Conference has exemplified consistency of delivery like P&G has. In every year since 2018, P&G has been able to grow or hold share in a majority of its top 50 category country combinations, while steadily adding to its overall global market share position, momentum that continued through this most recent quarter. At the same time, a focus on cost discipline, productivity, and prudent capital allocation has yielded both balanced top and bottom line growth, as well as strong free cash flow generation. And the company is by no means complacent, driving forward an integrated growth strategy that aims to empower an increasingly agile organization, relentlessly optimize performance across portfolio choices and key capabilities in the areas of supply chain and digital competency, and ultimately win superiority with consumers. To give us more perspective on P&G's accomplishments and the path ahead, I'm going to turn it over now to Andre.
Good morning, everyone. All right, I'll start today with a review of results, and the dynamics on the current year, and Jon will discuss strategies, and then we'll have time to answer any questions, towards the end. Starting with results, fiscal 2023 was the 5th consecutive year with 5% or better organic sales growth for us, a strong start to fiscal 2024 with H1 organic sales up more than 5%. This keeps us on track to deliver towards the top end of our 4%-5% guidance range for the year as market growth rates normalize in the back half. Q2 marked the 22nd consecutive quarter of 4% or better organic sales growth.
As expected, last quarter we saw volume acceleration in North America and Europe Focus Markets as price mix decelerated, continuing the transition back to a normalized top line growth with more consistency with our long-term algorithm. We fully expected a normalization in underlying market growth rates, and we see that in our Q2 results as the market lapped the last waves of cost recovery pricing. For P&G, we expect the pricing contribution to top line growth to reduce by an additional 1-2 points in the back half of the year. We will continue to price for new innovations when warranted and to mitigate foreign exchange rate impacts or any new commodity cost increases. We have good momentum across the portfolio with 9 out of 10 categories growing organic sales in the H1 of fiscal 2024, and good growth across the geographic portfolio.
Through the H1 , organic sales in focus markets are up 5% and in enterprise markets 10%. 5 of 7 regions are growing organic sales in the H1 . Over the past 3 months, global aggregate market share is up 30 basis points with 29 of our top 50 category country combinations holding or growing share. In the U.S., all outlet value share was up 20 basis points versus prior year. U.S. volume share was up 50 basis points, reflecting strong volume growth. Importantly, we're driving category value growth ahead of our fair share. Value share in European Focus Markets was up 120 basis points over the past 3 months. On the bottom line, consistent earnings growth despite the highest inflationary period in 40 years over the past 2 years.
This momentum continues with fiscal year-to-date Core Earnings Per Share up 16%, up 19% on a currency-neutral basis, Adjusted Free Cash Flow Productivity of 96%, very strong Organic Sales Growth with solid margin expansion, Core EPS growth, and strong cash conversion, strong balanced top line and bottom line growth combined with cash. During fiscal years 2022 and 2023, we faced historically high inflation pressure, a total gross margin headwind of 820 basis points from commodities, freight, and foreign exchange rates. We've offset those headwinds with a combination of productivity improvement and price increases, which lacked the inflation impact by about 6 months. The calendar year 2022 and 2023 benefit from productivity and pricing with 920 basis points.
This strong combination of productivity and pricing has enabled us to increase our investment in innovation and demand creation, to grow markets and our brands while restoring gross margin and operating margin to pre-COVID levels and potentially higher this fiscal year. Our pipeline of productivity opportunities is fully funded, sufficient, and growing. Pricing has been a neutral or positive contributor to the top line for 50 of the last 53 quarters or 19, 18 out of the last 19 fiscal years. We continue to invest in innovation, and we will continue to price with innovation when warranted. We expect these benefits to continue to fuel gross margin expansion, which in turn fuels investment in superior innovation, retail execution, and communication to drive market growth. All-in sales growth over the 5-year period since fiscal 2019 is up 4.6% on average.
