MEMO: Brand Men

Tl;dr: Neil McElroy, a junior at P&G sets out the roles and responsibilities of brand men, or brand managers. 

Neil McElroy reached some heights as President of P&G, and as the former U.S. Secretary of Defense. But every one starts out at the bottom.

In 1931 he was a junior executive at P&G managing soap advertising, and it was then that he wrote the Brand Men memo credited as the birth of brand marketing.

In 1925 P&G set up a formal consumer research department to better understand consumer preferences and behavior. The Brand Men memo laid out the role of the ‘brand men’, or brand managers.

His memo seeks additional staff resources and makes the case for moving responsibilities for brand management from the sales to the advertising departments, and to a single person responsible for each brand. He believes the brand manager should be responsible for the overall performance and everything from package and ad design, to sales analysis to replicate high-performing tactics and address underperforming regions. These are still the core of brand management in consumer products today.

Brand men

You can read the rest of the memo collection here.