Can we still build brands that gain consumer confidence, generate growth and remain time?

This is the question he raised Marc PritchardChief Brand Officer of P&G and one of the most internationally recognized voices in the field of Advertising and marketingat the beginning of his speech in the Cannes Lions 2025 Conference Program, where he has participated with a presentation entitled “timeless lessons to build brands through creativity”.

Under this epigraph, the American manager offered five recommendations that, as a whole, reflect the clear belief of his company in The strength of the brands and in the advertising capacity -And Pritchard emphasized the validity and importance of this word- to build them and enhance them.
Pritchard said that in P&G they do not believe that the brands are predetermined by a life cycle that ends in their disappearance, but that they can remain in force over time and, for that, for this Advertising campaigns play a fundamental role.

Hard work and artificial intelligence

Before starting to enumerate the lessons, Pritchard made two caveats. The first was that “The campaigns you are going to see were not created to win prizes at festivals like this, although they have been able to do it, but to do the hard work of selling day after day to the people of great consumption that give them a satisfactory result. And get this is very difficult, but we are very proud because these campaigns have shown that they build brand and make sales grow”.

The second was that he was not going to talk about artificial intelligencewhich caused the applause of the attendees. Despite this, he dedicated a few words to highlight its importance and their abilities, and to underline that in the P&G marketing area they are using it in everything that can be useful for the development of the campaigns. “But the heart of brand construction comes from humanity, and what we are going to talk about today comes from the minds, souls and hearts of people in love with the joy of creating. And developing the ideas and the craft of good creativity.”

And from here he listed and explained his lessons, which are these:

Know your consumer better than anyone

“Deep consumption insights are the source of ideas that build brands”Said Pritchard when he started talking about this matter. However, he warned that those Insights deep are not mere observations of human behavior. “That’s just” Sight “he stressed, “Insights are the discoveries of latent truths in those behaviors, which, in turn, generate ideas that can be interesting.”
Exemplified this lesson with paths Ariel campaignsa Frenchman who appeals to the fact that most people have uncertainty about the ability of their detergent to eliminate spots and another Spanish that appeals to the common belief in our country that to remove a difficult spot you have to wash it immediately after it occurs.

According to Pritchard, the exhaustive knowledge of the consumer that Ariel has and the appeal to his needs and concerns regarding the cleaning of the clothing has led to that the sales of the brand have grown double digit in the last three years.

Know your brand better than anyone

Pritchard also appealed to the importance of knowledge of The trajectory of the brand For which one works, its triumphs and failures, as well as what the company defends. And advised to study in depth the advertising history Of the same: the evolution of the messages, how he built their creativity, who were their prescribers, what were the milestones that generated notable growths in sales … “The fruits are in the roots”Pritchard pointed out to explain the importance of this historical knowledge, taking advantage of the phonetic forcefulness of the English phrase: “The fruits are in the roots.”
The advertising trajectory of the CHARM WATERY PAPER It was the example he put to illustrate this lesson. He pointed out how after the popular character Mr. Whipple, prescriber of the brand from the mid -60s to 80s of the last century, lost validity, the brand had trouble finding the right tone, always taking into account that it is a product that you have to talk to a certain delicacy. Until the bears appeared:

“This campaign”said Pritchard, “It has built a brand that is worth 5,000 million dollars, has registered 25 years of continuous growth and is the number one of its segment in the United States.”

Fall in love and continue in love with advertising craft

“I am using with pride and without apologizing the word advertising to describe the creative product of what we do.”Marc Pritchard said at the beginning of this part of his talk, and then gave a definition of it. “A form of communication that is used to attract attention to a product or service with the aim of persuading someone to do something in relation to them.”
Pritchard said that “This is our work”, create messages that call people’s attentionmake them cry, laugh or get excited and, through it, convince them to do something, that is, they buy the brand in question. “This requires art, science, ideas, craft and it is something that we must cultivate and revere”he said.

At this point, Pritchard said he does not like to use the word content “To describe what we do”. The reason is that it assimilates it to digital content and considers that under that meaning “Our work has been kidnapped for years. It seems that we never have enough”he added. “It is easy to produce and with it we simply try to respond to the demands of the algorithm, but too many times it is devoid of craft.”
According to him, consumers deserve the most High advertising craft level “At all times and in all places where our brands are expressed” And he exemplified this lesson with an announcement of the recent campaign of the SK-II skin products, inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, and that has returned to the brand to a double figure growth.

Use advertising to reinforce memory

“Brands grow through mental availability, of the fact that they are easily remembered, and physical availability, which is in shops. Mental availability is housed in memory and is built through advertising.”.
Thus, Marc Pritchard began to talk about the fourth of his recommendations, according to which advertising campaigns must serve to store in the human brain brand words and images That later, and through successive messages, they lead to action. “A consistent and persistent advertising”he continued, “It helps build memories and recover them from memory, so that the brand is always in the top of the people.”
That objective, according to the P&G director, is achieved through long -distance campaigns, “What is also called communication platforms” and offered a definition of them: “The transformation, through creativity, of an insightful and memorable idea that expresses the benefits of the brand, its points of superiority and its recognizable assets, in all relevant channels and forms of communication.”

The long campaign of the H&S shampoo Based on the idea that the user of the product has no dandruff precisely because he uses it, it is the case that Pritchard used to illustrate this point:

“Consistency is fundamental”said the director of P&G, “But we tend to think that campaigns are spent. And the truth is usually the opposite. We get tired of campaigns long before consumers. We must have courage and discipline to maintain the consistency of your advertising.”

Build strong and lasting creative relationships

“The best advertising arises from the best relationships”Pritchard said to introduce the fifth and final of his lessons, and then stressed the importance he has for professionals in the brands in the marketing departments “Enjoy the joy of creativity, the discovery of human truths that can be transformed into messages that move people and enhance brands.”
He commented that the greatest satisfactions of his career have been the ones that has provided the work hand in hand with “The creative geniuses that have developed our great campaigns. They are the MVP, the” Most Valuable Partners “he added, “And the relationship with them is pure gold. Give your trust and magic will happen,”

As an example of that magic that is generated when the relationship reaches the ideal point, Pritchard alluded to the advertising of Old Spice And this announcement, created in Spain with the Burns agency, was one of those who showed as an example.

At a time when the industry is debated between algorithm pressure and the promise of artificial intelligence, Marc Pritchard recalled from Cannes Lions a timeless truth: The big brands are not only built with technology, but with humanity, consistency and craft. His message was a call to recover the essence of advertising as persuasive art, as an act of faith in creativity and as a discipline capable of generating trust, growth and permanence. Because, in the end, the brands that last are those that understand that the future is built with deep roots and lasting relationships.