The strong top line coupled with a very strong productivity program has enabled us to increase our investment in demand creation by 6% on average over that same period. Based on our trends this year, advertising spend will be up roughly 70 basis points versus fiscal 2019 on a substantially larger sales base. Over these 5 years, we have been getting increasingly more effective and efficient in our consumer targeting, ad placement, and copy quality, reinvesting savings and driving higher return on investment along the way. We'll continue to be ROI-driven, optimizing reach and frequency, delivering more compelling brand messages to our consumers. Over the same 5-year period, SG&A excluding advertising has grown at half the rate of sales growth, about 2.4% versus sales at 4.6%. We take a disciplined approach to cost, selling, research, and overhead areas.
We are investing in new capabilities to make us more productive, and we are using more digital tools to increase the speed and lower the cost of developing and delivering new innovation. A good example is the digitally enabled, new molecule development in fabric care, which we talked about, before, which is improving product formulations, increasing supply assurance, and lowering costs, and all of that at increased speed and lower cost as we do this in a digitally enabled way. Over this 5-year period, total SG&A has improved by 120 basis points. This demonstrates our ability to continue to invest to drive demand in our categories and for our brands while simultaneously and sustainably improving structural economics. We continue to make strong investments in R&D to drive superiority. We spend more on research and development in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of sales versus our peer set average.
We have delivered irresistibly superior innovations that have grown markets while accelerating sales and share growth. We are leaner, faster, and more effective with our research and development focused on bigger, more meaningful innovations that grow markets. We will continue to invest to ensure our pipeline is full, not just for the next 3-5 years, but a decade or more from now. Strong bottom line results driven by productivity, which enable reinvestment in advertising and innovation to drive demand creation and grow categories, reigniting underlying category volume growth in the categories we compete in is critical for balanced mid- and long-term growth, and catalysts for this growth are available to us even in the most developed markets. We have opportunities to drive incremental household penetration, identify new jobs to be done with our consumers, and encourage incremental usage for better consumer experience.
Moving to the cash side, we're continuing our strong record of cash return to shareholders. We've paid a dividend for 133 consecutive years, and we have raised that dividend for 67 consecutive years. Only 7 U.S. publicly traded companies have paid a dividend more consecutive years than P&G, and only 3 U.S. companies have raised that dividend more consecutive years. Through the December quarter, we've returned over $7 billion of cash to shareholders, $4.5 billion in dividends, and $2.5 billion in share repurchase. Last year, at this conference, we committed to returning to our balanced growth algorithm across the top line and the bottom line, which includes consistent margin expansion.
We've done this via a combination of productivity and innovation-enabled pricing while building the overall superiority of our brands, a tailored organization across Focus Markets and Enterprise Markets, a broad product portfolio across 10 daily use categories, and a diverse yet focused geographic portfolio are key enablers of sustained balanced top and bottom line growth. We expect and but the environment around us to continue to be volatile and challenging, from an input cost standpoint to currencies to consumer retailer and geopolitical dynamics. This includes continued market pressure in Greater China and softening underlying market trends in some European Enterprise and Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, following multiple rounds of pricing to offset inflation and due to heightened tension in the Middle East.
Despite this volatility, we remain confident that the best path forward is to double down on the strategy that has enabled the strong results to date. We remain committed to delivering balanced top and bottom line growth and value creation for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Jon.
Thanks, Andre. Good morning, everyone. Our team continues to execute our strategy with excellence, enabling strong results, as both Steve and Andre said, over each of the last 5 years, pre-COVID, during COVID, through a historic inflationary and pricing cycle, and through geopolitical tensions. Our strategy is dynamic and sustainable, adds to the changing needs of consumers, customers, and society, and is focused on growing markets, creating versus taking business, the most sustainable and typically most profitable way to grow. We believe the best path forward is to double down on this integrated strategy, which has been delivering strong balanced top and bottom line results. So this strategy is unchanged, a focused portfolio of daily use products and categories where performance drives brand choice. The portfolio is performing, delivering broad-based growth across nearly all categories in most geographies for several years.
