Bill Brace: “Travel retail for us is a hugely important category.”In August, William (Bill) Brace was appointed Vice President Global Market Development & Operations for P&G Prestige. His is a big remit, overseeing the go-to-market strategy for the entire P&G Prestige portfolio of fragrances, skin care and colour cosmetics.
At last month’s TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes, Brace sat down with The Moodie Report to discuss the group’s 2012 performance, the strategy for travel retail, and his key objectives in his new role.
“The key priority for us is to continue the strong momentum in the channel,” Brace begins. “It’s been growing double digits for the last couple of years, and we really want to extend the strategies that are working, which for us centre around innovation; those big initiatives that have the potential to grow not only our brand, but the category in general.”
Gucci Guilty, The One Sport from Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci Première, and Boss Bottled Sport have been among the highlights in 2011/2012.
“The second strategy is about driving and building successful brands for the long run,” notes Brace. “That’s in our DNA as a company, and the way it translates in this category is by going beyond new initiatives, to grow our base business and our classics.
“In some cases we have products that have been out there 12-15 years, which is a long time in fragrance terms. Properties like Hugo Man, for instance, which was launched in 1995, yet is still an incredibly vital franchise which, with the launch of Just Different about a year ago, we’ve managed to double. It shows that there’s still a lot of life left in these sub-brands.”
He adds: “We focus on what’s new, but also on the whole brand. That’s particularly important for a channel like travel retail, where you don’t have as much opportunity to shout about a lot of different things. You have to focus on the brands and the lines that can make the biggest difference, be the most productive and are the clearest to consumers and shoppers.”
Gucci Première has got off to a flying start in 2012The third key strategy for P&G is all about retail partnerships. “We have just received the number one ranking from the Advantage survey, from all the P&C companies covered, which is a really gratifying achievement,” Brace revealed. “It’s been driven by our intention to make every store a growth engine for our business and our retail partners; to really drive total category growth, in addition to growth of our brands and of our business; to put the shopper at the centre of everything we do; and to identify what some of those insights are that drive the category forward.
“It also goes beyond just us seeing ourselves as successful; this is about retailers telling us that we are their preferred partner for growth.”
And in growth terms travel retail, Brace maintains, has a big role to play. “Travel retail for us is a hugely important category, on more than one level,” he underlines. “It’s one of our biggest channels; what’s also very important is just how fast it’s growing, which is hugely appealing and important to us. We don’t often see figures anywhere close to that level of growth across our other channels and other customers.
“We will therefore continue to put travel retail at the very forefront of our thinking, our strategies and our plans to grow our brands and our business.”
Hence the reason for Brace’s visit to Cannes. “This is an important opportunity for me to meet some of our key customers, our key distribution partners, and learn from them,” he notes. “I want to know how they see our business, and what they think our opportunities are, so I can incorporate that into my thinking and my agenda in the new role.”
Building on fragrance foundations
Historically, P&G Prestige has been known first and foremost as a fragrance group. That is slowly changing, as the brand’s flagship SK-II skincare franchise goes from strength to strength, and its Dolce & Gabbana make-up continues to grow.
“We’ve got huge opportunities to continue to build our portfolio and some of our brands in terms of skincare and cosmetics,” agrees Brace. “SK-II has been a phenomenal success for us, and in the past year has crossed some really significant milestones. Externally, it’s become the biggest skin care brand in Asia; internally it’s become a billion-dollar brand for us and continues to show incredible signs of vitality, via consistent double-digit growth.”
Capitalising on the success of Skyfall with the first James Bond men’s fragrance
Billion-dollar brand: SK-II has recently branched out into the men’s skincare marketHe continues: “We’ve just expanded the brand into men’s skin care; it has been a very successful launch. We’ve also introduced some colour cosmetics in selected Asian markets. In short, SK-II is a brand with a ton of momentum, and we think a ton of legs to really extend into other categories.”
Within colour, Dolce & Gabbana make-up also offers exciting potential, according to Brace, although he refuses to be drawn on when exactly the collection might make its travel retail debut.
“It’s still in the early phases, but we are really excited about it,” he confirms. “It’s in about seven countries right now – about 150 doors – but the growth has been fantastic, we’ve been doing triple-digits. The consumer response has been so encouraging. So even though we have a small footprint at this point, we already have doors where we are the number one cosmetics brand, and elsewhere we are seeing it move into the top five, if not top three, rankings.”
Bringing brands to life
Digital communication is already playing a key role for P&G Prestige, both in terms of promoting brands and building relationships with consumers.
“It’s absolutely a game-changing phenomenon,” Brace declares. “We’re using it to put a lot more emphasis on how we bring our brands to life, and create awareness and excitement for our brands and products.”
P&G Prestige is committed to building successful, long-term brandsFor example, to support the launch of Hugo Just Different, there was an interactive YouTube video, which allowed consumers to create a customised story according to how they interacted with the video.
“Executions like that don’t just drive awareness, they foster consumer engagement,” Brace explains. “It spawns a whole lot of other good things for your brand, including a lot of social media activity and word of mouth. So we’re doing more and more of that, and getting more and more sophisticated with some of the programmes that we are creating.”
Brace also singles out the Gucci Guilty launch, and the corresponding application that allowed consumers to fully immerse themselves in the Gucci Guilty universe, and even access special footage. “Digital allows us to give people an opportunity to engage with the brand, on a level that wouldn’t be possible with more traditional media,” he concludes.
Seeking out the top spot
In Cannes last year Director Global Distributors & Travel Retail Murat Akyildiz discussed P&G Prestige’s goal to become the leader in the beauty business, an ambition Brace confirms is still very much at the forefront of the group’s aspirations.
“The goal is still the same; it hasn’t changed,” he observes. “If anything, we are encouraged and emboldened by our progress in the last year. We have been growing ahead of the category, so we feel that we are building share and being disproportionately successful in the face of a very worthy set of competitors. We are on track for our vision, although there is still a lot more to achieve in terms of extending and accelerating our results.”
“Travel retail is one of our biggest channels…We will therefore continue to put travel retail at the very forefront of our thinking, our strategies and our plans to grow our brands and our business.”Bill Brace
Vice President Global Market Development & Operations
P&G Prestige“Growing ahead of share is a clear business objective,” adds Akyildiz, “and we need strong partnerships to help us do that. Hence for us the Advantage recognition is very meaningful, as it comes from an unbiased survey, which covers all the other companies in our industry. It encourages us, but also puts a great responsibility on us to work even harder to maintain, if not strengthen, our achievements.”
To help with this, P&G Prestige has come up with the SAGE (Store As Growth Engine) concept. “We try to bring this to life with another concept we call 10 3 1,” Akyildiz explains. “It concerns making sure we win at 10m, 3m and 1m. The 10m target is about how we stand out – essential in terms of growing the category and bringing the brand universe to life. Next we have to seduce the shopper at 3m, and then finally get them to select us at 1m. Those three elements have different components, executed in close co-operation with our partners.”
Akyildiz concludes: “This is obviously a journey on which we will continue to progress, but so far putting all these elements together has helped us to get this external recognition, of which we are very proud.”
