Procter & Gamble

The Procter & Gamble Company
Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: PG; DJIA component; S&P 500 component
Industry	Consumer goods
Founded	31 October 1837, Cincinnati, Ohio
Founder	William Procter; James Gamble
Headquarters	Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Key people	Shailesh G. Jejurikar (President and chief executive officer); Jon R. Moeller (Executive chairman)
Products	Cleaning agents, personal care, oral care, grooming, baby and feminine care
Employees	Approximately 108,000
Website	pg.com

The Procter & Gamble Company, usually abbreviated P&G, is an American consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is among the largest such companies in the world and owns a portfolio of brands that between them are used by a very large proportion of households on every continent.

The company was founded on 31 October 1837 by William Procter, an English candlemaker, and James Gamble, an Irish soapmaker, who had married sisters and were persuaded by their father-in-law to combine their businesses. It was, from the beginning, a company that made things out of animal fat: candles and soap were the same raw material differently processed.

P&G reports through five segments. Fabric and Home Care, at 36 per cent of 2024 revenue, includes Tide, Ariel, Downy, Gain, Cascade, Dawn, Fairy, Febreze, Mr Clean and Swiffer. Baby, Feminine and Family Care, at 24 per cent, includes Pampers, Luvs, Always, Tampax, Bounty, Charmin and Puffs. Beauty, at 18 per cent, includes Head and Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Pantene, Rejoice, Olay, Old Spice, Safeguard, Secret, SK-II and Native. Health Care, at 14 per cent, includes Crest, Oral-B, Metamucil, Neurobion, Pepto-Bismol and Vicks. Grooming, at 8 per cent, includes Gillette, Venus and Braun.

The company's influence on business practice extends well beyond what it sells. It invented brand management, pioneered consumer research, effectively created broadcast advertising sponsorship, from which the term soap opera derives, and its marketing organisation has been the training ground for a very large number of chief executives across the consumer industry.

History

Candles and soap, 1837 to 1890

William Procter emigrated from England and James Gamble from Ireland, both settling in Cincinnati, a city whose position on the Ohio River and whose enormous pork-packing industry, which gave it the name Porkopolis, made it the natural place to render animal fat.

The two men married the Norris sisters, Olivia and Elizabeth, and their father-in-law Alexander Norris pointed out that they were competing for the same raw material and should instead combine. Procter and Gamble was formed on 31 October 1837 with capital of US$7,192.24.

The company grew steadily and was transformed by the Civil War, when it won contracts to supply soap and candles to the Union Army, which both provided volume and introduced its products to soldiers who took the brands home.

Ivory, introduced in 1879, was the first product to make the company nationally known. Its distinguishing property, that it floated, arose from air whipped into the mixture, and the frequently repeated story that this was a manufacturing accident discovered when a worker left a mixer running has been questioned by company archivists, who found laboratory notebooks indicating deliberate development. Its advertised purity, "99 and 44/100 per cent pure", derived from an independent analysis commissioned by the company and is among the longest-running advertising claims in history.

The introduction of electric lighting destroyed the candle business, which P&G exited in 1920, and the company's decision to concentrate on soap rather than to defend candles is the first of several occasions on which it abandoned a declining core.

Brands, science and advertising, 1890 to 1945

P&G advertised in full-page magazine advertisements from the 1880s, and by 1921 was a substantial international corporation with an annual advertising budget of approximately US$1 million, then an extraordinary sum.

Two institutional innovations of this period have been more influential than any product.

Brand management, introduced in 1931 following a memorandum by Neil McElroy, then a young advertising manager, proposed that each brand should have a dedicated team responsible for its entire performance, competing with the company's other brands as well as with outside competitors. The argument was that a brand neglected within a portfolio will decline, and that internal competition produces better results than internal coordination. The structure was adopted across the consumer industry and remains the standard organisational form. McElroy later became chief executive and then United States Secretary of Defense, where he oversaw the creation of what became DARPA.

Broadcast sponsorship began with radio serials sponsored by P&G soap brands from 1933, of which Ma Perkins, sponsored by Oxydol, was the first significant. The company eventually produced the programmes itself through Procter and Gamble Productions, and the genre took the name soap opera from the sponsorship. P&G continued to produce daytime serials, including As the World Turns, Guiding Light and Another World, into the twenty-first century, Guiding Light running from 1937 on radio and 1952 on television until 2009, the longest-running drama in broadcast history.