Next strategy element, ongoing commitment to an investment in, no surprise, irresistible superiority through innovation across the 5 vectors of product, package, brand communication, retail execution, and value, holistically defined, leveraging that superiority to grow markets and our share in them, to jointly create value with retail partners. The plans across the businesses are broader and stronger than any time in the recent past as each team works to increase their margin of superiority and consumer delight, superior innovations that are driven by deep consumer insights, communicated to consumers with more effective and efficient marketing programs, executed in stores and online in conjunction with retailer strategies to grow categories and our brands, and priced to deliver superior value across each price tier where we compete. Superior products, Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth Tear with scalloped edge perforations, a great example of consumer insight driving innovation to improve the end-use experience.
Consumer response to the new product has been overwhelmingly positive and recommendations in social media. Let's watch the advertisement.
Wow. This new Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth Tear is so soft and so smooth. I'm starting to get carried away. Thank you, Mr. Smooth Bear.
Designed with smooth tear edges, new Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth Tear has wavy perforations that tear so much better for a smooth, more enjoyable go.
Hm? Mom, you okay in there?
I'm terrific.
Enjoy the go with Charmin.
Charmin Ultra Soft has grown organic sales double digits, excuse me, in the H1 of fiscal 2024 with U.S. value share up 30 basis points. This innovation has contributed to the mid-single digit market growth of both value and volume for U.S. bath tissue. Gillette's superior propositions, like Gillette Labs Razor with an exfoliating bar that removes dirt and debris before the blades, continue to drive growth in the global grooming category. Gillette Labs has reached shares greater than 20% in markets like Spain and France and is building momentum in the U.S. and in China. Let's watch an ad featuring dad and son TikTok stars. It's our classic father-teaches-son flipped on its head, son-teaches-father, in a very socially relevant manner.
This guy again.
Hey, son. You got a little something on your face.
I needed a quick shave.
Quick shave? Respect the process.
It ain't my dad's razor, Dad. It's from Gillette Labs.
Gillette Labs?
Gillette's ultimate shaving experience. This green bar releases trapped hairs from my face.
Game changer.
While it flexed its contours to it.
Looking smooth.
Feeling even smoother.
How about hooking me up with some Gillette Labs?
Check your tech.
You're the best.
Nah, you're the best.
The best make you get keeps getting better.
The next generation of shaving is Gillette Labs.
This ad contributed to Gillette Labs growing 62% versus the pre-copy period. The global grooming category is on track for $1 billion of retail sales growth this fiscal year, with Gillette driving 2/3 of the increase, well ahead of our global share. Dawn has delivered outstanding results behind innovation that drives product and packaging superiority, such as Dawn Powerwash, which we launched in the U.S. 4 years ago. If Powerwash were a standalone brand, it would now be the second largest in the category. We continued innovating to extend this margin of advantage. In 2022, we launched Dawn EZ- Squeeze in the U.S. and Fairy Max in Europe, superior product with an upgraded formula across the entire lineup, superior packaging. The no flip, no mess cap makes it easy and fast to use from the first squeeze to the last.
Let's watch two ads that show how we deliver superior communication in different channels for different consumer audiences.
Did you know there's a way to cut your dishwashing time by 50%? Try Dawn Powerwash dish spray. It removes 99% of grease and grime in half the time. Dawn Powerwash has 3 cleaning boosters not found in traditional dish soaps that remove food and grease 5x faster. And because it cleans so well, you can replace multiple cleaning products for counters, stoves, and even laundry stains. Try Dawn Powerwash dish spray, brand power helping you buy better.
Super Bowl means one thing: delicious, greasy, but tough-to-clean recipes. That's why I'm teaming up with Dawn Dish Soap to host the ultimate wash party.
Cut. Loving that energy, JJ. But the line is ultimate wash party. Let's go again?
That's what I said. I said wash party.
Wash party.
What's a wash party?
You're flying in a lucky fan and up to 9 friends to Scottsdale, Arizona. You'll wash their dishes while they watch a game, a wash party.
