 We felt that this was an opportunity to come into the epicenter of creativity and see how we can raise our creative game. Thank you Mark for joining us. So how has your can been so far? So far so good. We like to view ourselves as the hardest working company in the festival. We come here with a contingent of top talent so they can learn, get inspired, and help us raise the creative bar to the next level. If I'm not mistaken, you were one of the first kind of marketable organizations to actually come to Canada. That's right. Significant numbers. That's right. That's right. We was almost, I guess, close to 20 years ago when we came here for the first time because we felt that this was an opportunity to come into the epicenter of creativity and see how we can raise our creative game. The focus is on creativity. But the thing that we, as much as we are celebrating the craft, there is also the impact that it has. And so, you know, this is creativity with a goal in mind. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of the role that creativity plays in your organization. What are you driving to achieve? The products that we offer to the world's consumers are everyday household and personal care, cleaning health and hygiene products that almost everybody uses. So in a large way, all of our consumers in the world are potential consumers. And so what we do creativity as is a way to reach all those potential consumers, identify what each of their unique needs are, and then use creativity to be able to communicate what the product is, what it does, why it's better. How, tap into an insight that that consumer will recognize, say, you're really speaking to me, and then be so effective that it makes the market bigger. It's creativity that grows markets. So when markets are bigger, that means what you're doing is you're attracting more people to the market, you're offering them a better performing product. Hopefully they will use more of it, but in a responsible way. And when you grow markets, all boats rise. So that's, creativity is core to our entire superior strategy, a superiority strategy, and delivering a superior consumer experience. So creativity that grows markets, that, I like that a lot. You actually use the word insight, actually, in the lead up to that, and I think it's true that for creativity that the start point is an insight and a strong insight. One of the challenges in a lot of your brands are global brands. And so trying to find an insight that resonates globally without it being the lowest common denominator is kind of a huge challenge. How do you go about finding insight? Every market in which we compete on every single category, we are out connecting with consumers in their homes and stores, websites, e-commerce, wherever it may be. We even have a lot of connected homes that have measurement sensors. So we understand the actual consumption behavior, and then we have vast amounts of research data. But it's very, very focused on the local consumer, a good example of this. In the dishwashing, automatic dishwasher, do you have a dishwasher? I do. Okay, good. All right. So how often do you use it? Every day. Every day. It's my job in our house. You're perfect. So that's great, but not everybody does that. So 70% of the households in the United States have a dishwasher. They're used only about two to three times a week. 20% of people don't use it at all. So what we tried to do is say, okay, why is that? Doug Deeb, they felt that dishwashers waste water. So we created a new idea called do it every night. Cascade, do it every night. When the dishwasher every night, you're already on this. But that idea then helped bust the myths that a dishwasher uses more water than hand washing. Turns out, a dishwasher uses four gallons of water per cycle. Washing by hand, four gallons of water every two minutes. So they took that unique insight and translated it. They tried that insight over in the UK with Ferry Dishwasher, which is the auto dishwasher there. Very similar. 80% of households have it, two to three uses a week. The issue there was energy. Energy was a bigger issue because energy prices were up. People are very, very cognizant about energy and emissions. So and what they focused on was that on water, they focused on energy through turning to the short cycle. So turning to the one hour short cycle versus the three to four hours. And what they found is that product works better and it also helps you reduce 33% of your energy bill per use. So that became more appealing. Great example of different markets, similar idea, you want clean dishes. You also want to make sure that you're doing it in a way that's potentially better for the environment. But they found it in a different way through each country based on the insights. It's what I found fascinating about that insight, particularly as you talked about consumers in the UK and energy prices, that demonstrated a sense of empathy, like an understanding of actually this matters to our consumers, I mean to put myself in their shoes. How do you kind of ensure that all of your marketing is as empathetic? We spend, we really just love connecting with consumers. Our job is to make sure that we make their lives better a little bit every day. And it is one of the most noble jobs