Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article regarding an employee swap between Procter & Gamble and Google, A New Odd Couple: Google, P&G Swap Workers to Spur Innovation. The motivation behind the swap was to spur innovation between the two companies.
Google would like to have a bigger slice of P&G's $8.7 billion annual advertisement budget and better understand the needs of traditional consumer-market companies. Meanwhile P&G still spends most of it's advertisement dollars in traditional media with as little as 2% of its ad budget online does need some help in making the leap online.
What impressed me most in the story was just how much companies such as Google and P&G are in two different worlds.
As the two companies started working together, the gulf between them quickly became apparent. In April, when actress Salma Hayek unveiled an ambitious promotion for P&G's Pampers brand, the Google team was stunned to learn that Pampers hadn't invited any "motherhood" bloggers -- women who run popular Web sites about child-rearing -- to attend the press conference.
"Where are the bloggers?" asked a Google staffer in disbelief, according one person present.
For their part, P&G employees gasped in surprise during a Tide brand meeting when a Google job-swapper apparently didn't realize that Tide's signature orange-colored packaging is a key part of the brand's image.
I'm one of those people that get nervous when I see two opposing cultures trying to connect with each other. I am much more comfortable to read about such stories in the safe confines of my home office. I also get a little giddy when I hear of success in the bridging of two enterprise cultures. I wonder if Google would ever like to swap one of their employees for my federal IT job? I could use a little bit of innovation know how...