Earlier this year, when P&G launched Physique, a hair-care line aimed at women in their late teens to early 30s, it plastered the logo of a male and female silhouette on glasses and coasters in bars near college campuses.Trying to sound edgy, some cocktail napkins promised-- "New scientific evidence proves people with great hairstyles are less likely to go home alone."

The approach is both risque and risky for the Cincinnati company that invented soap operas to promote Ivory soap, Tide laundry detergent and Crest toothpaste. While P&G insists it won't cut its total ad spending, it has vowed to better control costs after a string of earnings disappointments and the recent resignation of Chief Executive Durk Jager.

P&G spent $1.7 billion on US advertising last year, down slightly from $1.72 billion in 1998, according to Competitive Media Reporting. Local TV spending fell 30% to $114.5 million in 1999 from $163.6 million the previous year, while its total spending on TV dropped seven per cent to $1.18 billion. Bob Wehling, P&G's global marketing officer, said it would be "reasonable" to expect that the company's TV spending this year also will decline as a percentage of the total marketing mix.

P&G's spending on magazine advertising rose 17 per cent in 1999 to $456.7 million, and the company tripled its spending in newspapers, to $15 million from $5.3 million the year before. Broadcasters don't like it. "They've made a radical change," Chris Rohrs, president of the Television Bureau of Advertising, a group representing 510 stations, says. "I think they're on the wrong track."

But P&G believes that TV advertising no longer delivers the best value. Mark Schar, a P&G vice-president, says television reaches "too broad" a consumer group. New marketing pitches must be more tailored, he says, especially since consumers are spending more time on the Internet or using new TV-recording devices to avoid watching commercials.

To push its advertising agencies to look beyond television, P&G has changed how it pays them. Beginning this month, P&G is rewarding agencies based on the performance of the brands they pitch, measured by sales growth, instead of a 15% commission for every ad dollar spent. Since television ads are more expensive, P&G figured its traditional approach encouraged agencies to favour TV. P&G recently tested the new compensation with 10 of its brands, giving each roster agency a chance to try the new approach.

"Television is still an important element, but as we get smarter at understanding our targets, there are more efficient, more direct ways to reach them," says Neil I. Kreisberg, executive managing director at Grey Global Group.

The strategy comes at a critical time for P&G, which has vowed to control its operating costs. To design a new push for Bounty paper towel, slated to start later this month, P&G initially met with its advertising, public-relations, direct-marketing and Internet staffs. In the past, the ad agency would have presented the company with a budget, gotten approval, designed a campaign and then pulled in the other groups, says Angela Pasqualucci, executive vice-president at Jordan, McGrath, Case & Partners/ Euro RSCG. The new campaign aims to get women gabbing about Bounty by offering lifestyle advice and other "talk" tactics.

P&G says its Physique push exemplifies the extreme of its new approach. While the typical P&G brand spends 60 per cent to 80 per cent of its advertising budget on television and the rest on other promotions, Physique flipped that formula. More than two months before the hair-care line was available in stores, P&G mailed teasers last fall to women its database identified as spending much time doing their hair and gossiping about it with friends.

In November, P&G mailed out 500,000 samples. It also created a Physique Web site that offered a free bottle of shampoo to users who e-mailed the link to 10 friends. In December, before Christmas break, glasses and napkins showed up in college bars so that students would talk about the line after they went home, says Jane Wildman, P&G's general manager for Physique. Finally, in early January, P&G began running television and print advertising. A few weeks later, P&G shipped Physique to more than 60,000 grocery, drug-and mass-merchandise stores.

Eager to create buzz, P&G released a study by a Yale University psychology professor that concludes bad-hair days make people sad. The report was sponsored by P&G.Although P&G calls the Physique launch a success, it knows similar approaches won't work for laundry detergent. "We've got a lot of tests going on," says Schar, the company marketing executive. "Once we figure it out, oh, baby."