As You Like It

As a door-to-door soap salesman, Neil McElroy long ago hit on a simple formula for winning customers: "Give them something good and expose them to it often." As boss of Procter & Gamble Co., biggest U.S. soapmakers, strapping (6 ft. 3 in.) President McElroy, 45, has never let the old selling formula slip out of his hands. Thanks to that, as P. & G. reported last week, earnings for the first nine months of its current fiscal year soared to $49 million, up $15.5 million from last year. What impressed stockholders even more was that P. & G.'s earnings were climbing at a time when its biggest competitor, Lever Bros., was taking losses (TIME, Jan. 30).

To boost earnings still more, confident P. & G. was test-selling a batch of new products last week. Among them: Cheer, a synthetic laundry detergent; Joy, a liquid cleanser for dishes; and Wondra, a "washoff" cold cream. P. & G. also plans to invade the fast-growing home-permanent-wave field with a product called Lilt.

P. & G. frequently has several brands in one field, e.g., Tide competes with Duz and Oxydol, and Cheer will compete with all three. Thus, P. & G.'s hottest competitor is often P. & G. itself. The company also keeps ahead of the soap parade, spending more on advertising than any other U.S. company (an estimated $33.5 million last year).

Back of P. & G.'s omnipresent advertising is the smooth promotional touch of Neil McElroy, who moved into the president's chair only 19 months ago, when Richard Deupree became board chairman. Just out of Harvard in 1925, McElroy started at the bottom in P. & G.'s advertising department, plugged Camay toilet soap door-to-door, later directed ad campaigns for such products as Dreft, Drene, and Duz, which he made bestsellers. As president, he still likes the person-to-person approach, will talk soap to his wife's bridge party guests, or to anybody he meets at any time to learn what customers are thinking. Says he: "It's the housewife who buys our product. We'll play it any way she wants to play it."

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