FIRST things first. How odd to be invited down to Weybridge in Surrey for coffee with Chris de Lapuente, Procter & Gamble’s baby-faced UK boss. I mean, P&G people don’t speak to the press, do they? Well, things change, says De Lapuente with a little smile. “We want to be more externally focused than we have ever been before,” he adds. And part of being more externally focused means putting yourself about and starting to explain what you are doing to a habitually difficult press. That, for a congenitally secretive American multinational famous for not saying anything, must be quite tough.

He laughs. He’s sitting in a meeting room off his open-plan office on the first floor of P&G’s swanky glass and steel British base, part of a vast business park built over the old Brooklands motor-racing track. Just 40, De Lapuente looks so young you can barely believe he commands the second- biggest advertising spend in Britain (after the government). He is, in fact, the youngest UK boss P&G has ever had, and one of the firm’s highest flyers.

“Actually, I think the average age of our senior management team in the UK is only about 40 or 41,” he says, smiling. Medium height, mousy, balding, earnest, public-school educated, De Lapuente presents himself more like a pudgy middle manager than one of Britain’s foremost young business leaders, but then nothing is quite what you expect at P&G. For a start, despite a roster of brands that runs the gamut of household names — Fairy Liquid, Ariel, Always, Pampers, Pantene, Pringles, Tampax — and a 166-year history of consumer-marketing nous, much of its inner workings remain a mystery to outsiders.

That was always the P&G way. Bosses were trained up from the bottom, rivals were never poached, everything was done strictly by the book; discipline, research, no comment. It is a mono-focused approach to selling that has led rivals to dub P&G executives “Proctoids” (check in your free will at the door). And nothing was ever revealed, except to trusted business partners. Like the little old man in the Wizard of Oz, P&G always preferred to work its magic behind the curtain. Now, it seems, a certain change in style is being initiated at the $43 billion (£27 billion) turnover giant: less bureaucracy, more transparency. After an earnings slide at the start of the decade, P&G is sending its business leaders out to reaffirm what makes people tick: “walk the talk,” as De Lapuente puts it. And, of course, he wouldn’t be walking to talk to me unless the firm had numbers to be proud about.

Last week, while arch-rival Unilever was getting mixed reviews for its results (see Unilever faces thin pickings as the Atkins diet bites), P&G unveiled global year-end figures showing net sales up 8% and net earnings up 19%. No wonder it wants to crow.

De Lapuente says much of the current growth is organic, not bought in, achieved by running the core brands better and getting even closer to the consumer. More than £2 billion of that turnover came from the UK and Ireland, P&G’s most profitable area of operation outside America.

But what’s changed? Faster decision-making, better information, less central control. There’s still the rigid application of formula, however.

Ask De Lapuente nicely, and he will explain with boyish enthusiasm how P&G’s marketing has refined the selling process down to two critical moments, when the consumer makes his or her (85% her) purchasing decision in-store, and when the purchaser finally uses the product and judges its effectiveness and value.

Common sense? Maybe, but its efficient implementation is vital to P&G. “Our competitors are awesome, the markets we are in are worth many millions, the smallest percentage point can make a huge difference,” he explains.

And P&G’s understanding of what motivates consumers has always been the engine of its success. From its early days as a candle and soap maker in Cincinnati, Ohio — using pig fat going cheap from the Midwest abattoirs — it has built and bought its way to market predominance by rigorous organisation and never losing sight of what sells: what consumers want.

Now it competes globally in soap, paper products, beauty, fragrances, snacks and beverages, pet food, healthcare, homecare and more. Some feel its adherence to the consumer-is-king philosophy has blinded it to sensitive issues — P&G has been severely criticised for the environmental impact of disposable nappies, a product sector it pioneered, and more recently in the UK for the health effects of its Sunny Delight children’s drink.

Just saying “well, people want it” doesn’t wash any more, and it looks like the new generation of P&G bosses is acknowledging that. The beverages arm is up for sale. In its place P&G is piling money into haircare — it recently bought Clairol and is awaiting approval for its takeover of Wella. Brands are swiftly digested, “Proctered” and relaunched, usually with a leap in profitability.

And the people that come with them? I am not sure if De Lapuente answers that one, initially telling me that they are happily subsumed into P&G, later implying that many leave. Certainly, P&G, which prides itself on being a model employer, has always placed an emphasis on hiring young, promoting from within, and rarely bringing in executives from outside. There is even a rumour that P&G and Unilever have a no-poach agreement in Britain. That sounds almost like restraint of trade.