At its first CES, P&G shows off a connected home scent-emitting device, a toothbrush that coaches you, and image recognition-powered skincare advice
Procter & Gamble is 182 years old, but it has never been at CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas, until this week.
Context & Ripple Effects
P&G arriving at CES is the consumer-goods counterpart to a show already remade by ambient computing: the prior year's coverage documented massive investment in voice control across every platform and gadget, and the 'home of the future' had become CES's center of gravity rather than its sideshow. For a company whose brand reach rests on shelf space and advertising — Kantar put its 2019 US ad spend at $4.3B — the move signals that distribution is shifting toward devices that live inside daily routines.
The products on display are not one-off gadgets but a template: sensing plus software wrapped around consumables. Within a year, the pattern was visible in oral care specifically, as [[a:949969|wireless chips, motion and pressure sensors, displays, and machine learning began changing brushing habits]] — exactly the coaching-toothbrush category P&G was staking out.
First-order effects
- P&G now competes directly with consumer-electronics makers on their own stage, converting its household-brand trust into hardware credibility while keeping its core razor-and-refill economics intact.
- Its $4.3B annual US advertising budget becomes negotiating leverage: a first-time exhibitor of this size raises the value of CES floor space and forces rival packaged-goods companies to decide whether to follow onto the tech-show circuit.
Second-order effects
- Device makers building smart-home ecosystems gain a new class of partner — CPG brands whose consumables create recurring revenue per active device — pressuring platforms to open APIs to everyday-product companies.
- Rival personal-care brands face a forced response: if coaching hardware changes hygiene habits, they must either build their own connected lines or cede the premium tier of an otherwise commoditized category.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the boundary between packaged goods and consumer technology dissolves structurally: brands compete on software-driven routines and data loops rather than shelf placement, with trade shows like CES — and later events such as IFA 2025, where Amazon, Google, Samsung, and LG plan AI-driven smart-home showcases — serving as the merger point for both industries.
- Consumer-products giants accumulating behavioral data from daily-routine devices points toward a regulatory reckoning over who owns intimate health and habit data, an area where the rules were still unwritten when these products debuted.
The trend: Consumer packaged-goods companies are crossing into connected hardware, turning everyday routine products into sensor-and-software platforms anchored at tech trade shows.