Neil H. McElroy: Business Management and Public Service Rolled In One

Neil H. McElroy was an American business executive and public service. He served as the president of Procter & Gamble. He was the Secretary of the Defense Department during the Dwight Eisenhower presidency.

McElroy was born on October 30, 1904 in Berea, Ohio although he grew up in Cincinnati. He finished economics at Harvard and worked with Procter & Gamble after graduation. He was with the advertising department. McElroy developed the concept of brand management and issued the famous three-page memo which became one of the advertising industry’s most essential texts.

Because he showed high business IQ, McElroy rose to the top and became the president of Procter & Gamble in 1948. His brand management revolutionized marketing in the US and it spread throughout the entire world. Brand management created the needed balance between centralized oversight and decentralized decision making depending on who has the best information that can affect the decision at hand.

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik I on October 4, 1957, four days before Charles E. Wilson left the Defense Department as its Secretary. The launching of Sputnik I suggested that Soviet Union was ahead of the US in missile development. This led President Eisenhower to swear in Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy on October 9, 1957.

Just one month after the Soviets launched Sputnik I, another Soviet satellite was launched into the space. Because of the growing about the Sputniks, McElroy’s first move was to make the needed clarification about the relative position of the US and the Soviet Union related to missile development and to speed up the American missile development efforts. At that time, the US was developing intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRMBs). McElroy said that these IRMBs can be as effective as the Soviet’s intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) when they are properly deployed in overseas locations. McElroy ordered the production and deployment of many US IRMBs and increased its military presence in the UK and Europe.

In McElroy’s opinion, the Sputniks did not represent a major military peat that changed the balance, but he recognized that the Sputniks had a significant impact worldwide. McElroy spent his early years in the Defense Department trying to explain the US missile program and easing the congressional anxiety about the supposed US-Soviet Union “missile gap.”

McElroy resigned on December 1, 1959. On his final day at the Defense Department, he received the Medal of Freedom from President Eisenhower. He left Pentagon and served Procter & Gamble as chairman of the board. He died on November 30, 1972.