Procter & Gamble: Floating Ivory Soap, Radio Soap Operas and Silk Pampers

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Procter & Gamble began in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1837, when English candle maker William Procter and Irish soap maker James Gamble, who had married sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris, were pushed into partnership by their father-in-law Alexander Norris so they would stop competing for the same animal fats and wood ashes. Sales reached $1 million by the late 1850s, and Civil War contracts to supply the Union Army with soap and candles sent soldiers home with a national brand preference. Ivory soap, which floated in murky rivers and tubs, arrived in the 1880s, and in 1887 grandson William Arnett Procter introduced profit sharing for workers. In the 1930s Ivory's sponsorship of radio serials gave the soap opera its name, and the company went on to produce shows such as Guiding Light and As the World Turns. Tide, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent, launched in 1946, and Pampers disposable diapers followed in 1961.

The $57 billion purchase of Gillette in 2005 made P&G larger than Unilever. Later decades brought the 1980 recall of Rely tampons after a CDC report linked them to toxic shock syndrome, years of PETA campaigns that ended in a 1999 pledge to limit animal testing and $275 million for alternatives, a 2011 EU fine of more than 211 million euros for a washing powder cartel with Unilever, and a 2016 Amnesty International report linking a palm oil supplier to child labor and forced labor. Its 2017 ad The Talk won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix and an Emmy while police groups called it anti-cop, and Gillette's 2019 ad The Best Men Can Be became one of the most disliked videos on YouTube. In 2014 the company dropped or sold about 100 brands to focus on its 65 most profitable lines.

• In 2022 Ukraine's National Agency for Prevention of Corruption labeled P&G an international sponsor of war for keeping a Gillette plant and a toiletries plant running in Russia.
• Gillette took an $8 billion write-down in 2019, which the company attributed to currency swings, shaving clubs and men growing beards rather than the ad.
• P&G stopped producing soap operas in 2010 and is returning to television in 2025 with Beyond the Gates, plus a vertical video drama called The Golden Pear Affair for its Native brand.
• Pringles went to Kellogg's and dozens of beauty brands to Coty, and in 2023 the company began cutting the bottom 25 percent of its product variations, or SKUs.
• Under incoming CEO Shailesh Jejurikar, P&G is moving toward premium goods such as Pampers made with silk fibers in China as birth rates decline.