As part of his training he had to run an advertising campaign for a minor P&G shampoo brand. Training for a finance position, not a product management position! Why would you make somebody in finance handle marketing for a shampoo? Because they need to understand the fundamental mechanics that drive the business. There's no such thing as a good or a bad ad. The only thing that matters is that you flash the name of your product into peoples' primitive lizard brain over and over and over. Pantene, Pantene, Pantene, Pantene. People buy commodity products, and are willing to pay more, solely based on whether they recognize the name or not. Humans have no defense against this.