P&G and Merck Procter & Gamble is buying Merck's consumer health business, giving P&G new vitamin and food supplements to add to its over-the-counter business. The deal is worth $4.2 billion, and Merck's OTC sales bring in almost $1 billion a year. Meanwhile, P&G joint venture with Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries will be terminated in July. Fortune
Price war weighs on P&G, puts pressure on ad budget Its skirmishes are looking more like a broader price war for Procter & Gamble Co., fueling relatively weak 1 percent organic sales growth for the packaged-goods giant last quarter. In previous quarters, P&G's organic sales and unit volume grew at about the same pace. But this quarter unit volume grew 2 percent, twice as fast as organic sales, which exclude the effect of currency, acquisitions and divestitures, with lower prices reflecting the difference. P&G's shares were down almost 4 percent in Thursday afternoon trading. (Ad Age)
P&G ends its YouTube boycott after more than a year Procter & Gamble, one of world's biggest advertisers, kept its ads off YouTube for more than a year because of concerns about inappropriate content. Now it's returning to the video site, but a lot more selectively than before. (Ad Age)
P&G Wellness Procter & Gamble will try to pitch some of its most popular products, such as Crest toothpaste and Pantene shampoo, as "wellness boosters" by teaming up with Arianna Huffington's "behavioral health" firm Thrive Global. As Fortune's Sy Mukherjee writes: "Thrive's central role across the P&G portfolio will be providing what the company calls behavioral 'microsteps' in order to 'habit-stack'-i.e, build a positive, affirming mental habit into something consumers may already do every day." Fortune