in the world when you think about it because these are products you use every single day. And so you'd be amazed at the passion commitment that the people at P&G have for the consumers that we're serving. So then when we understand and then extract these insights, we're like, wow, okay, this is great. We're really going to make people's lives better if we do this. One thing, I'll give you an example on Pantene. Pantene's a brand that in Brazil, what they found is in Brazil, they weren't appealing to a large part of the population. The brand was not doing very well. Part of it is they looked at the makeup market and they said, makeup is 55% black and brown. We're not even representing the black and brown community in there and we're not representing their hair. Curly hair in Brazil is a huge part. So what they did is they did a whole campaign on really celebrating curly hair. All sorts of different curly hair. And it's a beautiful campaign and the business has gone up like that. In Europe, they've looked across and said, okay, we're going to celebrate Caucasian hair, Asian hair, black hair, Hispanic hair. Gray hair, women in menopause, we're going to focus on Lucy Edwards, who is a influencer who's vision impaired, who has the feeling of hair. And then the LGBTQ plus community focus on the fact that hair is a unique and meaningful expression of identity. So we have this campaign called Hair Has No Gender. So deep empathy, same thing. And what it has done for that brand is that it has appealed to all consumers, each individual consumer in a unique way. It has built the brand and it has built the market. And that's what creativity is all about. And that's what human insight, empathy, that then allows you to serve all on each. So it's insight, inclusiveness, as well as impact. All three of those things are what you need to do to reset the bar, to drive creativity that grows markets. So that hair example is a great example of talking to all people, but there is a unique relevance to each. Exactly. There is some work that, I think it's Old Spice, the writer's room, I'd love you to talk a little bit more about that. I feel like... Old Spice is such a great example. A brand that was growing and doing well, part of the problem though is that when we looked at... When the team looked at the individual, each of the individual groups, they found, we're not growing among black men. Why is that? We have representation in our advertising, so why is that happening? When they dug deep and went deep into the insights, they found that, first of all, black men really care about their skin, and so it's deeply care about their skin, do a lot to take care of their skin. So it was this truer insight about them, and that is true for everyone. And then what they found is that there's this tension between men and women in some cases on using your personal care products or any product, so that could create some creative tension. And then they looked at the humor, and they said, we need to make this humor more sophisticated and more real, so black men and women look at it and say, okay, they understand that. So that's where they got Gabrielle Dennis, Dionne Cole, Millison Shelton, who's a black director, and created the Men Have Skin Too campaign. And that was a breakthrough. And then they've worked with Kevin Hart and Kevin Hart on Heartbeat Media, LOL Studios, to create these funny sketches. And the writer's room was a brilliant one, because it was one of their writers whose girlfriend had been using his Fiji scent product, and he was angry about that. So they did a role play, and it was just, you look at this and use it. It's so funny, but the product is woven into this perfectly. So you remember Old Spice, and it's been very, very successful. We often talk about representation as sort of on a hierarchy, because as you talked about, there was black men in the advertising of Old Spice, and I remember it. But that's just the base level. With the writer's room, you kind of went into this understanding of the culture that's nuanced as a consumer. That's it. You get it. You start with representation, good start, then you go to relevance, which is insights and nuances. Then you go, when you create then that work, which is very nuanced and it's funny, it's funny to everyone, very, very true to the black community. And then put it on Heartbeat Studios, that's relevant advertising on resonant media. You have the recipe for really good growth. So there is one campaign that I'd love to just touch on, which is one of the great examples, but this one was around period protection, and I've worked in the category. So I feel partly responsible for some of the myths and misinformation that you were pushing up against. I'd love you to just talk a little bit about that work, because I found it really culturally relevant. Well, period protection is a big market, big opportunity, but it is fraught with misinformation and myths, and it's different in every country. So if you go back again to our earlier discussion about insights, go to India, for example. In India, one out of four girls miss school, one out of five girls miss school, 23 million girls a year miss school during their period. And a lot of that is due to lack of information, lack of education. So the creative