By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Expect a new corporate history of Procter & Gamble Co. to appear next spring.

Titled Rising Tide, it'll be the first produced by P&G since 1981, when Oscar Schisgall wrote Eyes on Tomorrow. Published by a unit of Doubleday & Co., the book's account ended during the reign of Ed Harness, when P&G was establishing beachheads in international markets such as Japan.

Since then, there's been plenty to write about: The global expansion into Asia and Latin America, the move into beauty care with products such as Olay, the rise and then fall of chief executive Durk Jager, the rebound under current CEO A.G. Lafley and the selling off of icons such as Jif and Crisco and most of the Ivorydale plant complex in St. Bernard.

P&G executives have been reading galleys of the book, which was produced with the company's full cooperation, a spokeswoman said. Harvard Press will publish it, and the book will appear in bookstores even though the target audience is mainly P&G employees and retirees.

A new plan

Hiring a New York investment banking firm is the next step in the financial travails of Games Inc.

Games, run by businessman Roger Ach, hired Wellfleet Partners Inc. in December as "the first step in the implementation of our new strategic initiative," the company said in a filing with federal regulators.

Ach's company, which runs the Internet site www.lottery.com, has tried for years to convince states to sell lottery tickets online. That hasn't happened, so it's switched its focus to online games, trying to acquire online rights to some of the world's best-known titles.

Wellfleet has not invested in Games, but it's helping find financing for potential acquisitions, Ach said.

Games didn't reveal much about the new contract. But it's staggering from financial losses, including $686,849 in the quarter that ended Sept. 30.

Revenue almost doubled, however, to $91,173, according to another December filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The eyes have it

For a company that has always done the bulk of its marketing through Yellow Pages directories, a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade New Year's Day might seem like an unnecessary risk.

Roto-Rooter was afraid of that, until the company saw its first-year results last year.

In spending $300,000 to sponsor a float in the 2003 game, Roto-Rooter says it reached 111 million Americans, spending only $3.25 CPM (cost per thousand impressions), substantially lower than most national marketing buys in the standard media-measuring tool.

So the company re-upped for the Jan. 1, 2004, game.

Roto-Rooter's company-owned locations spent $14 million on Yellow Pages advertising this year, and $25 million counting franchisees and contractors.

"We've been looking for something that's a little outside of the box that might deliver the same audience," spokesman Paul Abrams said.

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E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com