WORLD: ANALYSIS - Will the monster marketer put its money where its mouth is?

P&G claims it is embracing creativity, but change may prove slow, John Tylee says.

The presence of Procter & Gamble at this year's Cannes Festival was memorable less for Jim Stengel's spectacular tumble off the awards stage, and more for the fact the company's global marketing chief was seen taking a trip in such unlikely surroundings.

For half a century, the world's biggest advertiser, the owner of such familiar brands as Flash, Fairy, Daz and Tampax, would have no truck with the hedonistic excesses of the annual jamboree.

Now, here was Stengel and some 40 cohorts sitting for hours in viewing theatres and poring over print work. Onlookers claim the P&G team was deeply impressed by much of what it saw.

Of course, it would be a simplification to suggest that Cannes 2003 was P&G's catharsis, the moment when a company so wedded to rule-book advertising and infamous for strangling good ideas at birth underwent a Pauline conversion.

'There's far more depth to what P&G is doing than trying to win a few Cannes Lions,' an industry source says.

Nevertheless, this year's festival may well go down as a defining experience for P&G, confirming the belief at its most senior levels that creativity and effectiveness aren't incompatible.