The company also made an early and sustained commitment to consumer research, employing market researchers from 1924 and conducting systematic interviewing on a scale nobody else attempted.

Tide, launched in 1946 and developed during the war, was the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent and made soap-based laundry products obsolete within a decade. It remains the company's largest brand.

Expansion and diversification, 1945 to 2000

The post-war decades brought international expansion and a very large number of product introductions, many of which created categories.

Crest, launched in 1955, was the first toothpaste with fluoride demonstrated to reduce cavities, and received the endorsement of the American Dental Association in 1960, which transformed its sales and which was the first such endorsement of a consumer product.

Pampers, introduced in 1961 after development by the chemical engineer Victor Mills, who was reportedly motivated by changing his grandchildren's cloth nappies, created the disposable nappy category and is now among the largest brands in the world.

Head and Shoulders in 1961, Bounce, Downy, Folgers through acquisition in 1963, Pringles in 1968 and Always in 1983 followed.

Acquisitions accelerated from the 1980s: Richardson-Vicks in 1985, bringing Vicks, NyQuil and Oil of Olay; Noxell in 1989, bringing Noxzema and Cover Girl; Max Factor in 1991; Tambrands, bringing Tampax, in 1997; and, in 2001, Clairol from Bristol-Myers Squibb for approximately US$5 billion.

The period also produced the company's most serious product failure. Rely, a superabsorbent tampon introduced in 1980, was associated with a sharp increase in toxic shock syndrome, a rare and sometimes fatal condition caused by staphylococcal toxins. P&G withdrew it in September 1980 in a recall generally regarded as having been handled responsibly, and the episode changed the regulation of tampon absorbency and labelling permanently.

Gillette and the portfolio reduction, 2000 to 2015

A. G. Lafley became chief executive in June 2000 after the abrupt removal of Durk Jager, whose 17-month tenure had involved a reorganisation and a profit warning that halved the share price.

Lafley's tenure is among the more studied in consumer business. His arguments were that the consumer is boss, that innovation need not originate inside the company, and that P&G should concentrate on categories where it could lead. The second produced Connect and Develop, an open innovation programme under which the company set a target of sourcing half its innovation externally, through partnerships, licensing and acquisition of technologies rather than companies. The Swiffer, the Mr Clean Magic Eraser, licensed from BASF, and Olay Regenerist all came through it, and the approach was widely copied.

The largest transaction was Gillette, acquired in 2005 for approximately US$57 billion, at the time the largest consumer goods acquisition ever conducted. It brought razors, Duracell batteries, Braun appliances and Oral-B, and gave P&G a position in male grooming to balance a portfolio weighted toward products bought by women. Berkshire Hathaway, a large Gillette shareholder, became a large P&G shareholder as a result.

Lafley returned as chief executive in 2013 after Robert McDonald's tenure, and the period from 2014 was dominated by the reverse process. P&G announced that it would divest or discontinue approximately 100 brands, retaining around 65 that accounted for the great majority of profit. The reasoning was that the portfolio had accumulated small businesses that consumed management attention disproportionate to their contribution.

The divestments included Pringles to Kellogg's in 2012 for US$2.7 billion, Duracell to Berkshire Hathaway in 2016 in a transaction structured as an exchange for Berkshire's P&G shares, Iams and other pet food brands to Mars in 2014, and, in the largest single step, 43 beauty brands including Clairol, Wella, Cover Girl and Max Factor to Coty in 2016 for approximately US$12.5 billion.

Taylor and Moeller, 2015 to 2026

David Taylor became chief executive in 2015 and Jon Moeller, previously chief financial officer, in 2021.

The period has been defined by three things. The first is a reorganisation in 2019 into six sector business units with profit responsibility, replacing a matrix that had been criticised as slow. The second is a campaign by the activist investor Nelson Peltz of Trian, who in 2017 fought the most expensive proxy contest in corporate history, spending a reported US$60 million against P&G's US$100 million, initially lost by a very narrow margin, obtained a recount that reversed the result, and joined the board, from which he retired in 2021. His arguments concerned the organisational structure, the pace of innovation and the company's response to small challenger brands.

