Sidebar: Listening Lessons

In the 20th century, the keepers of Procter & Gamble brands excelled by being "the biggest shouters," says Greg Icenhower, associate director of corporate communications at P&G. "In the 21st century, we want to be the best listeners." Here, Icenhower and his colleagues offer insights into how P&G is using the Net to manage that shift.

Keep the old, keep the new. "The Net doesn't replace anything," Icenhower says. "It's a complement." Even as P&G conducts virtual focus groups at Pampers.com, for example, it still invites hundreds of people to its Cincinnati headquarters each year to talk about parenting.

Cast a wide Net. Using the Internet, you can extend your listening beyond the narrow confines of one or two test-market cities. "We knew how we were doing in Grand Junction [Colorado], but we also knew how we were doing in LA and Chicago," says Vince Hudson, a brand manager who worked on Whitestrips, a new tooth-whitening product that P&G market-tested via the Web.

Let a thousand brands bloom. "We try to bring order to chaos," says Icenhower. "But we don't want to change what the brands are doing." That's the spirit behind PG.com, the company's portal site. Before you can listen to your customers, you have to listen to your own people.

Make the content count. Good listeners build trust. For the people at Tide.com, that means putting a premium on the quality and objectivity of the advice that they offer on the site. Says Bob Gilbreath, assistant brand manager for Tide: "We tell you that you may have to scrub, or that there are some stains that no product [including Tide] will ever get out."

Sidebar: Girl, Interpreted

How do you talk to a 13-year-old girl about sex, boys, and growing up?

Don't mention brands. Tell her that "being a girl rocks." Create a cartoon icon that looks like an extra from Josie and the Pussycats. Give her advice on topics that matter to her, like, right now. For example: "Do boys like girls who are smarter than they are?"

Oh, and do all of that on the Net.

Welcome to the world of being a girl at the dawn of the 21st century. Private matters that most girls used to discuss with their moms or whisper about with their friends (or, worse, just ignore) are now openly chatted about, laughed at, and argued over in a virtual hangout spot called BeingGirl.com.

The brainchild of a team at Procter & Gamble that's charged with developing a Net presence for the company's feminine-care products, BeingGirl plays down branding and plays up the sense of community.

Make no mistake: BeingGirl is about getting teenage girls to buy Always and Tampax, both of which are P&G brands. But P&G has learned that to reach those girls via the Web, it must create an environment where they feel no less at ease than they do at the nearest shopping mall.

"The big keys for us are tone of voice and the nature of the content," says Derrick Tarver, 33, global brand manager for P&G Femcare Interactive. "And we always keep in mind that teens today have an acute awareness of commercialization."

So how do you get through to those teens? Just ask them, and then listen to what they say. Last year, P&G asked two groups of girls to review the teen section of its Tampax.com site. The girls said that there was some great stuff on that site -- including Ask Iris, an advice column by Iris Prager, who is now president of the American Association for Health Education. But the overt branding of Tampax.com proved to be a turnoff for the girls. P&G learned two other things about girls today: They aspire to be older than they are, and they see the Web as a place where they should be able to speak their minds without giving away their identities.

P&G drew on that research when it launched BeingGirl in July 2000. The look of the site is bold, stylish, and feminine, without being too girly. (There's not a flower or a pastel color in sight.) And the content? Well, it's pretty in-your-face. In late May, the Private Issues area addressed the problem of having more than two nipples. Another section, Girl Vine, offered an outline of "Miss Myths" and "Fem Facts" about "puberty and periods." And in Total Opinion, the characters Eric and Lisa provided a running commentary on relationship issues. So do boys like girls who are smarter than they are? Says Eric: "Most guys don't like to be around a girl who looks dumbfounded every time they say a word with more than five letters."