• Ad Age, Monday, May 7, 2007 12:15 PM

Elva Lewis, the executive charged with ushering Procter & Gamble into a post-mass world, gives the marketer a barely passing grade--D--for its efforts so far.

Lewis is charged with the cat-herding task of getting the real power barons at P&G--its brand managers--to cooperate on an idea in a way that the legendarily siloed brands haven't before: targeted scale. It's a term for the way P&G is trying to leverage its heft in relationship marketing, whether through direct mail, online communities--or even content plays such as its Home Made Simple Web site and newsletter.

By crunching syndicated consumer data and doing tons of qualitative research, P&G's Targetbase is creating nine or 10 customer segments that take a broad enough account of habits and preferences to provide a base of insights for several products. A recent mailer to new moms, for example, flogged both Tide and Pampers products. Cohort segmentation, Lewis says, covers 90% of the top prospects for P&G's biggest 50 brands.

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