Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) (NYSE: PG) is a global $50 billion (sales per year) consumer goods corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio that manufactures a wide range of consumer products. The company has approximately 106,000 employees.

History

Procter & Gamble was started in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble as a family-owned company in Cincinnati that manufactured soap and candles. William Alexander Procter, William Procter's son, served as president of the company from 1890 to 1907. William Cooper Procter, William Procter's grandson, lead the company from 1907 to 1930.

In January 2005 Procter & Gamble proposed acquiring The Gillette Company for an estimated $57 billion US dollars.

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Operations

Effective July 1, 2004, the company's operations are:

• Health, baby, and family care
• Household care
• Beauty care
• Chemicals
• Global operations

Brands

see also List of Procter & Gamble brands

Thirteen of P&G's brands have more than a billion dollars in sales: Pampers^†, Tide, Ariel, Always^†, Pantene, Charmin, Bounty^†, Iams, Crest, Folgers, Pringles, Head & Shoulders, Febreze^† and Downy. Other well known P&G brands include Ivory Soap, Oil of Olay, Max Factor, Bold, Daz, Flash, Hugo Boss, Zest, Fairy, Wella and Lacoste.

^† See "Brand details" for more information

Brand details

included here are brands that do not have their own articles

• Always is a brand of feminine hygiene products, including maxi pads, pantiliners, and feminine wipes, produced by Procter & Gamble. --See also Brand homepage; Category:Hygiene
  • Related Trademarks¹: Ultra Thins; Flexi-Wing; Maxis; Alldays; CleanWeave
• Bounty is a brand of paper towel sold in the United States and manufactured by Procter & Gamble. It's well-known advertising slogan is "The Quilted Quicker Picker-Upper...Bounty!" Procter & Gamble claims that the brand is more absorbent and larger than other brands of paper towel on the market. --See also Brand homepage
• Febreze is a household fabric odor freshener manufactured by Procter & Gamble, sold in North America and Europe. First introduced in test markets in 1996, the product has been sold in the United States since June 1998. Since its introduction, the brand has grown to include air fresheners in addition to fabric refreshers. --See also Brand homepage; Category:Cleaning products
• Pampers is a brand of disposable diaper marketed by Procter & Gamble worldwide. The main competitor in the United States is the Huggies brand. Also marketed under the Pampers brand is a disposable training pant bearing the sub-brand Easy Ups.
• Tampax is a brand of tampon produced by Procter & Gamble. --See also Brand homepage; Category:Hygiene

¹ Trademarks listed here have not been verified by consultation with a trademark registration agency.

Ethics

It is known that Procter & Gamble tests on animals every year.

Crisco

When William Procter and James Gamble started the company Procter & Gamble, they hired chemist E.C. Kayser and developed the process to hydrogenate cottonseed oil. The initial purpose was to make a cheaper substance to make candles than the expensive animal fats in use at the time. Electricity began to diminish the candle market, and since the product looked like lard, they began selling it as a food. This product became known as Crisco. Further success came from the marketing technique of giving away free cookbooks with every recipe calling for Crisco.

Procter & Gamble divested the Crisco (oil and shortening) and Jif (peanut butter) brands in a spinoff to their stockholders, followed by an immediate merger with The J. M. Smucker Co. in 2002.

Financials

Financial information for the prior organization of the company follows:

Television

P&G produced and sponsored the first radio soap operas in the 1930s. When the medium switched to television in the 1950s and 1960s, most of the new serials were sponsored and produced by the company. Two of their serials, As the World Turns and Guiding Light, are still on the air.

List of past serials produced by P&G:

• Search for Tomorrow
• The Edge of Night
• Another World
• Somerset
• Texas

P&G was also the first company to produce and sponsor a prime-time show, Shirley starring Shirley Jones, in 1979; it lasted 13 episodes.

Diversity

Procter & Gamble was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

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Logo controversy

The company received unwanted media publicity in the 1980s when an unfounded rumor spread that their previous corporate logo was a satanic symbol. The accusation is apparently based on a particular passage in the Bible, specifically Revelation 12:1, which states: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Since P&G's logo consists of a man's face on a moon surrounded by 13 stars, some have claimed that the logo is a mockery of the heavenly symbol alluded to in the aforementioned Biblical verse, and hence the logo is satanic. But the charge has been denied by company officials, and no evidence linking the company to the Church of Satan or any other occult organization has ever been presented.

• See also: Allegations of Satanism in popular culture

External links

• PG.com: Procter & Gamble web site
• Yahoo profile
• Straight Dope entry on the old logo controversy

Criticism

• PGinfo.net critical of P&G
• PG.com: Animal Alternatives (broken) apparently in response to PGinfo.net, see next link
• Battle of the Web Sites: PETA vs. Procter & Gamble
• McSpotLight.org: Procter & Gamble in the McSpotlight also critical

Print Sources

Soap opera: the inside story of Procter & Gamble, by Alecia Swasy. Publisher: New York : Times Books, c1993. ISBN: 0812920600 LCC: HD9999 Edition: $24.00 ($31.50 Canada)