I'm washing dishes.
Dawn's giving away $1 million worth of Dawn Platinum EZ- Squeeze to tackle everyone else's wash party messes.
Okay, cool.
I don't have him in the script.
Him? I don't mind him. He sort of follows me everywhere.
Did Dawn help save his life too?
What? He's a mascot.
Because all it takes is just one drop of oil.
Wildlife wouldn't survive. That's why wildlife rescuers only trust Dawn Platinum, because it gets every drop of oil off a bird's delicate little feathers.
You know your stuff.
No, I just love Dawn and ducks. Learn more at jjwashparty.com. They should have called it a Watt party, you know?
Innovations like Dawn Powerwash and Dawn EZ- Squeeze in the US and Fairy Power Spray and Fairy Max in Europe are disproportionately driving market growth in hand dishwashing, with value share in the US approaching 67%, nearly 50% across Europe Focused Markets. Over the past 12 months, the US hand dish market has grown market value high single digits and market single digits, with Dawn's value share up half a point and volume share up one point. Superior product and superior packaging with superior communication driving market growth. Superior communication, "Wash hands, have dinner," is the most mentioned sentence in Chinese homes. Safeguard leverages its insight during Chinese New Year with a long-form digital ad helping consumers feel that no matter where they spend Chinese New Year, when they hear "Wash hands, have dinner," they will feel the protection of family around them. Let's watch this copy.
我来的刚回来，爸爸来喝了。
来爸爸。
嫂子啦，爸爸有好东西啦。
你们过去要几点钟啦？
我要上车嘞，你们三人光到啊。我先出去估嘞。
快点快点快点快点。
妈！
哎，来了来了。
妈！
妈！
你说什么？
四九七八。
爸！洗手吃饭！
到了。
爸妈，你们来，进进。
啊，坐坐坐。
哎爸妈，你们来了。
哎。
饭菜都准备好了。
啊。
乐乐快来。
爷爷奶奶！爷爷！
哎。
洗手吃饭。
好。
爸爸身体健康，平时常来我们这里吃东西，希望你可以吃到。
妈妈，我快到小区了。
妈妈，快来，快来。
妈妈，我来了。
妈妈，我来了。
今天已经成为了我们伟大的祖国，生生日长，昌旺荣耀。
爸！
祖国这么多这么多。
洗手吃饭。
哦。
你挺忙的。
我是中国人员。
来来来，来！
来！
哈哈哈，爷爷，你还逗我够多了。
妈妈来了。
每句洗手吃饭都是家的守护。
长大了吧，哈哈哈。
洗手吃饭，健康过年。
This copy resulted in our highest-ever consumer engagement in China, with reach of over 200 million consumers and more than 27 million earned media impressions. Over the past 12 months, P&G share in the China hand cleansing category is up 80 basis points, and our Safeguard premium body wash has grown organic sales by 40%. Next, superior retail execution. 6 years ago, we acquired Native Deodorants. It was a direct-to-consumer, online-only, natural deodorant at a premium price point. It was an acquisition that delivered a natural deodorant offering which our Old Spice and Secret brands didn't have. We spent time learning from Native what the brand means to consumers and the value it provided them. We learned more about their successful direct-to-consumer model. We first tested taking this digitally Native brand into stores with 1 retailer.
Our superior retail execution and strong retail partnerships enabled us to bring Native into national in-store distribution and step-change value and market growth in the deodorants category from low single digits to mid-teens. Native's price point is a significant premium to the category average. Trading consumers up to Native drives significant category growth for our retail partners. Native is approaching $500 million in sales and has launched into several other categories: hair care, body wash, and body lotion. Native is leading U.S. category growth in each of its categories, driving Native's value share up 1-3 points in each category across all time periods. Superior retail execution and value. Hair Care Mexico has been on a decade-long journey to deliver category growth by serving the most demanding consumers with superiority across price tiers.
