John Smale, the Ontario-born former Procter & Gamble chairman who went on to overhaul General Motors‘ management structure, died Saturday at 84 years of age.
Born in Listowel, Ontario, in 1927, Smale joined P&G in 1952, working first on Gleem toothpaste. But he’d had a brief career prior to joining the company, working three years as a salesman for Vick Chemical Co., whose successor he eventually would bring into P&G via acquisition decades later.
He already showed a marketing bent of sorts during college at Miami University in Ohio, where he deviated from the staid image of a future Procter executive. He parlayed his experience as social director of Phi Delta Theta to write and market nationally two how-to books for fraternities and sororities – Party ‘Em Up and sequel Party ‘Em Up Some More.
At P&G, he brought cause for celebration to what’s now known as the oral-care business. Smale led a team that convinced the American Dental Association to award its first seal of approval to Crest fluoride toothpaste for its cavity-fighting power in 1961. That led to the “Look Ma, No Cavities” campaign from Benton & Bowles, New York, which propelled Crest from a 12% to a 38% market share, allowing it to assume category leadership in the 1960s.
That also helped propel Smale up the ladder at P&G to VP of the toilet goods division, VP of the flagship detergent division, and, by 1974, exec VP of the entire U.S. operation.
By 1981, he became P&G’s seventh CEO. He is both one of the longest to serve in that post and among the most transformational. Despite beginning his watch amid a stubborn recession, P&G more than doubled revenue and earnings to $24 billion and $1.6 billion respectively during his time as CEO, and P&G’s stock price more than quadrupled.
“John deeply believed in product superiority and our ability to develop and deliver such products,” said former P&G Chairman-CEO Durk Jager in an e-mail. “This was the reason why he got us into pharmaceuticals through Norwich. He believed it would help us to become better in life sciences.”
Smale was known as a tough manager with a habit of asking incisive questions – sometimes ones subordinates wished no one would. And he had a way of seeing opportunities that others would miss. In an interview for presentation at Smale’s 2007 induction to the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame, Roy Bostock, a former CEO of Benton & Bowles and Bcom3 and now chairman of Yahoo, noted how in a 1967 meeting Smale reframed the discussion about the potential market size for Pampers to focus on the number of diaper changes. That led to a tenfold increase in projections that ultimately was borne out in the market.
When Mr. Smale retired as CEO at P&G in 1990s, it was far from the end of his contributions. Besides staying on P&G’s board for another five years, he turned his attention to a struggling GM on whose board he also sat.
By 1992, with GM struggling to rebound from a recession earlier in the decade and losses mounting, Smale led a board revolt that ousted CEO Robert Stempel. Mr. Smale became chairman and Jack Smith became CEO. Mr. Smale then led an effort to institute a brand-management system similar to P&G’s at GM. By 1994, GM posted then-record profits of $4.9 billion, and by 1995, Mr. Smale stepped down as chairman, though he remained on the board until 2000.
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