The third is the challenge from those challengers. Direct-to-consumer brands including Dollar Shave Club and Harry's attacked Gillette's pricing directly, and Gillette's share and pricing power in the United States fell materially, leading P&G to write down the value of the business by approximately US$8 billion in 2019. The company's response, cutting prices and introducing lower-priced lines, restored some position.

Gillette's 2019 advertisement, "We Believe: The Best Men Can Be", which addressed bullying, harassment and what it called toxic masculinity, produced a very large and polarised reaction, with a substantial boycott and equally substantial praise, and is the most discussed instance of a P&G brand taking a social position.

During the pandemic the company performed strongly, as demand for cleaning products and home care rose sharply, and it subsequently raised prices substantially through the inflationary period of 2021 to 2023, which held revenue while volumes fell, the pattern seen across the industry.

In June 2025 P&G announced approximately 7,000 job reductions over two years, citing uncertainty arising from tariffs under the second Trump administration. In July 2025 it announced that Shailesh G. Jejurikar, a career P&G executive who had run the fabric and home care business, would succeed Moeller as president and chief executive in 2026, with Moeller becoming executive chairman.

In January 2026 the company launched Pampers nappies incorporating silk fibres, a move into premium positioning intended to address declining sales in baby care caused by falling birth rates, including in China, its second largest market.

Brands and segments

Fabric and Home Care

The largest segment at 36 per cent of revenue. Tide and Ariel, the latter the international equivalent, are the largest laundry brands in the world. Downy and Lenor are fabric conditioners, Gain a value laundry brand with an unusually strong scent-driven identity, Dawn and Fairy dishwashing liquids, Cascade and Finish automatic dishwasher products, Febreze air care, Mr Clean and Swiffer surface cleaning.

Tide Pods, introduced in 2012, were a significant innovation in format and became briefly notorious in 2018 when a social media phenomenon involving adolescents biting them prompted safety warnings and packaging changes.

Baby, Feminine and Family Care

Pampers is among the largest brands in the world and faces a structural problem: the number of babies is declining in most of its markets, including China, which had been its principal growth opportunity. The January 2026 silk-fibre premium line is a response.

Always and Tampax lead feminine care globally. Always' "Like a Girl" campaign from 2014, which examined the phrase as an insult, is among the most awarded advertisements of the past two decades. Bounty, Charmin and Puffs cover paper products in North America.

Beauty

Olay, SK-II, a Japanese premium skincare brand whose principal ingredient is a yeast ferment filtrate and which is very large in East Asia, Pantene, Head and Shoulders, the largest shampoo brand in the world, Herbal Essences, Rejoice in China, Old Spice, Secret, Safeguard and Native, acquired in 2017.

Old Spice's 2010 campaign, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like", is among the most successful brand revivals in advertising and is studied as an example of addressing the actual purchaser, since most men's grooming products are bought by women.

Health Care

Crest and Oral-B lead oral care, the latter from Gillette. Vicks, Pepto-Bismol, Metamucil and Neurobion cover personal health. P&G bought Merck KGaA's consumer health business in 2018 for approximately €3.4 billion, adding Neurobion, Femibion and Nasivin and substantially strengthening the segment outside North America.

Grooming

Gillette, Venus and Braun. The segment is the smallest and has been the most disrupted, by direct-to-consumer competitors, by changes in shaving frequency, and by the general observation that a category built on incremental blade count increases had reached the limit of what consumers would pay for.

Notable brand histories

Tide

Tide, launched in 1946, was the product of wartime research into synthetic surfactants and was the first detergent that cleaned effectively in hard water, which soap does not.

Soap forms an insoluble scum with the calcium and magnesium in hard water, which is why laundry in much of the United States and Europe had always been unsatisfactory. Tide's alkyl sulphate surfactants, combined with builders that sequester the metal ions, solved the problem, and the product took the market within four years despite costing more.

It has been reformulated repeatedly since, adding enzymes from the 1960s which digest protein and starch stains, optical brighteners, fabric protection and, from 2005, the cold-water formulation that addresses the great majority of the product's lifetime energy footprint. Tide Pods, introduced in 2012, changed the format and were the most significant innovation in the category in decades, though they required substantial redesign of packaging and child-resistance after ingestion incidents.

Tide is the company's largest brand and among the most valuable in consumer goods.