From product innovations on the base classic products to new premium product innovations that expand consumers' regimen both in and out of the shower, Hair Care Mexico has driven category growth 1.5 times their fair share over the past 4 years. Pantene's 3 Minute Miracle Conditioner and its Combing Cream are incremental products for the consumers that want softer, shinier hair that's easy to comb and style. Consumers are willing to pay a price premium for these benefits. Superior retail execution has grown consumption by making these product innovations more visible in store with premium displays and offering multiple sizes to make them more accessible to value price points. P&G is the number 1 hair care company in Mexico in value share, and it's grown value and volume share over the past 12 months, reaching record high shares in shampoo in December 2023.
Mexico hair care organic sales are growing over 25% in the H1 of fiscal 2024, and value share is up 70 basis points over the past 12 months. There are many more opportunities to delight consumers and grow markets. Let's look at an example. U.S. fabric enhancers organic sales have grown double digits on average for the past 7 years. Despite strong sustained growth, there remains significant upside potential in household penetration across all forms: liquid fabric enhancers, scent beads, and dryer sheets. Once we were present in a consumer's household, significant opportunity exists in load penetration, which is illustrated by the table on the right. Growth opportunities, as you can see, exist in all categories. Another example, baby care. U.S. Ninjamas is driving over 40% market growth in the youth pants segment.
With our more recent launches in Germany and France, the bed wetting category is growing double digits, and Ninjamas is the main contributor. Dawn Powerwash and Downy Rinse incremental products to the dishwashing and laundry regimen that solve previously met unmet consumer needs. Third strategy element, productivity, improvement in all of our operations to fund investments in innovation, brand building, and market growth, to mitigate cost and currency challenges, and to expand margins and generate cash. We're reaccelerating productivity back to pre-COVID levels with an objective for gross savings in cost of goods sold $1.5 billion before tax. Visibility to more savings opportunities is increasing, enabled by platform programs with global application across categories like Supply Chain 3.0. We're working in a new way with retailers on the totality of the supply chain, end-to-end, versus simply trying to optimize each piece.
One example, using data and machine learning algorithms to optimize truck scheduling to minimize the time for drivers. We're also using AI tools to optimize fill rights and for dynamic routing and sourcing optimization. $200 million-$300 million of savings opportunity in just these areas. We have line of sight to savings from improved marketing productivity, more efficiency, and greater effectiveness, avoiding excess frequency and reducing waste while increasing reach. We're taking targeted steps to reduce overhead as we digitize more of our operations. The team has delivered strong cost savings in the H1 of the year, and we plan to build on this momentum. Next, constructive disruption of ourselves and our industry, a willingness to change, adapt, create new tools, technologies, and capabilities that will shape the future of our industry and extend our competitive advantage.
We continue to be a constructive disruptor of brand building, in-housing more of the media planning and placement activity, using our proprietary tools and consumer data to increase effectiveness and efficiency of our communication. We're disrupting traditional lab-based innovation models to dramatically increase the speed and breadth of discovery. Last but not least, we've designed and continue to refine an empowered, agile, and accountable organization, an increasingly diverse organization, enabling us to better serve an increasingly diverse set of consumers. Strong progress across all strategic pillars with significant opportunity ahead of us, no reason to stand still. As illustrated by the 4 focus areas we've outlined previously, first, Supply Chain 3.0, which is delivering productivity as talked. We're also driving improved capacity planning, greater supply agility, flexibility, data transparency, scale, and resilience all the way up and down the supply chain, inclusive of our retail partners.
All of this is driving higher quality, increased supply assurance, and higher on-shelf availability of products, and of course, better cash and cost structures. These programs improve superiority with consumers and further strengthen what is already the top-ranked supply chain by our retail partners and third-party industry surveys. Next, environmental sustainability, superior propositions for consumers, customers, and share owners that are sustainable, driving sales and profitability while reducing the footprint of our operations, enabling consumers to reduce their footprint, and innovating to deliver cross-industry solutions for some of our most pressing challenges.
