Hasta La Creative!

Procter & Gamble Co. expects its agency consolidation process to take a year or two and come largely through discussions with agency executives, though it’s likely to involve reviews in at least some cases, according to Global Brand Officer Marc Pritchard.

Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller announced the initiative on P&G’s earnings conference call earlier on Thursday. In an interview, Mr. Pritchard said the expected savings of up to $500 million annually in agency fees and production costs will be “largely incremental” to what P&G already has accomplished through belt-tightening efforts of recent years. It will also be on top of this year’s already-booked cuts in non-media costs, which were running around $490 million on an annualized basis as of the quarter ended Dec. 31, according to comments in January by Mr. Moeller.

That implies combined savings of as much as $1 billion, which is huge even for a marketer that spent $9.2 billion globally on reported advertising spending last fiscal year.

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