Retired P&G Executive Tells Local Business Leaders About Tide, Advice, And Exploding Coffee Machines

Monday, March 18, 2019 at 12:16 PM

By Mike Perleberg @mikedup84

Paul Fox lives in Hidden Valley, but he spent his career traveling the world getting customer insights for Procter & Gamble.

(Aurora, Ind.) – Paul Fox has been around the world working for one of the planet’s biggest companies, but he calls Dearborn County home.

Fox retired in 2017 after 17 years with Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, where he was the Director of Corporate Communications and Vice President of Strategic Innovations.

The born Englishman and now Hidden Valley resident was the featured speaker at the Dearborn County Chamber of Commerce’s Get Energized Luncheon at the Dearborn Country Club on Friday, March 15.

“I am probably busier now that I was before I retired,” Fox shared with the audience of local business leaders, adding he is now an instructor at both Xavier University and Northern Kentucky University.

He became a U.S. citizens “some years ago.” He’s proud to call the U.S. home, citing its ideals, purpose, mission, and values.

He recalled when the company’s former CEO, A.G. Lafley, welcomed him to the company.

“Never be afraid of making mistakes. We learn from mistakes more than successes,” Fox remembered from Lafley’s advice. “But, fail quickly and fail cheaply.”

Fox told about how a longtime P&G scientist endured 14 years of failures to invent Tide, now one of the most popular laundry products in the world.

Leadership, Fox said, takes tenacity, passion and an unwavering desire to win, regardless of a person’s age. Some of the world’s most successful business people – Intel founder Robert Noyce and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus – didn’t establish their companies until they were in the 40s or 50s.

Fox related stories of successes and failures in his time at Procter & Gamble. He shared about a trip to Leon, Mexico in which he went into an everyday consumer’s home to learn why, despite a tight household budget, she paid more to use the international equivalent of Tide when washing clothes by hand.

“The cheap detergent would crack the skin on her hands. She bought it because she wanted to hold her husband’s hands without pain,” Fox revealed.

Listening closely to consumer insights helped P&G to develop a new, efficient way to clean floors by combining its cleaning products and technology used in its Pampers diapers. Today, millions of homes around the globe have a Swiffer spraying mop in their cleaning closet.

But even major companies make mistakes. Fox shared that P&G gave up on the idea of a single serving coffee maker because the prototype blew up in the CEO’s office.

Keurig's K-cup brewers are now a staple in homes and offices worldwide.

The Dearborn County Chamber of Commerce’s Get Energized Luncheon was sponsored by Friendship State Bank.