“Over 40 years ago Procter & Gamble created the soap opera so we could explain the functional differences of our laundry products to consumers, Dina Howell, P&G’s general manager-marketing, global operations, told LSB Brandworks University 2008 participants. “Now we focus much more on emotional differences.”

But bringing those differences to life and turning them into sales in the global market will require new insights about both consumers and retailers.

“Consumers are very protective of who they allow into their homes,” Howell said. “They are more likely to believe their friends than the news media or Internet. They want experiences, services and value added. Brand building must inspire consumers to interact with a brand. Marketers must move from telling and selling to creating relationships.”

But how can you create a relationship with consumers when you’re selling shampoo or feminine hygiene products? One strategy P&G has used successfully is charity tie-ins. Doing well by doing good is an old story, but P&G has used the power of the Internet and social networks to expand the reach of their charities, persuade customers to get their friends involved, and link the causes directly to retail sales.

Pantene shampoo’s Beautiful Lengths project doesn’t just donate money for cancer research. It asks women to get personally involved with other women by donating their long hair to be made into wigs for women who have lost their hair to radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

P&G set up a separate Web site, beautifullengths.com, where women can sign up to join the Million-Inch Chain of donated hair featuring the Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank. They can post photos of their own hair, participate in a blog, connect to Facebook and MySpace sites, learn how to participate in a hair-cutting event and even get advice about how to grow long, beautiful hair. Of course, the site provides a handy form where they can email all of this wealth of information to a friend.

So far, Howell said, the project has collected 55,000 ponytails in three years and Pantene has donated 3,000 wigs to women with cancer.

She also described P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water program that provides clean water to more than 200,000 African children every day. P&G makes a donation to the program for every consumer purchase of a PUR water product, which is fairly traditional. But the program Web site also invites consumers who are moved by the message to spread the word by emailing friends.

In a slightly different twist, P&G’s Tampax Always product sponsors the Beinggirl.com Web site where young women can find advice about all things feminine. Many of the topics on the site stem directly from P&G’s extensive research with consumers.

But everything new isn’t happening on the Internet. Howell predicted that the new P.R.I.S.M. in-store measurement tool will change the way retailers and marketers approach marketing at the point of sale. P.R.I.S.M. has been developed by a consortium of 24 retailers and 12 manufacturers led by In-Store Marketing Institute and supported by Nielsen Media Research.

The system will track as consumers shop. “For the first time ever, we will know how many consumers were in each aisle at any given time and can compare that to sales. We will know the traffic by category and by store. Measurement in the retail space is the Holy Grail. Whoever cracks that code will have real competitive advantage,” Howell said.

“We know that about 70 percent of purchase decisions are made in the store. When we actually do marketing in store, that has a very high ability to influence people as they’re making a decision right at the shelf.”

“We are always looking for new ways of thinking about marketing to create deeper connections. Things that are relevant to consumers and on-equity for our brands.” Howell said. “The connections must be authentic, generous and experiential. We have to win their trust by delivering on promises that extent beyond the physical nature of brands. Whatever we do must be meaningful to the consumer.

“Figure out what you stand for and what you never stand for and never cross that line even if you give up short term sales,” Howell urged.

Howell leads P&G’s in-store “shopper marketing” strategy applying both consumer and retailer insights to enhance sales. She previously spent eight years developing P&G’s relationship with Wal-Mart in eleven countries, including doing “shopalongs” with consumers to see what they planned to buy and what they actually ended up buying.