With social media becoming increasingly important and fewer people watching traditional commercials on television, what does

P&G need to do to maintain its strong brand images? Brand image is the impression in the consumers' mind of a brand's total personality. Brand image is developed over time through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme, and is authenticated through the consumers' direct experience. Fewer people are watching televisions worldwide, which translates to advertisements broadcasted on television having a smaller reach of potential consumers. This signals danger for Procter and Gamble as spends a huge proportion of its budget on advertising on televisions and reduced reach of customers might affect the development of P&Gs brand image. At the same time, internet users has more than doubled over the past six years (http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/19/world-internet-populationhas-doubled-in-the-last-5-years/). Various avenues of social media websites have also amassed popularity among the general public. A very good example is Facebook, with its number of users increasing from a mere 1 million in 2004 to about 1.01 billion as of 2012 (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-activeusers-facebook-over-years-214600186--finance.html). The opportunity of capturing these group of online consumers to increase its market share, coupled with the relatively lower costs of advertising products online has caused the Chief Executive Officer of P&G, Bob McDonald to consider moving their products to the digital realm (http://www.mmm-online.com/pg-signalsplans-to-cut-ad-costs-by-shifting-to-digital-media/article/225878/). The lower cost of advertising products online is due to videos created being able to be shared on social networking sites for free. This means that the only cost that has to be incurred would be the cost of designing and developing the advertisement itself. The importance of social media as a new platform of advertising P&Gs products is undeniable. However, that does not mean it is the end for television advertisements (http://blogs.forrester.com/tracy_stokes/12-03-19pg_brand_building_goes_digital_but_this_is_not_the_end_of_tv_ad vertising). People in certain countries like the United States are still on the average, spending a significant amount of time consuming traditional media (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-

movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsennumbers-article-1.1162285). This indicates worldwide decrease of average time spent on watching television does not mean the same for every single country. Hence, it would not be wise to phase television advertisements out entirely. A better suggestion would be to have advertisements on both traditional and social media. More specifically, advertisements should be still used in countries where the television viewership is still significant. In countries where television viewership has reduced to a new low, P&G can consider reducing the amounts spent on television advertisements. P&G should also set aside money to develop videos and posters that could be posted on social media websites and make them viral by introducing innovative measures. These advertisements should have the P&G logo so as to enable consumers to be aware of P&Gs product portfolio. P&G can also have contests like the implementation of a Facebook Like and Share contest whereby participants can create their own P&G poster, upload them on P&Gs facebook page and share them. The poster with the greatest number of likes and scores by the judges will receive a price. P&G also gains by having the poster as part of its marketing campaign. Another way for P&G to maintain its strong brand image would be to conduct exhibitions to enable consumers to have a better understanding of its history and current range of products. Increasingly, consumers are more inclined to purchase products that are produced through socially responsible methods and leveraging on this fact, P&G can have a campaign on environmental sustainability and research on more eco-friendly ways of producing their packaging and containers for their products so as to improve its brand image. For this, P&G can also liaise with non-profit organisations to sponsor them with their products in conducting the activities