Pampers

Victor Mills, a chemical engineer who joined P&G in 1926 and who also contributed to Ivory, Duncan Hines cake mixes and Pringles, began work on a disposable nappy after finding cloth nappies unsatisfactory when caring for his grandchildren.

The first version, tested in 1959, was unsuccessful; the product was too hot and too expensive. The design that worked, launched in 1961, combined a plastic outer layer with a cellulose core, and the price was reduced by redesigning the manufacturing rather than the product.

The decisive later innovation was the superabsorbent polymer, introduced in the 1980s, a cross-linked sodium polyacrylate that absorbs many times its weight in liquid and converts it to a gel. This allowed nappies to become substantially thinner while performing better, and it is the reason the modern product bears little resemblance to the 1961 version.

Pampers is among the largest brands in the world, and its principal current difficulty is demographic rather than competitive.

Gillette

King Camp Gillette founded his company in 1901 on the idea of a disposable blade held in a permanent handle, which established the razor-and-blades business model taught in every economics course, though historians have noted that Gillette himself did not price the razors at a loss and that the model as described emerged later.

The company that P&G acquired in 2005 had built its position through a sequence of technical advances, from the double-edged blade through the Trac II in 1971, the first twin-blade cartridge, the Sensor in 1990, the Mach3 in 1998 and the Fusion in 2006, each adding blades and each priced higher.

The strategy worked for a century and reached its limit in the 2010s. Consumers concluded that a fifth blade added nothing, cartridge prices had reached a point that invited entry, and the products were locked in cabinets in American shops because they were among the most stolen items sold, which is not a favourable retail environment. Dollar Shave Club's 2012 launch video, which addressed the pricing directly and was watched many millions of times, did more damage than any competitor's product.

P&G's response, price reductions and lower-priced lines, together with the approximately US$8 billion write-down in 2019, is an unusually clear instance of a company accepting that a long-standing pricing structure had become untenable.

SK-II

SK-II originated in a Japanese sake brewery, where researchers observed that the hands of elderly brewery workers remained unusually smooth, and isolated a yeast ferment filtrate, marketed as Pitera, as the active ingredient.

P&G acquired the brand with Max Factor in 1991. It is priced at a level far above the company's other products, sells principally in Japan, China, South Korea and among travelling Asian consumers, and is among the most profitable things the company owns.

Its marketing has been unusually ambitious. The "Marriage Market Takeover" campaign of 2016, which addressed the Chinese term for unmarried women over 27 and which featured women confronting parental pressure to marry, was widely covered and won major awards, and is cited as an example of a beauty brand addressing a social subject with more substance than the genre usually permits.

The brand's principal recent difficulty has been geopolitical rather than commercial: Chinese consumer sentiment against Japanese products following the 2023 Fukushima water discharge reduced sales substantially, and the recovery has been slow.

Marketing and research

P&G is, by most assessments, the most influential marketing organisation ever assembled, and its practices define the discipline.

Brand management

The 1931 McElroy memorandum established that each brand should be run by a team with responsibility for its results, which had three consequences. It made brands rather than factories the unit of the business. It created a career path in which a young manager runs a small brand and is measured on it, which is why P&G has produced an extraordinary number of chief executives: Steve Ballmer, Jeff Immelt, Meg Whitman, Jim McNerney, Scott Cook and a long list of others began there. And it institutionalised internal competition, so that Tide and Gain compete for the same shelf and the same consumer.

Consumer research

The company has conducted systematic consumer research longer and more thoroughly than anyone. Its methods include large-scale quantitative surveying, in-home observation, in which researchers watch people actually wash clothes rather than asking them how they do it, shopper research at the shelf, and extensive testing of concepts, formulations and packaging before launch.

The observational work has repeatedly produced findings that contradict what consumers report. The Swiffer emerged from watching people mop and noticing how much of the effort went into managing the bucket. The Febreze launch initially failed because the product removed odours without leaving any sensory evidence that it had worked, and succeeded when a perfume was added so that users could tell something had happened, an episode widely cited in writing on habit formation.

Advertising

P&G is consistently among the largest advertisers in the world, with annual spending in the region of US$8 billion.

