It’s not Satanic; the Moonies don’t own the company.
Apparently Christians easily forget that gossip is a sin, and some of America’s largest marketing firms are plagued by the consequences.
For the second time in as many years, Procter and Gamble Company, the consumer product manufacturing giant, has been targeted by a campaign of unfounded rumor. The current wave, which began last October, charges that P & G actively promotes Satanism. It is circulating in the Pacific coastal states and typically alleges that a P & G executive appeared on either the Phil Donahue or the Merv Griffin television talk show and publicly linked P & G with promotion of Satanism.
Statements have been issued by spokesmen for both the Donahue and Griffin programs to deny that they had ever interviewed a P & G official.
The tenuous basis for the rumor is apparently the P & G corporate symbol: a man-in-the-moon profile and 13 stars. The rumor mongers claim this is a sorcerer’s head and that the number of stars is of significance in Satan worship. Actually, according to P & G spokeswoman Kathy Gilbert, the 13 stars were chosen in the 1850s to represent the original colonies, and the man-in-the-moon was tossed in by William Procter and James Gamble because it caught their fancy. The man-in-the-moon profile was a fad at the time—much as the happy face is today.
A year earlier, the Cincinnati, Ohio—based P & G was subjected to a spate of rumors, largely from the upper Midwest, alleging that the firm had been bought out by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. P & G, which markets products such as Folger’s coffee, Ivory soap, Head & Shoulders shampoo, and Pampers disposable diapers, has never been approached by the Moonies.
In both cases, Gilbert said, the inquiries came from individuals who typically stated that they “heard it at their church over the weekend.” She observed that they referred to “fundamentalist-type churches,” and that a few of the churches had attempted to organize boycotts of P & G products.
Sales have not been perceptibly affected by the rash of rumors, but P & G officials, taking no chances, have spent several hundred dollars to combat the slander. “It’s a lot cheaper to fight the rumors than it is to have the corporate symbol redesigned,” said another company spokesperson.