A good example is the 4-chamber Ariel Platinum Pods innovation that we launched in a new cardboard package, extending our superiority advantage in product performance while improving sustainability by enabling great wash results even in cold water, already contributing to a 2 degrees Celsius reduction in wash temperatures in Europe against a 5-degree target, also extending packaging superiority with a more attractive and more sustainable cardboard box. Let's watch this copy.
C'est la finale du programme à froid.
Est-ce que Clarisse va nous sortir un blanc impeccable ?
Non, j'ai parié que non.
Elle a cette capacité à se laisser passer dans les grands rendez-vous. Ça serait vraiment le bon moment.
Clarisse, éloignez-nous. On passe de réaliser l'exploit.
Le blanc à froid, c'est risqué, mais elle peut le faire.
Ça y est, c'est bientôt le moment de vérité.
On va se la faire boboler en français, c'est toujours jeune pour son adversaire.
Allez, ouais!
Le résultat de votre lessive ne devrait pas être un jeu de hasard. Alors, comme Clarisse, choisissez Ariel Pods. D'abord une pod, puis le linge, et même à basse température, le blanc est impeccable. Ariel Pods, des lessives toujours gagnantes, même à froid, et toujours tenir hors de portée des enfants.
Superior innovation leading to grew organic sales high single digits in fiscal year 2023 and was up double digits in the H1 of fiscal 2024. Another example, Head & Shoulders Bare, delivers superior anti-dandruff performance with the bare minimum of ingredients, 9 to be exact, in an Eco bottle with 45% less plastic versus our regular bottle. Global Head & Shoulders is growing organic sales 8% fiscal year to date. Next focus area, digital acumen, leveraging data and digitization to delight consumers, streamline the supply chain, increase quality, drive productivity, all driving shareholder value. Andre mentioned the improvement we've delivered in ad copy qualification and media buying with proprietary digital tools we've developed and the digital molecule development work in fabric care. But we've built similar tools to drive faster, cheaper, and better innovation in perfume, which benefits almost every product category in the company.
We're also digitizing more of our back office work processes to lower cost and drive efficiencies while delivering higher quality output. Each of these examples has obvious cost benefits, but they're also driving product and package superiority, superior brand communication to consumers, superior retail execution in stores and online, stronger internal controls, and jobs that enable people to focus on higher order tasks with greater business impacts. Superior value equation for all employees, inclusive of all genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages, and abilities for all roles, to ensure we continue to attract, retain, and develop the best talent in our best position to serve all consumers. These 4 focus areas are not new or separate strategies. They simply strengthen our ability to execute the existing strategy. Our strategic choices on portfolio, superiority, productivity, constructive disruption on organization reinforce and build on each other.
We continue to believe that there's merit in doubling down on this integrated strategy, starting with a commitment to deliver irresistibly superior propositions to consumers and retail partners fueled by productivity. We remain as confident as ever in this strategy and our ability to drive market growth and to deliver balanced growth and value creation to delight consumers, customers, employees, society, and share owners. With that, we're happy to take your questions. We'll start in the front here. It's you. Oh, you're looking for a mic. Okay. It's coming.
So, Jon, can you just give us an update on your expectations for category growth going forward? Obviously, we've had a period of excess pricing in the last couple of years here, and thoughts around pricing versus volume and the volume recovery we see going forward. And then maybe also just touch on the competitive environment around the world that you're seeing in terms of promotion as things normalize on a post-COVID, post-sort of price increase basis here. Thanks.
A classic Dara Mohsenian question.
This is a good thing or is that?
We expect that, to your point, market growth rates will revert to pretty much their historical norm, which in our categories has generally been somewhere between 4%-5%. Volumes will have to be a stronger component of that if we expect to realize that on a sustainable basis. The good news there is we're beginning to see strong volume progress. We mentioned on the call in North America, obviously our largest market, last 5 quarters volume versus a year ago -3%, flat, +2%, +3%, +4%. We're also seeing good volume growth in Europe. When you look at the aggregate numbers, it's not as obvious that's driven by China separately, but generally very strong progress. Andre mentioned our volume share progress as well, which is encouraging. So we expect that growth will continue.
