Marketing Briefing: What recent earnings for P&G, Unilever and Coke say about where the industry is headed

While marketers and agency executives — and, let’s face it, the country — wait with bated breath for the outcome of this election, it’s worth taking a look back at the recent earnings results for some of the world’s largest advertisers. We can’t know what we don’t know. But we can distract ourselves with current and evolving marketing trends.

We’ve read those corporate tea leaves to decipher some of the marketing trends and potential headwinds that executives at Unilever, Procter & Gamble and The Coca-Cola Company detailed during their earnings calls. For one, long-term growth strategies are being stuck to, while personalization is emphasized as a means of trying to stand out.

Procter & Gamble

P&G’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard detailed his view of getting back to basics — one of the major trends for marketers this year — as a way to drive growth for the consumer packaged goods behemoth at the annual ANA conference in October. The focus on continued growth was also clear in the company’s earnings for fiscal Q1 2025, during which P&G’s chief financial officer Andre Schulten noted that the company saw “solid top line growth across roughly 85% of the business” — seemingly a positive harbinger for the rest of its fiscal year.

That being said, the maker of Tide, Old Spice and Pampers, to name a few brands, noted that sales in Greater China dropped 15% in Q1. “We will continue to push all levers in our control to offset headwinds largely not in our control,” Schulten said during the company’s Oct. 18th earnings call.

As for the balance of 2025, P&G continues “to expect the environment around us to remain volatile and challenging from input costs to currencies to consumer, competitor and retailer and geopolitical dynamics,” said Schulten. Despite those challenges, he noted that the company will maintain its organic sales growth target of 3% to 5%.

Unilever

Finding ways to drive future growth was also a recurring theme during Unilever’s earnings call on Oct. 24. The company said it is continuing to implement its growth action plan, a 10-point plan it debuted a year ago to “transform Unilever’s performance,” CEO Hein Schumacher said.

Unilever beat Q3 expectations, nabbing its fourth consecutive quarter of growth for the maker of brands like Dove, Hellmann’s, Knorr, and others.

“Growth in the quarter was once again driven by our power brands, which were up 5.4%, including 4.3% volume growth,” said Schumacher. “And these brands are undoubtedly benefiting from increased focus and investments we are putting behind them under our growth action plan.”

He continued: “We are starting to see the positive impact from scaling fewer but bigger innovations across our markets.” Schumacher also noted that the company’s growth action plan was “not a quick fix,” but that it would take time to unlock “Unilever’s full potential.”

The Coca-Cola Company

Similar focus on long-term plans to push the company to greater growth seems to be a common theme. Throughout Coca-Cola’s Q3 earnings call on Oct. 23, during which the company reported results that beat expectations despite being virtually flat year over year, CEO James Quincey noted that the company continues to push on its “refreshed marketing model” which is “integrating digital, live and retail experiences to connect with consumers in unique and personalized ways.”

“The Olympics and Paralympics games are a great example,” said Quincey. “We featured our total beverage portfolio, launched fan zones and festivals and leveraged social channels to increase connections with athletes. Many of our brands offered customized packaging, and our system activated tailored points-of-sale displays with customers around the world.”

With that approach, Coca-Cola brands were “activated with customers across 65 markets, featured nearly 250 influencers and demonstrated positive engagement scores across our portfolio,” said Quincey.

Looking ahead, Coca-Cola anticipates that its more agile approach to its marketing model will help the company adapt messaging. “If there’s high inflation, there’s likely to be a big push on affordability and a big shift in the marketing and innovation mix,” said Quincey. “So there’s a set of kind of framework approach depending on what our problem is occurring in the marketplace.”

“We’re pursuing an all-weather strategy,” Quincey added. “Some years, the headwinds will be greater than others, but we’re going to pursue a strategy to get over the line in terms of trying to drive some growth.”

By the Numbers

We’ve seen advertisers across a range of industries, especially grocers, investing in loyalty schemes to entice shoppers to return again and again. Many of those organizations have used that investment to increase their competitiveness and build up a better picture of their customer base.

But, according to a recent survey of 112 marketers by the Association of National Advertisers and fraud prevention company HUMAN Security, that’s opened up many brands to a greater risk of fraud, with 33% of marketers surveyed saying their brands had been subject to fraudulent behavior.

The report highlighted a range of other concerns marketers had about their loyalty schemes:

• 55%: The proportion of marketers who said they struggled to differentiate their loyalty scheme from the ones offered by competitors.
• 53%: The percentage of marketers who said their biggest loyalty itch was determining how frequently to message customer members.
• 39%: How many marketers said they struggled to measure return on investment in their loyalty program. — Sam Bradley

Quote of the week

“It seems like we’ve replicated the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy when it comes to DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) in the advertising and marketing industry.”

— Lisette Arsuaga, co-founder of AIMM, said in an email to Digiday, when asked about the impact of DE&I fallout on the marketing landscape.

What we’ve covered

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• Digiday+ Research: A look at brands’ 2024 holiday marketing plans
• Marketing execs believe deeper relationships, understanding influencers can avoid potential backlash in politics