Neil McElroy - Godfather of "Brand Men", Soap Operas, and the Internet
If your job is anything like mine, a huge part of it has been shaped by a man you've probably never heard of; Neil McElroy. He was central to the invention of market research, brand management, soap operas - and involved in (although admittedly much less) the development of the internet and the iPhone.
I’ve been doing some reading around the foundations of media and market research (trying to figure out the general trajectory of ‘jobs like mine’; what they are, what they used to be, what they might look like in the future), and along the way learning about a man whose name wasn't immediately familiar to me - but whose career I found fascinating.
Soap Sales to Soap Operas
In 1925, aged 21, Neil McElroy got a summer job in between graduating from Harvard with a degree in Economics and going on to business school to study a post-graduate degree. The summer job was opening envelopes in a postroom at Procter & Gamble for about $100 a month. By the time he left the company, he would be earning about two hundred times that amount- but his impact was far greater than just a story about rising through the ranks at P&G.
Although McElroy’s plan had been to go on to business school, he decided to stay on with the company, where he moved first to being a door-to-door soap salesman, and then into a position in soap marketing. By 1929, he was manager of P&G's Promotions department.
This was at a time when the advertising industry was in a period of transition - just starting to move from ‘printed’ media (ie. posters, newspapers, leaflets etc.) and into “broadcast” media (ie. TV and radio advertising.)
In the 1920s, the relationship between brands and broadcast was already fairly close - radio shows like Crisco Cooking Talks brought together brands with recipes (in a way that sounds surprisingly close to "content strategies" 100 years later), and Procter and Gamble brands were often at the heart of it.
“Bill [Ramsey] was a wonderful guy,” enthused Short. “He came to the company [P&G] around 1930 or so. I don’t know what his initial job was at the company. He was in advertising, but when radio became important and they decided to start the soaps, somebody in management said we have to have somebody in charge of this.
This is where McElroy was credited with creating the first TV soap opera; content that was made specifically for the medium, produced for the specific purpose of attracting the best audience for his soap advertising. (Hence the name...)
Its a format that for years was still delivering the highest audience ratings outside of sporting events- the only programmes to get higher ratings than Eastenders and Coronation Street in the 21st Century are the Olympics, England matches in international football tournaments, and the Only Fools & Horses 2001 Christmas special. Perhaps the age of the soaps is coming to an end - viewing figures over the last few years are down, Neighbours and Holby City are coming to an end this year. (Perhaps, when we have virtually unlimited multi-series drama serials on demand, we just don't need the daily drama of the soap opera any more.)
The "Brand Men" Man
If that was all he did, it would probably be considered a career-defining achievement. But in 1931, he wrote a 3-page memo which is now credited with effectively inventing brand management. Previously, the company structure was built around functions - the "insight" was to structure the company around products, where each “Brand Man” (this was 1931 - it would definitely have been a man) would be entirely responsible for just one or two brands, and expected to know them inside out; not just the products and the marketing, but a deep understanding of who was using them and how.
He also developed the strategy of brand management - managing a portfolio of brands for the same product category (ie. one brand of soap for washing your hands, another brand of soap for washing your dishes, another for washing your clothes, another soap for washing your hair etc. etc.) Today, if I’ve run out of washing up liquid, I wouldn’t dream of washing my dishes with any of the other varieties of soap in my household. I’m honestly not sure if that’s because today’s soaps are so vastly different, or just because the mental block of using a brand for something other than its advertised purpose is too big for me to overcome. (In a world where there are shelves full of different varieties of shampoo for dry hair, greasy hair, damaged hair, dyed hair etc. etc. - and I'm supposed to believe that there's a significant difference between them - can one of them be the best one for washing the dishes?)
He was also firmly rooted in data - he pioneered many of the fundamental ideas behind market research (that is, understanding not just the product being sold, but who it was being used by and how it was being used), and media research (apparently he loved telling radio broadcasters facts and figures about their own audiences that they didn’t know themselves).
His ascent through the company continued - in 1943 he was Vice President of Advertising and Promotion and within a decade he was President of P&G.
But his story doesn't stop there.
Spaceships, Scientists and the birth of the Internet
In 1957 President Eisenhower recruited McElroy to be Secretary of Defense. He accepted - but said that he would only be available for 2 years.
The Russians launched Sputnik 1 - the first satellite in space, 5 days before he was due to take over the role.
America panicked- it meant the Russians were 'winning' the space race in terms of scientific progress, but more importantly, the specific science of sending rockets - potentially carrying explosive payloads - half way around the world, far too high to be intercepted.
What a time to take on a job that included running NASA.
McElroy quickly pushed through a defense department restructure that involved creating a new agency - ARPA - which would essentially work on whatever scientific research projects they wanted to, with unlimited scope and full autonomy. ARPA went on to develop the first computer network - ARPANET, which used technologies like TCP/IP, and went on to became the foundation of the internet.
After serving the 2 years as Secretary of Defense that he said he would be available for, he resigned his position on 1st December 1959 (citing "reasons of an urgent nature"), and returned to P&G, where he remained as Chairman of the Board until shortly before his death in 1972.
Footnote...
Later in life, McElroy was an advisor at Stanford, where he was mentor to Bill Hewlett and David Packard. They took the 'Brand Man' product manager ideal and developed it into "The HP Way" - a management playbook still relevant today (as evidenced by testimonals from Brandwatch, or someone leaving HP to start a new company). This presentation - from someone who worked at both HP and Apple - draws a clear line from Neil McElroy, through the "HP Way" at Silicon Valley to Steve Job's focus on 'making insanely great products' at Apple and creating the most valuable company in the world. According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs believed his greatest achivement wasn't creating the Mac, the iPod or the iPhone, but the Apple team itself.
This is a story about the world of the 1920s-60s, and piecing together a story as old as this one is always going to mean conflating facts with myth- and I'm quite sure that my own addition will have contributed more to the myth than the history. The story of rising up from the postroom to inventing brand management and market research, and create the working conditions that both sparked the beginnings of the internet and inspired Steve Jobs to create the thing he was most proud of...
Maybe its too good to be true- but its still a hell of a story.