For marketers wondering how long it would take for a gargantuan, old-fashioned firm to reinvent itself as a nimble marketing powerhouse - never mind whether it's even possible - the answer is five years.

At least, that's how long it took Procter & Gamble chairman/president/CEO A.G. Lafley and his senior management team, including global marketing officer Jim Stengel, to turn things around, taking the CPG firm from one which industry watchers said had "lost its way," to its current leading-edge state.

And it's been a successful transition

sales-wise too. The CPG giant, which is based in Cincinnati and has nearly 98,000 people working in almost 80 countries worldwide, has increased sales more than 40%, doubled profits, augmented its billion-dollar brand portfolio to 17 from 10 and delivered four consecutive years of double-digit earnings per share growth. That's not including the addition of the Gillette business. Oh yeah, and its stock price and market share have doubled.

Stengel, who was in Toronto on April 11, says it's all due to an "undercurrent of transformation" that has occurred internally. The bespectacled marketer delivered a speech, entitled "Marketing Unleashed: Empowering People to Drive Innovation and Results," to a packed house at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management Marketing Guru Lecture. He shared how the organization has laboured to put people - consumers, retailers, agency partners, and staff - at the centre of everything P&G does. It all started with the simple notion that the consumer is boss, he says. Then, the firm focused on what the 23-year vet of P&G, who was appointed to his post in 2001, calls "the first and second moments of truth" - being when the consumer chooses the product, and when he/she uses it.

To get there though, Lafley had to first ensure he had the right people in place. "It started with [him] setting the tone and culture," explains Stengel. "People shared that, but half the senior management changed. He put people in who got it."

Next up was an overhaul of the firm's operational structure and processes. Walls were torn down and customer teams were created, so that marketing-trained folks could work side by side with sales, IT, and so on. For example, there are currently 200 marketing staff on retail teams at P&G offices globally, says Stengel, whereas there were less than 20 dedicated to those groups six years ago.

Also during this internal revolution, P&G's research methodologies were re-examined. Gone is the clinical environment that positioned marketers as "observers;" in its place are programs that bring marketers much closer to consumers. Such "consumer immersion experiences," as Stengel calls them, for instance, include marketers in Mexico toiling at small shops in low-income areas for a week-long period, in order to get a first-hand look at how customers shop.

And in the U.S., Iams SVP research and development Diane Hirakawa has her staff conduct in-home use studies, where they can see how owners interact with their pets. What they discovered is that often owners will supplement meals (although they haven't mentioned that in more traditional research settings), and that children often impact feeding habits. The Iams marketing team also volunteers at an animal rescue shelter to understand the challenges of caretakers.