P&G invented brand management here in 1931, and its own brand just went through the wringer
The city that invented modern marketing is watching its two flagship companies rebuild trust in real time: P&G through 7,000 job cuts, and Kroger through a failed merger, a CEO scandal and a brand-new chief executive.
Benchmarks in this market
- Qualified CPG & retail-brand inquiries
- +168%Qualified CPG & retail-brand inquiries
- Brand-trust content engagement, post-upheaval clients
- +46%Brand-trust content engagement, post-upheaval clients
- Time-to-market on rebrand and repositioning work
- -28%Time-to-market on rebrand and repositioning work
Illustrative ranges for engagements of this type, not verified Cincinnati-specific client data. Orientation, not a guarantee. Your starting point changes the range.
How we work here: Remotely from our Lahore office, with ET coverage for calls and travel for kickoffs. We don't claim a Cincinnati office we don't have.
Clients across every market
What's actually different about the Cincinnati metro
Procter & Gamble has been based in Cincinnati since it was founded in 1837. It employs about 107,000 people worldwide and has been the world's biggest advertiser in nearly every year Ad Age has tracked it since 1987.
More important for how this city works: P&G invented modern brand management in 1931. It gave each product its own dedicated manager, responsible for positioning, competition and profit. That setup is now standard at almost every consumer company on earth. It also built a real agency scene here. Nine of Cincinnati's top 25 marketing and branding firms still count P&G as a client, including Barefoot Proximity, LPK, Northlich and the local offices of Landor and Interbrand.
Kroger, America's largest pure grocery chain, has been based here since 1883. It runs 84.51°, its data-science and retail-media arm named after Cincinnati's latitude, out of a 280,000-square-foot downtown building, using purchase data from nearly half of U.S. households. Fifth Third Bank rounds out the big names and is adding about 750 jobs downtown.
This isn't a city living off a 1931 invention. Both flagship companies are going through upheaval right now, which makes brand credibility a current problem, not history.
Kroger's very dramatic year
In fourteen months, Kroger's $24.6B merger with Albertsons collapsed after regulators stepped in (December 2024). Longtime CEO Rodney McMullen resigned after a board ethics investigation into his personal conduct (March 2025). About 1,000 corporate staff were laid off, including at the Cincinnati headquarters (August 2025). And former Walmart U.S. CEO Greg Foran was named permanent CEO to lead a turnaround (February 2026). A company going through that much in public needs partners who can rebuild trust carefully, not paper over it.
P&G is cutting jobs and investing at home
In June 2025, P&G announced 7,000 non-manufacturing job cuts over two years. At the same time, it's moving about 300 jobs into its downtown headquarters and 1,200 more to nearby Mason. The world's biggest advertiser is actively reshaping its Cincinnati footprint, not just cutting from a distance.
Deep agency talent, but good reasons to look outside
Nine of the city's top firms already work with P&G, so local agency relationships are sophisticated. But a company going through upheaval like Kroger's often needs an outside view, because every long-standing local vendor has some version of the old relationship to protect.
84.51° is a home-field advantage
A local data-science operation with purchase data from nearly half of U.S. households is a rare resource. A Cincinnati CPG or retail brand that hasn't at least looked at what that data could tell it about its customers is leaving an advantage on the table.
What usually moves first in Cincinnati.
Based on what tends to be the binding constraint for companies in this market. Your audit may point somewhere else. We go where the numbers say.
Industry playbooks relevant in Cincinnati
Specific playbooks for Cincinnati businesses
The part clients actually remember.
Not the reports. The uncomfortable conversation that changed the trajectory.
Our offices had been competing against each other in Google for years without anyone realizing it. Fixing that alone changed the numbers before any new content was even published.
We were generating 400 leads a month and closing nothing. Now we generate almost no leads and close eight-figure pipeline. Marketing and sales finally look at the same screen.
We hired a marketing agency and got told, in week one, that we had a privacy problem nobody had spotted in two years. That conversation was not what we expected and it was the most valuable thing anyone has done for us.
Cincinnati questions, answered straight.
Not on spending, and we wouldn't pretend otherwise. The real opportunity is sharp positioning in your category and channels where a giant's broad scale works against it. Trying to outspend the world's biggest advertiser at its own game isn't the plan.
Let's look at your numbers.
A free 30-minute teardown of your funnel, ads, and site, run against what actually works in the Cincinnati metro. You keep the findings either way.