We expect to grow ahead of the market, and we expect to continue to work to influence the rate of market growth. In terms of promotion, we're still seeing levels (this is aggregate data, of course) of volume moved on promotion below pre-COVID levels. It's come up a little bit, but it's still meaningfully below what it was. Andre, I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that.
No, I think we're looking at 85 indices versus pre-COVID levels. That is stable in the biggest markets, Europe, Focus and North America. We see a bit of increase in Latin America, as we mentioned, Brazil, Mexico, local competition as well as multinationals. We'll remain competitive, but again, our best response is irresistible superiority.
As far as our own desire, we would rather invest a dollar in innovation or a dollar in brand building any day of the week before we invest in promotion. Why is that? Because those first two investments offer the potential of proprietary advantage. Promotion does not. Having said that, we strive to be competitive and will endeavor to do that. Nick?
Great, thanks. Jon, maybe we can just go back to the AI, specifically in terms of innovation and marketing. So you talked about speeding up the pace of discovery. How does that change your innovation strategy? Does that mean you'll be able to launch more products? And I know, obviously, you have to manage a supply chain and complexity, but would love your thought on that just going forward. And then how far is P&G away from being able to do customized, personalized video marketing to consumers at scale?
Clearly, the new tools, well, first of all, I want to clarify one thing that's very important. I don't really care about AI or blockchain or machine learning or any of that. That's not to denigrate your question. Your question's a good question. But what we care deeply about, and which we've both talked about today, is consumer delight, customer delight, employee delight, all done in a societally responsible way that creates value for share owners. And if these tools can help us advance that endeavor, we will clearly embrace them. And where they don't, we need to stay away from them. Now, in terms of, I just think that's an important mindset given some of the conversations I've had in the hallways and at dinner, etc. AI is not an objective for us: consumer, customer, employee, society, shareholder delight.
The combination of new technologies is allowing significant innovation opportunities, which both speed the rate of innovation, also free up larger parts of our innovation team further up the innovation pipeline to really work on those big ideas that Andre was talking about that drive markets. So it allows a reallocation of resources as well as more productivity for each resource that's dedicated. I'll give you one example: packaging design. Sounds simple, but has been one of our thorniest, most difficult jobs. And part of that is simply that we have manufacturing lines across the world that are differently configured and do relatively better or worse jobs at running variations in, for example, bottle sizes. Also, our retail partner shelves are different across the world and within a market, and they're changing all the time.
So the old process required us to test a change that a package designer wanted to make across each of those manufacturing platforms to make sure it could run and across each of the existing retail shelving configurations. And now that's all digitized. I was just out in the labs 2 weeks ago where they were showing me this. That takes the design timeline down from something like 18 months to something that's much shorter than that. And again, offers the opportunity not just for more productivity but reallocation of resources. I'm going to leave it there so I can give others a chance to ask a question, but we can catch up on the second one in the hallway. Catherine?
My question relates to breaking free from societal constraints and pursuing one's dreams despite gender and the board's role in succession planning. So on your website, it says, "For more than 185 years, we've challenged the norm and inspired the future." On the one hand, P&G's board has made extraordinary efforts to diversify its board and leading relative to many peers. Yet on the other hand, despite all the Tide laundry competition and diaper changes, we've never seen a female CEO. Why is that?
That's a question for the board. I expect that someday you will. I'd be very surprised if you wouldn't. But just generally on this topic, it is very important and fundamental to our company, and it has everything to do with serving and delighting consumers. Last February, we just crossed a very important milestone. It's no reason to stop the work. But we now have more than 50% of our manager roles across the world staffed by women, which is huge in my mind, not because of the numbers and we can turn some box on a chart from yellow to green, but because a disproportionate number of our consumers are women. And we're better positioned to serve them and win when we have the representation that we want. I'll give you another example of why this is important. How do we sustain superiority without some degree of superior talent?