idea that the team put together was, let's educate, not just the girls, let's educate their moms, because what they learned is that if the moms aren't educated, then the girls won't be educated and they won't go to school. So they created this program called this film and program called The Missing Chapter. It was a missing chapter that wasn't in the education system, that wasn't in the books that talked about menstrual and period protection and menstrual education. Beautiful film, really a very, very, very, very powerful, won a Grand Prix last year. And importantly, it's up for a creative effectiveness award this year, and we love that, because it grew the market, it changed the nature of the education in the system, and they even changed the education system, they put the chapter in. So that's a very impactful piece of work. The other one is Always, Always is a brand, there's a product called FlexFoam that is the peer protection brand made for anybody and everybody, because the insight, particularly in Latin America and the U.S., is that the wrong size pad is often used, based on body shape, size, so you need to help people understand how to be able to use the right size pad for the best protection. And one of the most amazing examples of growth in terms of education was Tempax, because tampons are a high performing product and highly misunderstood. So we worked with Amy Schumer to do some very funny education. I would ask you to go take a look at it, particularly look at one which we showed, which is the gynecologist visit, where you just go through myth after myth after myth, and it helps people overcome the myths in a humorous way, because the team says, if we can laugh about it, we can learn about it. And it's so important, because these are tough subjects, you know it, they're tough subjects in taboo and many places, so you have to find very creative ways to be able to overcome them. And it's been great for this business. The team is amazing. It's funny, I used to, many years ago, I worked on the launch of UbiCotex, which is when I was, yes. Oh yes, oh my, you were right. And we went right at the myth. Oh, and you did a great job. I tell you, you did a great job on that. That was really good. And it was, because I was literally the father of a daughter who was literally about to start a business. I was really personally invested, but the funny thing is, I learned so much about millennial girls, or Gen Z girls and periods, and then my wife calls me, she's like, Saffy, you started a period. I was like, I am so ready. Am I ready? Literally, I left the office, I ran home, and I got back, and I was like, Saffy, stand, and she went, I don't want to talk about it, I'm just slammed the door, and that seemed to be it. Exactly. All that knowledge. I couldn't use it. That's why if you look at the Amy Schumer kind of college, it's just great. She just goes, she just knocks every one of them down in a hilarious way. So what you're articulating, and I like it that you actually didn't use the word, but it was purposeful. Like, there was purpose behind this, but at the same time, it grew the business. Yeah. And it's an important point, because what I think brands, what they can do is they can make a difference by focusing on what they do best, and what they do best is a superior offering, a superior product, how it's better, how it works, education makes it better. So what it does is it improves lives by just delighting the consumer on an everyday product, and it grows the market. That's what we do. And it's a heavy lift for household care and personal care product. Very heavy lift, but one of the biggest creative challenges is to make this kind of work interesting and useful and grow the business. But that is what we do. That's what we try to do at least. One last question. This is about looking forward, but I'm not interested in technology because there's a lot of that conversation. Going back to creativity, and I'm curious about kind of if we think ahead to can in 10 years' time, what would creativity look like? What will our canvases be? I think our canvases will continue to grow like they have in the last 10 years. They will continue to expand to different ways that we can engage with people, and who knows, based on the fact that technology exponentially grows every 18 months, it's going to be some amazing ways in which we can engage, probably going to be far more experiential, far more useful, far more precise, far more individual. But the components of what makes successful creativity will be the same in my view and in our view. Because they've been the same for hundreds of years, or at least 187 years, which we've been around for. Because you need to understand that consumer insight. What's the job that we need to do that a product needs to do? What's the problem that needs to get solved? What is the product? How does it work? How does it make it better? Why is it better? And then what's the benefit that you receive? I think those components will stay the same. You just need to apply them to the different parts of the creative canvas. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The approach is consistent, the execution will evolve. Yes. Perfect. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. It was a pleasure.