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he would have to "moderate" his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be "more efficient" than the traditional media that usually eats the lion's share of P&G's ad budget.This is coming from the man who increased P&G's adspend by a staggering 24 percent over the two years through October 2011, even though sales rose only 6 percent in the same period.

Note that P&G's revenues were up 4 percent to $22 billion in the quarter but the company's costs for sales, general and administrative work were flat.

n the call, McDonald and his crew were asked about ad costs three different times. McDonald eventually said: As we've said historically, the 9% to 11% range [for advertising as a percentage of sales] has been what we have spent. Actually, I believe that over time, we will see the increase in the cost of advertising moderate. There are just so many different media available today and we're quickly moving more and more of our businesses into digital. And in that space, there are lots of different avenues available. In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient. One example is our Old Spice campaign, where we had 1.8 billion free impressions and there are many other examples I can cite from all over the world. So while there may be pressure on advertising, particularly in the United States, for example, during the year of a presidential election, there are mitigating factors like the plethora of media available.

Once upon a time, the hush-hush plans and special-access security clearance would have been about some cutting-edge sneaker technology: the discovery of a new kind of foam-blown polyurethane, say, or some other breakthrough in cushioning science. But the employees in this lab aren't making shoes or clothes. They're quietly engineering a revolution in marketing.

Nike Digital Sport, a new division the company launched in 2010.

On one level, it aims to develop devices and technologies that allow users to track their personal statistics in any sport in which they participate. Its best-known product is the Nike+ running sensor, the blockbuster performance-tracking tool developed with Apple (AAPL). Some 5 million runners now log on to Nike (NKE) to check their performance. Last month Digital Sport released its first major follow-up product, a wristband that tracks energy output called the FuelBand.

I spoke to Samantha Silberberg, integrated marketing manager, and Patrick McIntee, senior marketing manager, in The Economist Group’s integrated marketing department about the top

Advertisers are creating their own content in-house, and requesting it from media companies. So much of advertising today is about relinquishing control of brand image, but white-label content [content produced by media companies that advertisers rebrand to appear as their own] allows them to provide information that is valuable to readers while creating a positive brand image.

The truth is that many advertisers lack the time, skills, expertise and resources to produce effective white-label content. There is also still distrust from audiences towards companies that are not already content providers offering content.

The Year Ahead For...Social media

Social media is antifragile. It is thriving in a world of increasing technological development, complexity and uncertainty.

In 2013, social media will

Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, who recently stated that: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”

Strategic Consultancies Invade Marketing Agency Space

“All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”

Let’s be honest: You have no idea what’s going to happen to your industry. That’s why you build your organization into an engine of possibility.

Management theorist Henry Mintzberg makes a distinction between deliberate and emergent strategy. Deliberate strategy relies on senior leaders to set goals and develop plans and strategies to achieve them. Emergent strategy is a strategy that emerges from all over the company, over time, as the environment changes and the organization shifts and adapts to apply its strengths to a changing reality.

Emergent strategy is an organic approach to growth that lets companies learn and continually develop new strategies over time based on an ongoing culture of hypothesis and experimentation.

Jim refers to ideals as the 400 percent advantage. Why? Because the brands identified as The Stengel 50 by Millward Brown Optimor have outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of four over the past decade. Representing a wide variety of product and service categories they are united by one common factor; they operate in harmony with their ideals.

Ideals provide the “North Star,” the compass bearing by which these companies steer through good times and bad. Particularly noticeable from the chart comparing the Stengel 50 and the S&P 500’s performance over time is the rapid recovery of the Stengel 50 from the recession in 2008. These companies are not hindered by their ideals in tough times, they are helped by them.

Ideals probably have their strongest influence through the people who work on a brand, but can also have a positive effect with customers and consumers, not least in how their communications are received. In Grow, Jim reports work conducted by Millward Brown’s neuroscience practice, showing that people find the Stengel 50 brands to be more empathetic, more ideals-based and more memorable in what they stand for than their competitors. The end result, people are more likely to want to share the advertising with others.