Its chief brand officer from 2015, Marc Pritchard, used that position to force change in digital advertising, demanding in a 2017 speech that platforms accept third-party measurement, adopt viewability standards and provide transparency in the media supply chain, and cutting hundreds of millions of dollars of digital spending when they did not. Because P&G is large enough that its withdrawal is noticed, the intervention is generally credited with accelerating industry-wide adoption of measurement standards.

The company reported that cutting more than US$200 million of digital advertising in 2017 had no measurable effect on sales, a finding that prompted a wider reconsideration of how much programmatic advertising was reaching actual people.

Research and development

P&G spends approximately US$2 billion a year on research and development and holds tens of thousands of patents. Its laboratories work on surfactant chemistry, enzymes, polymer superabsorbents, which are what make modern nappies possible, fragrance encapsulation, skin biology and materials.

Connect and Develop, from 2001, formalised external sourcing of innovation and is the model most often cited in discussions of open innovation.

Corporate affairs

Leadership

Shailesh G. Jejurikar became president and chief executive in 2026, having been announced in July 2025. Born in India and a P&G career employee, he had run the fabric and home care business and then served as chief operating officer. Jon Moeller, chief executive from 2021, became executive chairman.

Previous chief executives include David Taylor, 2015 to 2021; A. G. Lafley, 2000 to 2010 and again 2013 to 2015; Robert McDonald, 2010 to 2013, who left to become United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Durk Jager, 1999 to 2000; John Pepper; and Neil McElroy, who left to become Secretary of Defense.

The board had fourteen members as of March 2026.

Headquarters and workforce

P&G's headquarters has been in Cincinnati since its founding, and the twin towers of its downtown complex, completed in 1985, are among the city's most recognisable buildings. The company is by a considerable margin the city's most significant institution, and its philanthropy, through the Procter and Gamble Fund, has shaped local arts and education.

It employs approximately 108,000 people worldwide, a number reduced by successive efficiency programmes including the approximately 7,000 positions announced in June 2025.

Finances

Revenue has run in the region of US$80 billion to US$85 billion in recent years, with operating margin in the low to mid twenties as a percentage of revenue, which is high for consumer goods and reflects both scale and the pricing power of leading brands.

P&G has paid a dividend every year since 1890 and has increased it annually for more than 65 consecutive years, one of the longest such records of any company. It is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and is held very widely by income investors.

The company's persistent financial challenge is volume. Price increases through 2021 to 2023 sustained revenue while units declined, and restoring volume growth without conceding price is the central problem for it and for every competitor.

International operations

P&G operates in approximately 70 countries and sells in around 180, and roughly half its revenue comes from outside North America.

Europe is its largest international region, with Ariel, Fairy, Lenor, Pampers and Gillette holding leading positions. Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy are the principal markets, and the company's European operations are managed from Geneva.

Greater China became P&G's second largest market during the 2000s and has been among its most difficult since. The company entered in 1988, grew very rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s as urban incomes rose, and then lost share from about 2014 to domestic competitors and to a shift in consumer preference toward local brands, a change accelerated by the growth of Chinese e-commerce and by the rise of domestic beauty companies. SK-II performed exceptionally well until the 2023 discharge of treated water from the Fukushima plant produced a consumer boycott of Japanese brands in China that reduced its sales sharply. Falling birth rates have compounded the problem in nappies.

India is a growth market in which P&G competes with Hindustan Unilever, the market leader, and with domestic firms. Its strongest positions are in feminine care through Whisper, in hair care and in Vicks, which has an unusually strong position in Indian households.

Latin America is led by Mexico and Brazil, where the company competes with Unilever and with regional producers, and where price tiering across formats, including small single-use sachets for consumers who cannot afford a full-size package, is central to the business.

Japan is a demanding market in which P&G's early entry in 1972 was a failure, because products designed for American conditions did not suit Japanese laundry practice, housing or expectations. The company's eventual success, and the lesson that global products require local adaptation, is one of its more frequently taught cases.

The company withdrew from Russia's non-essential categories after the 2022 invasion while continuing to supply what it describes as health and hygiene essentials.

Manufacturing and supply chain

P&G operates approximately 100 manufacturing sites and is among the largest purchasers of several commodities, including palm and coconut derivatives for surfactants, wood pulp for tissue and nappies, petrochemical feedstocks for polymers and packaging, and fragrance materials.

