Pritchard's Latest Progress At P&G; Bank of America Names Brand Safety Officer

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“Less Doing More”

In a speech at the ANA Media Conference, Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard shared new details on Procter & Gamble’s ongoing marketing revamp, which involved significant spending cuts with “several big players” by 20% to 50%. “We took more control, and what do you know, we reduced media waste by 20% and increased media reach by 10%,” he said, according to a transcript of his prepared remarks. It’s an approach P&G calls “less doing more.” P&G also wants agencies to recombine their creative and media offerings. To that end, Publicis paired its Saatchi & Saatchi creative group with media buying for the P&G baby care brand Pampers in the UK. The Wall Street Journal has more.

Mean Streets Of Programmatic

Bank of America created the role of “brand safety officer” to monitor the company’s online media spend, according to The Drum. Senior VP Lou Paskalis, speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, said, “It is a function of the marketer to hold to account the individual platforms to get better. To make more relevant experiences, we require high-quality and pristine data, and if so much of that data is co-opted because it is non-human traffic or agenda-driven, I am not getting the best signal.” More.

Log Me In, Scotty

AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile have revealed more details about the Mobile Authentication Taskforce, an initiative the four telcos announced in June to help users manage passwords across apps. At Mobile World Congress, the telcos said they plan to launch a platform this year to manage passwords with a verified phone number tied to a unique Device ID profile. The profile, which includes mobile phone number, IP address, SIM card attributes, account type and more, will only be accessible to select apps. The solution should “decrease fraud and identity theft, and increase trust in online transactions,” according to the GSM Association, a trade body for mobile operators. More.

The Carrot And The Stick

In December, Google announced a change to a 15-year-old AdWords program that provides $10,000 each in annual ad credits to 35,000 nonprofits. Starting this month, nonprofits that receive clicks on fewer than 5% of their ads will have the grants pulled. “Despite rushing to comply, several [nonprofits] said they could not do so in only two months and that their accounts may not get funded for March,” reports Reuters. A Google spokesperson says the company “revised our Ad Grants policies to help nonprofits be more effective with AdWords and improve the quality of their ads, which will lead to targeted awareness of their projects and mission.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!