Can CPG Companies Do Relationship Marketing?

Advertising Age has a piece on consumer packaged goods giant Proctor and Gamble and an interview with Elva Lewis, a 21-year P and G vet and the person who's supposed to help the company move into non-mass marketing. Her grade on how they've done so far? D - "theoretically a passing grade."

According to her, the company has a "decent" relationship with 10 million households instead of "solid" ones with 40 to 60 million. And, mind you, there's no telling from this article what the definitions of these relationships actually are. After so many years of mass marketing, I'd wonder those might be. Lewis talks about the need to spread direct marketing expenses across all the company's brands - and the difficulties in getting those brands to cooperate, as they've been successfully siloed for so long. One problem I could see is that a relationship doesn't exist unless both sides think that it does. If they're not hearing back regularly from their customers, it could be that they will remain in the realm of mass marketing without ever knowing it.