ball's throw from the Magic Kingdom - I couldn't help wondering whether some of the execs might be dwelling just a wee bit inside Fantasyland.

They certainly sounded confident, and presented great cases for how and why they've finally gotten a grasp on consumers who are now completely in control, have unlimited choice, and who, according to Lafley, are now co-creating or even directing mass-market brands and media strategies. But beneath the bravado you could see a twinkle of fear glinting off their PowerPoints. They understood that the process of mass marketing has changed, but they didn't seem to understand what it has actually changed to.

It's not simply a massive role reversal, as Yahoo's Dunaway implied when she suggested simply "flipping the funnel" of the traditional mass-marketing megaphone. No, it may be a far more fundamental shift, and one that has even darker implications for big marketers and big media than ceding control to consumers. It may be the end of mass marketing as we know it. It may be the birth of micro-marketing. Mass marketing may not go away, but the opportunities for that kind of scale are going to be fewer and farther between.

"Just let go"? It's an interesting choice of words. It's the kind of thing you might hear a rescue worker bellow to someone hanging from the edge of a burning building over a safety net. It's also something I'd imagine a hospice worker whispering into the ear of a terminally ill patient. Or maybe it was meant in the way a Zen Buddhist monk might tell a disciple to open his or her mind. I'd like to think it's the latter.

Forgive me if I sound a little skeptical, but I've been around too long to take anything P&G says at face value. And frankly, I've never understood all its posturing of industry altruism. While I certainly understand the need for big marketers to share ideas, strategies, case studies, and visions, I just don't think the alpha marketer does this freely or without a competitive advantage tucked neatly inside.

I can cite plenty of occasions when P&G zigged some industry agenda even as it zagged in its own direction. The best example that comes to mind was a rallying cry issued by another P&G chief about a decade ago. It was Ed Artzt's famous speech at an American Association of Advertising Agencies conference, in which he lambasted Madison Ave. for not embracing the Internet quickly enough. The speech worked, and sent most major marketers, agencies, and media companies scrambling for an Internet strategy - it also helped fuel a proliferation of dot-coms, a rapid expansion of the ad economy and a run-up in the stock market that ultimately came crashing down, triggering a worldwide economic recession.

Now, I'm not laying all that on the feet of P&G, but I do find it interesting that back then and even today, P&G has spent relatively little on online advertising.

In fact, during a press conference about a year after his online rallying cry, Artzt was asked what P&G had learned about online advertising and how it was incorporating it into its marketing strategies. His answer was that P&G actually didn't plan to spend much if anything online, but saw the Internet as a great way of getting feedback from consumers - sort of a better version of the 800 telephone numbers the marketer used to employ 10 years ago.

Still wonder what P&G means by "letting go"? Go to PG.com and tell them Media magazine sent you.

JOE MANDESE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF