CANNES--Procter & Gamble global brand building officer Marc Pritchard has urged companies to demonstrate courage if they hope to succeed in an environment where they are “constantly being judged”.

Pritchard made the remarks during his presentation at the Cannes Lions festival, where he discussed the difficulties of creating a creative culture at the 175-year-old company.

In particular, he said that marketers should have the courage to say yes to risky ideas. Instead, said Pritchard, “we don’t quite say no but we polite you to death.”

“We need to inspire creative work that is so brilliant you bet your career on it.”

Pritchard, who will headline the Holmes Report’s Global Public Relations Summit in Miami later this year, also suggested that brands look to their roots for creative inspiration.

“I go back to the very beginning of a brand’s life,” he said. “Who founded the brand, who screwed it up? It’s about discovering the most basic human insights that are the universal truths, motivations and tensions that define human behaviour.”

Pritchard featured work from Febreze to support his argument, pointing to the campaign’s “veracity” as its defining factor. He also showcased P&G’s mum-focused Olympics campaign, which he said had “reinvented the relationship between people and P&G and its brands. It was driven by the courage to say yes.”