Look under your kitchen sink, in your medicine cabinet or above your washing machine and chances are you’ll find a Procter & Gamble product. P&G produces over 300 of the best-known commercial products such as: Crest, Charmin, Bounty, Dawn, Swiffer, Tide, Downy, Duracell, Gillette, and the list goes on and on and on.

At a recent advertising trade conference, P&G’s marketing chief Jim Stengel called for a “mind-set shift that will make us relevant to today’s consumer’s; a mind-set shift from ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships….With the amount of information we have at our fingertips today, it makes it even more important to stay in touch, to get out there and talk to real people about real issues.”

This means a significant investment in Web 2.0 tools. According to a June article from Information Week, “P&G provides a study of how Enterprise 2.0 will take shape given the scope of its project and the way it draws on tools from startups as well as big-name vendors. In 2005, P&G laid plans for a Microsoft-centric collaboration initiative, with instant messaging, unified communications, and presence using Live Communications Server; Web conferencing with Live Meeting; and content management and collaboration via SharePoint. About 80,000 employees use Microsoft IM, and 20,000 have moved to Outlook. P&G has a few SharePoint sites running, and the major rollout begins in August.”

As with most things P&G touches, we can expect their rollout of integrated communications to be innovative and ahead of the curve. For now it seems most collaboration are being explored internally, with most company blogs, wikis, and the upcoming collaboration initiative residing on the company’s intranet.

Still, as consumers become more comfortable with integrating social networking into their online habits, P&G will find tools to help them provide feedback. The end result? Collaboration leads to innovation.

Related Links:

Volker Schubert - Aspects of Enterprise 2.0

Central Desktop - Beyond E-Mail at Procter & Gamble

Email Insider - Tap Women’s Social Networks with Email