Its supply chain is regarded as among the most sophisticated in the industry, and its practices in vendor-managed inventory, continuous replenishment and collaborative forecasting were developed jointly with Walmart from the late 1980s in an arrangement that is generally credited with creating modern retail supply chain practice. The two companies established direct data links so that P&G could see sales at the shelf and replenish automatically, which reduced inventory for both.

The relationship with retailers is the defining commercial tension of the business. P&G's brands give it leverage, since a supermarket that does not stock Tide loses customers, and the retailers' own brands and their control of the shelf give them leverage in return. Negotiations over price, promotion and shelf space are conducted annually and occasionally result in a brand being delisted, most visibly in several European disputes over price increases during 2022 and 2023.

Competition

Unilever is the closest comparator, with a similar portfolio structure, a stronger position in emerging markets and in food, and a weaker one in North America.

Colgate-Palmolive competes directly in oral care, where Colgate leads globally and Crest leads in the United States, and in home care.

Kimberly-Clark competes in nappies with Huggies, in tissue and in feminine care, and Essity in Europe.

L'Oréal, Estée Lauder and Beiersdorf compete in beauty, a category in which P&G's position has narrowed substantially since the 2016 sale of 43 brands to Coty.

Henkel and Reckitt compete in home and hygiene, and Church and Dwight in a number of American categories.

Edgewell, Harry's and Dollar Shave Club, the last owned by Unilever from 2016 and sold in 2023, compete in grooming.

The most consequential competitor across every category is private label, the retailers' own brands, whose quality has improved and whose share rises whenever consumer budgets are pressed. The 2022 to 2024 period saw private label take share in most P&G categories in Europe and North America, which is the specific pressure behind the volume problem described above.

Direct-to-consumer challengers remain a structural threat in categories where the product is simple and the incumbent's price premium is large, which is why grooming was attacked first.

Corporate culture and people

P&G is known within business for a culture that is formal, analytical and unusually consistent.

It hires almost entirely at entry level and promotes from within, so that its senior management has typically spent thirty years at the company, and the current chief executive's appointment continues that pattern. This produces deep institutional knowledge and, critics argue, a resistance to outside ideas that Connect and Develop was designed to counteract.

The company's internal documents are famously disciplined: the one-page memorandum, a P&G convention, requires that a recommendation be stated in a single page with the reasoning, and the practice is one of the habits its alumni carry elsewhere.

Its alumni network is extraordinary. Chief executives who began at P&G include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Jeff Immelt of General Electric, Meg Whitman of eBay and Hewlett-Packard, Jim McNerney of Boeing, Scott Cook of Intuit, Chip Bergh of Levi Strauss, Kevin Johnson of Starbucks and a very large number of others, to the extent that the company is sometimes described as a business school that also makes soap.

Philanthropy

P&G's principal programmes are the Children's Safe Drinking Water programme, which distributes a powdered water purification sachet developed by company scientists and which the company reports has provided many billions of litres of clean water, and Tide Loads of Hope, which provides mobile laundry facilities after disasters.

The Procter and Gamble Fund supports education and arts in Cincinnati, and the company has been a significant funder of the city's cultural institutions for a century.

Timeline

1837 William Procter and James Gamble form the partnership on 31 October.
1862 Union Army contracts during the Civil War expand the business.
1879 Ivory soap is introduced.
1890 The company incorporates and begins paying dividends.
1911 Crisco introduces the first all-vegetable shortening.
1920 The candle business is discontinued.
1931 Neil McElroy's memorandum establishes brand management.
1933 Radio serial sponsorship begins, giving rise to the term soap opera.
1946 Tide is launched, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent.
1955 Crest is launched; the American Dental Association endorses it in 1960.
1961 Pampers and Head and Shoulders are introduced.
1980 The Rely tampon is withdrawn after association with toxic shock syndrome.
1985 Richardson-Vicks is acquired; the man-in-the-moon mark is removed from packaging.
1988 The company enters China.
2000 A. G. Lafley becomes chief executive after Durk Jager's removal.
2001 Connect and Develop is launched; Clairol is acquired.
2005 Gillette is acquired for approximately US$57 billion.
2014 The programme to divest or discontinue approximately 100 brands is announced.
2016 43 beauty brands are sold to Coty for about US$12.5 billion; Duracell passes to Berkshire Hathaway.
2017 Nelson Peltz wins a board seat after the most expensive proxy contest in history; Marc Pritchard's speech forces digital advertising reform.
2018 Merck KGaA's consumer health business is acquired for about €3.4 billion.
2019 Gillette is written down by approximately US$8 billion; the "We Believe" advertisement provokes a divided response.
2021 Jon Moeller becomes chief executive.
2025 Approximately 7,000 job reductions are announced in June; Shailesh Jejurikar is named as the next chief executive in July.
2026 Premium silk-fibre Pampers are launched in January as birth rates fall in key markets.

