Productivity to Fuel Growth
and Value Creation
Productivity is required to fund investments in superiority, to strengthen organization effectiveness and efficiency, to offset inevitable cost and currency challenges, and to deliver strong cash generation. In short, productivity is required for sustained growth and value creation.
Every day, we continue to pursue the many opportunities to drive efficiency up and down our profit and loss statement and across our balance sheet.
Our Supply Chain is one of our biggest sources of productivity. Across our production lines, automation technologies continue to play a key role in accelerating supply chain progress in our manufacturing sites. We are now at the stage where real-time vision cameras on many of our manufacturing lines are capturing visual data and applying advanced algorithms to analyze a greater number of products for superior quality — driving productivity, while delivering superior quality.
We are investing in advanced supply planning technologies to better anticipate consumer demand and adjust production and inventory levels accordingly, helping minimize out of stocks, overproduction and waste. We have enhanced collaboration across retailers and suppliers through these unified digital platforms, facilitating real-time information sharing and decision-making, and driving shelf availability — building trust and enabling joint value creation.
In Brand Building, we are increasingly using programmatic and algorithm-based media buying to enable brands to reach the widest range of consumers where they are most receptive to our brand messages. Our proprietary data platform enables brands to use target audience algorithms to serve ads at the right frequency each week, all year round — more effective reach and more cost efficient. As a result, in the past five years the average media reach has increased to 80% in the U.S. and to 75% in Europe.
We are also investing in retail media to reach consumers closer to when they purchase, particularly in Retailer Search, the largest element of retail media spending. We use a proprietary program that automatically adjusts search ad buying every 15 minutes on retailer search platforms, increasing brand sales return by four times and driving category growth.
Productivity is not new to P&G. It is an essential choice that fuels every element of our strategy.
Productivity is integrated into our strategy. We are delivering the same or better output measures with lower spending or resource investment.
Materials
VARIOUS STATEMENTS IN THIS ANNUAL REPORT, including estimates, projections, objectives and expected results, are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and are generally identified by the words “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “opportunity,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “likely” and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, including the risks and uncertainties discussed in Item 1A – Risk Factors of the Form 10-K included in this Annual Report. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.