I just don't know how that's possible. It runs against the laws of physics. So we need to attract, retain, and develop better talent than our competitors, the best talent in the world. And how can you do that without a superior employee value proposition? And how can you have a superior value proposition for all employees that doesn't include equality? There has to be something in it for everyone. So we continue to be very committed. I know the board is as well. I know Andre and Jon are. And hopefully, we can continue to make progress. And if we could change this dialogue, Catherine, from, if you will, social justice to winning, I think it's such a more powerful proposition because it doesn't allow anybody to opt out. In the current construct, I can say, "Well, that's not something that I care about.
That's not something that I historically contributed to." Whatever. Once we land it on, "No, no, no, no. This is fundamental to winning. You don't care about that? I've got a door to show you." Right? So I think we're really making significant progress both in terms of representation, our thinking on the importance of this, its link to winning for the business. We're increasingly serving a more and more diverse group of consumers. 100% of the growth in North America is going to be multicultural consumers in the next decade. We need to position ourselves from an empathy standpoint, from an understanding standpoint, from an effectiveness standpoint to win with each of them. Yeah, Andre?
Thank you. You mentioned, Mike, you're getting this progress on the margin, and you've been amazing at innovating in value and creative categories and creating growth to the categories. Are you seeing, and I think the margin, and we all in this room probably appreciate the margin progression that you've had, and understandably, you have a lot more FX pressures coming your way. But if you were to think about how the negotiations with your retailers have come to fruition, is there any pressure as part of the promotional trends coming back? Is there any pressure to give back some of these, or that is not something that is?
Well, that's always part of the discussion, but is not a very predominant part of the discussion. By far, the most predominant part of the discussion is, "What can we do working together to increase market size?" I had a conversation with one of our retail partners 2 or 3 years ago, and I was visiting them with a couple of other manufacturer CEOs, and they were talking about market share, market share, market share. And I finally got frustrated and stood up and said, "The truth is, I don't care about your market share. And the truth is, you don't care about my market share. Let's just be honest with each other. What benefits us both is market growth." Now, you can't just have that conversation and expect the world to change. You have to deliver against it.
I've just given you a number of examples where we've successfully done that. If we can continue to do that on more category country combinations than less, that's going to be the conversation.
One more.
Here? Sorry, I apologize. I haven't.
No, Chris. Hello. Chris Carey.
You're on.
John, can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Okay, great. Chris Carey, Wells Fargo. So a consistent message today around the focus portfolio, daily use, performance drives brand choice, also a consistent message around irresistible superiority. One of the themes we've heard this week at CAGNY from some of your larger multinational peers is just the substantial growth that remains in international, in emerging markets. I wonder, as you canvass the world, where you see those types of opportunities in sort of the most tangible form. Where are those international opportunities nearest to you? And just in general, how would you characterize this per capita trade-off opportunity in global markets? Again, one of the themes we've heard from some of your larger peers this week.
Yeah, well, as Andre shared with you earlier this morning, what we call our enterprise markets, which are essentially the non-North America, non-Europe, non-Northeast Asia, have been growing and continue to grow at very strong rates, roughly a third to 2x as high as the focus markets. But we can't get trapped in growth rates and percentages. We need to be focused on where the dollars are. Right? So this is always a struggle internally on smaller brands, for example. Yeah, I can grow this brand at 20%, and I can only grow Tide at 10%. Yeah, but what's the value of Tide growth at 10% worth? It's huge. And so while there are international opportunities, the biggest opportunities in absolute terms are right outside this building and increasingly in Europe. And I think we can do I think we can do it all. We need to be disciplined.
You've seen us make some disciplined portfolio choices in terms of our presence or our business model in Argentina, in Nigeria, previously in Venezuela. But there are more opportunities than problems, and that's true across Focus Markets and Enterprise Markets. But thanks for your question.
I think with that, we will move over to the breakout room. Please join me in thanking P&G for their longstanding support of our conference.