After Corridor Test Market, Procter and Gamble to Launch "Future Friendly" Initiative Nationwide

National Ads Launch March 29

George Ford Cedar Rapids Gazette

The nation's largest consumer products maker is rolling out a new "green" program after test marketing it in Cedar Rapids.

Procter & Gamble, which operates two plants in Iowa City, will roll out its Future Friendly initiative nationwide on March 29. The program, tested in Cedar Rapids in April of 09, educates consumers on ways to reduce waste and save energy and water.

Glenn Williams, a spokesman for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, said Future Friendly will involve many of the company's most popular products like Tide, Pampers, PUR and Duracell.

"Right now, Tide, Pampers, PUR and Duracell are telling their own individual stories about sustainability," Williams said. "We felt that if we could scale this into a single cohesive message, there is a great opportunity to educate people about how they can reduce waste and save water and energy." Williams, who spent most of April in Cedar Rapids, said the community was selected as a test market because it fit a nationwide profile.

"When it comes to people's attitudes about sustainability, they fall into three buckets," he said. "About 17 percent are what we would call 'dark green' or willing to do anything in the name of sustainability. At the other end, there's a group of about 17 percent that are not involved in sustainability and may actually be offended by it." Williams said Procter & Gamble calls the remaining 66 percent the "sustainable mainstream." Price is the first consideration, performance or whether the product is a good value comes second and sustainability is last.

"When we looked at cities around the country, Cedar Rapids exactly mirrored those percentages," Williams said.

"We also wanted a place where people were blogging and had a good environmental awareness. We tested television commercials, in-store advertisements and package labels, we held public relations events, and we did some radio interviews." If you shopped at Hy-Vee, Menards, Sam's Club, Target, Walmart and Walgreens in April, you may have participated in the testing of Future Friendly.

Williams said the Cedar Rapids test convinced Procter & Gamble that the sustainable mainstream offered a good market for products identified as friendly to the environment.

"On March 29, television commercials will start running and a Future Friendly Web site will go live," he said.

"We also will use extensive social networking to make people aware of the program." More than 15,000 stores have agreed to participate in the initial phase of the Future Friendly program. Products labeled Future Friendly will start showing up on retailer shelves in early April.

Williams said the program is part of Procter & Gamble's pledge to provide conservation education to a minimum of 50 million households in the United States by the end of this year.