Recently, Carlos Aguiar has been to South Africa on a safari, which he considered ´unforgetable and amazing´. He renewed all his energies and had to face new challenges as soon as he came back to Johnson & Johnson Oral Care and Baby divisions.´In 2007, we are supposed to deal with 600 thousand newly-born infants and make the professional toothbrush Extreme lead the market.

For almost two hours, the executive talked about such issues and told us what he intends to do with OTC line by Pfizer, recently acquired by Johnson & Johnson. Read below the main parts of the interview:           
 

Top Team:Johnson Baby's program,implemented in maternities, has significantly changed and it is considered today a world benchmarking. Which strategies have you made use of?

Carlos Aguiar: The program targeted only A and B maternities. We needed to expand the number of newly-born infants, so we incorporated C and D maternities as well, as they constantly deliver a huge number of newly-born infants. Throughout such reformulation, we increased the standadization of Johnson & Johnson´s products and the delivery of kits. The strategy was made after a program taken by Johnson in China, as the pyramid of newly-born infants and ours are alike, that is, fewer newly-born infants in upper-middle class and a lot in C and D working class.  
 
Top Team: Have executives from all over the world followed such program?
 
Carlos Aguiar: Troughout those years, we´ve been visited by major executives, such as from Collen Goggins, the world president of Johnson & Johnson consumer. Such work was highly expanded. Last year, we covered nearly 370 thousand newly-born infants. Within 2006, we will reach the number of 500 thousand by distributing 50 thousand kits a month in 400 maternities from 11 Brazilian states. That is an excellent number if we consider that Brazil has almost three million newly-born infants a year. In 2006, we will reach 70,000 pregnants who attend courses sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. Baby´s program has something else to be highlighted: it is the 360 degrees communication. When the consumer sees any Johnson Baby´s product in PDV, magazine, television or even in the maternity, he has a very good impression of it. Consequently, its brand is strengthened.            

Top Team: Oral care project, developed by Johnson together with dentists has had great result. How is it structured?
 
Carlos Aguiar: We have a team which is highly focused in São Paulo, Capital, as 50.000 dentists are settled in this area. They visit the major professionals and take information about Johnson & Johnson products, such as our dental floss, which is considered to be the best one on the market. As our next step, we will take information about Extreme Professional, a modern toothbrush that we have recently launched. This product was developed specially for the Brazilian market. We talked to nearly 2,000 dentists in order to know the main features of the ideal toothbrush. After gathering all this information, we drew a brush with a small head,  tongue cleaner, unique bristles for outstanding cleaning and ergonomically designed handle for better comfort and control. It took two years to have this work done, which means a great evolutin on the toothbrush marketing.
 
Top Team: Recently, Johnson acquired the OTC line by Pfizer. Are you prepared to work with these new products?
 
Carlos Aguiar: Such important acquisition will significantly aggregate to OTC line by Johnson. That line by Pfizer is really well known on the market by its modern products, especially Listerine, which leads the market in its category. We have restructured all Johnson & Johnson, by developing integrating and operational work between Johnson and Pfizer so that next year we will be able to work perfectly.
 
Top Team: Which are the next goals for the Oral Care and Baby projects?
 
Carlos Aguiar: For Baby project, we intend to cover over 600 thousand newly born infants in 2007 and 700 thousand in 2008, by reaching 100% of the newly born infants in A, B and C all over Brazil, either by sales rep or by making use of other market strategies. For Oral Care, we intend to make the Extreme Professional lead the market and make it the favorite toothbrush for the Brazilian dentist.
 
Top Team: Both projects, either Oral Care as well as Baby, have been conducted by Rent Power e Rossetti Mk Sales Reps. How do you analyze such partnership?
 
Carlos Aguiar: Rent Power e Rossetti Mk Sales Reps came to meet Johnson and Johnson´s needs. We needed an extra sales power in order to meet our needs. Rent Power e Rossetti Mk Sales Reps has effectively helped us. Their work has been really good, either the quality of the auditors´ work as well as the sales reps´. Results have increasingly been better.