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Radioactive Wash. P. & G. values research so highly that six out of every 100 employees are engaged in some kind of research project. At the company's new $5,000,000 Miami Valley research laboratory, McElroy's special pride, more than a hundred scientists work over their test tubes, taking competitors' products apart and putting new ones together.
Sometimes research leads P. & G. far afield. Long a seller of cellulose (a byproduct of cottonseed crushing) to the chemical and plastics industries, P. & G. recently found the demand far bigger than it could supply. President McElroy's solution was typical. He bought 560.000 acres of pineland in Florida, set up a $35 million plant to produce cellulose from wood pulp, now has his researchers testing ways to use the part of the pine tree not used for cellulose.
P. & G. laboratory workers can often be found sitting between troughs of sudsy water, an arm resting in each, to see how the skin reacts to different soaps and detergents. Clothes are soiled with radioactive dirt, "Geiger-counted" after every washing. Researchers work daily on such questions as: What holds dirt on cloth and skin? What do suds accomplish? (Mainly, they accomplish sales. Nonsuds-ing detergents often work just as well, but many women won't buy them.)
P. & G. hires housewives to wash clothes in the laboratory as they would at home, maintains a beauty shop where a woman employee can have her hair shampooed free—half with a P. & G. product, the other half with a competing shampoo. The company keeps a staff of bakers busy developing new recipes for Crisco and its bakery-trade shortenings (latest treat: a chocolate-coated ice-cream cone), is now working with soybean oil in the hope of cashing in on the boom in "frozen custard" and other ice-cream substitutes.
Use & Compare. When the laboratory people have finally perfected a new product, P. & G.'s marketing operation begins with all the precision of an amphibious landing. A staff of 125 P. & G. girls (not too pretty, lest they attract too many marriage proposals; not too homely, lest they jump at the first offer) travels all over the U.S., talking to half a million women a year, handing out new products for housewives to "use and compare." Though P. & G. has a long list of product names already patented aad ready for use, its ad agencies often run contests to get new ones. They must be easy to remember, simple to pronounce on the radio, fit well into advertising slogans ("Tide's in; dirt's out").
When a new product hits a "test market" city, P. & G. trucks roll slowly down the streets while teams of men swarm in & out of houses handing out samples. Big changes in a product are often made during such test-marketing. Cheer was first put out as a white detergent. Then someone suggested that it be dyed blue and tried out. The blue not only sold much better (especially among women who used bluing in their wash), but it also supplied a catchy ad slogan: "It's new! It's blue! It's Blue Magic!"
Headaches & Rewards. All P. & G.'s careful planning, diligent research and hard selling have their rewards. Only once (in the commodity collapse of 1921) has