P&G Airs Your Dirty Laundry
Procter & Gamble Co.expects big things from the little concentrated liquid-detergent packs called Tide Pods it's launching this month. The three-chamber unit-dose Pods in colorful fishbowl-style packaging are backed by a colorful campaign led by Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, inspired by pop artists -- hence the term "Pop" that plays heavily throughout the ads, said Sundar Raman, marketing director for Tide.
Here are some of the key numbers by which P&G measures the need and potential for Pods, which it bills as its biggest laundry innovation since the launch of liquid Tide in 1984.

$300 million: First-year sales P&G hopes to get from Pods.
$150 million: Estimated first-year marketing spending on Pods.
30%: Share of the $6.5 billion U.S. laundry detergent market that P&G projects unit-dose products like Pods can ultimately capture.
6,000: Consumers with whom P&G has tested Pods.
8: Years it took to develop Pods.
450: Packaging and product sketches rendered in the process.
900: The number of different conditions of water, stains, fabrics, etc., that affect the outcome of a wash load.
1: The number of hours a typical consumer can save annually by using Pods vs. pouring liquid detergent and using pretreaters.
22 %: The percentage of U.S. consumers whose laundry rooms are in the basement and would benefit from having to carry just a Pod or two vs. a whole laundry bottle.
7: Weight in pounds of a typical liquid laundry-detergent bottle.
3.5: Weight in pounds of a package of Pods that does a similar number of loads.
90%: The proportion of active ingredient in Pods (the rest being water).
92%: The proportion of active ingredients in Dropps, laundry detergent packs from tiny Cot'n Wash that launched in 2010.
50%: Roughly the proportion of active ingredients in Tide liquid detergent.
10%: The proportion of active ingredients in the next leading laundry detergent brand.
100 million: The number of U.S. consumers who use Tide at some point annually.
20%: The proportion of U.S. laundry loads rewashed because of consumer dissatisfaction with the results (more often by men than women).
68%: The percentage of consumers who say their detergent lets them get satisfactory results with minimum time and effort.
97%: The percentage of consumers who say that about Tide Pods.
Source: Procter & Gamble Co., Cot'n Wash