Controversies

Animal testing

P&G has been a principal target of animal welfare campaigns for decades, including a long-running boycott organised by PETA. The company has reduced animal testing substantially, has invested heavily in alternative methods, and states that it does not test on animals except where required by law, the principal such requirement historically being China's rules for imported cosmetics, which were relaxed from 2021. Campaigners maintain that the exception is substantial and that the company's influence could have been used to change the requirement sooner.

The Satanism rumour

From the late 1970s a persistent rumour held that P&G's man-in-the-moon trademark, in use since the 1880s, contained satanic symbolism, and that the company donated to satanic organisations. The claim circulated through churches, chain letters and later email, and was promoted in some instances by distributors for Amway, against whom P&G won several defamation suits, including a US$19.25 million verdict in 2007.

The company removed the mark from packaging in 1985. The episode is a standard case study in the persistence of misinformation and in the difficulty of refuting a claim that has no evidentiary content.

Environment

Palm oil and deforestation. P&G uses palm oil derivatives in cleaning and personal care products, and Greenpeace's 2018 campaign linked its supply chain to forest clearance in Indonesia. The company committed to full traceability and no deforestation, and reports progress that campaigners regard as incomplete.

Forestry. Charmin and Bounty use virgin wood pulp, including from the Canadian boreal forest, and the Natural Resources Defense Council's tissue scorecard has ranked P&G's products among the worst on sustainability grounds. A 2020 shareholder resolution requiring a report on deforestation in its supply chain passed against the board's recommendation, an unusual outcome.

Plastic. P&G is regularly named among the largest branded contributors to plastic waste in audits conducted by Break Free From Plastic, and has commitments on recyclability and virgin plastic reduction comparable to those of its peers.

Emissions and water. The company has committed to net zero across its operations and supply chain by 2040, and reports that the great majority of the lifetime emissions associated with its products arise during use, principally in heating water for laundry. This has produced a genuinely useful product strategy, in which cold-water formulations such as Tide Coldwater reduce consumer energy use more than anything the company could do in its own factories, and a marketing campaign to change washing habits.

Other

The Rely tampon withdrawal of 1980 is described above. The company has also faced litigation over the labelling of flushable wipes, over benzene contamination detected in aerosol dry shampoo and antiperspirant products in 2021 and 2022 which produced recalls, and over advertising claims in several jurisdictions.

P&G continued operating in Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, reducing its portfolio to what it described as essential health and hygiene products, and has been criticised for doing so.

Assessment

Procter and Gamble's durability is the fact most worth explaining. It has existed for 189 years, has paid a dividend for 136, and remains the leader in most of the categories it competes in, which is a record no technology company will approach and few industrial ones have.

The explanation is not any particular product. It is a method, which the company has applied with unusual consistency: find out what people actually do rather than what they say, build something measurably better, support it with advertising at a scale competitors cannot match, and give each brand an organisation whose only job is that brand. The method produced Ivory, Tide, Crest, Pampers, Head and Shoulders and Swiffer over a century and a half, and it has been copied by everyone.

The method's weakness is now visible. It works best when a company can outspend competitors on both research and advertising, and both advantages have eroded. Digital advertising is available to anyone at any budget, which is why a razor company founded in a garage could take share from Gillette. Manufacturing can be contracted. Distribution can be replaced by a website. And the retailers' own brands have improved to the point where the quality gap that justified the price premium is, in several categories, no longer detectable by consumers.

P&G's answer has been to concentrate on the categories where technical performance genuinely differs and where it can defend a premium, to divest the rest, and to spend on the innovation that makes the difference visible. It is the right answer and it is a narrower business than the one the company ran in 1995. The pressures that produced the 2025 reduction of 7,000 positions, and the declining birth rates behind the premium Pampers line of 2026, are not cyclical.