Employees at Procter & Gamble and Google are learning what it's like to walk in each other's shoes as part of a temporary staff swap the companies initiated to spur innovation within their own organizations, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The idea for the swap came out of discussions by P&G's former global marketing officer Jim Stengel and with Tim Armstrong, the executive responsible for Google's ad sales and operations in the Americas.
P&G is, like many other companies, trying to get hold of where online fits within their marketing strategy. Seeing that generations of American consumers are growing up and spending more time online than in front of the television made developing a better understanding essential.
"We're trying to open the eyes of our brand managers," said Stan Joosten, digital innovation manager at P&G.
The gulf between the two groups of employees is real, with each having to learn the "language of the other."
Google employees could not understand how an event to unveil a new Pampers brand did not bring in "motherhood" bloggers to spread the news online.
For their parts, P&G employees could not believe that a Google employee didn't grasp the significance of the signature color orange in a Tide brand meeting.
P&G staffers perked up when Denise Chudy, a sales-team leader at Google, showed them that the search term "coupons" had grown 50 percent over the past year.
Catherine Duval-Russell, a marketing manager at P&G, wrote on an in-house blog that tracking searches were some of the "best learning" she received while at Google.
According to The Wall Street Journal report, one of the great successes to come out of the collaboration was a spoof campaign on YouTube of P&G's "Talking Stain" ad launched during last year's Super Bowl. The campaign was successful enough that P&G plans to use consumer-generated ads again in the future.
Mr. Stengel, who recently left P&G to start his own firm, said a campaign like that "never would have happened" previously at the company.
Discussion Questions: What do you think of the employee swap program between Procter & Gamble and Google? Is this something that has application with other firms? What needs to be done to make this sort of exercise work for all involved?