WILD GEESE: Briain de Buitleir, CEO, PGT Healthcare, Geneva:A graduate fair in 1980s London was the start of a richly rewarding career for one Cork BComm graduate
FOR BRIAIN de Buitleir, emigrating to London in 1985 was all about “getting a good job”. The BComm graduate, voted UCC Students’ Union president aged just 19, describes the job prospects here at the time as “probably terrible” – a college career service survey showed just two people from his class of 300 remained in Ireland after graduation he recalls.
Rather than resenting emigration, he says it was just part of the psyche. “At the time, it was more about where you could get a good job. If you could get a good job with a highly reputable company in New York or London, it didn’t matter so much.”
Taking “the bus and the boat”, de Buitleir’s job hunt brought him to a graduate fair in London, where one employer stood out.
“I’d come across Procter & Gamble in some of the case studies we’d done in college and I thought, ‘this would be a really good company’.”
Scoring an interview, de Buitleir was hired into the firm’s brand management team, based at its UK and Ireland head office in Newcastle. Open your cupboard and you’ll probably find a brand he worked on in his early years – Bold 3, Flash, Lenor, Fairy Liquid and Ariel. “It was at a time when responsibility for P&L [profit & loss] sat with the brand manager, so you could be running quite a large business two years out of university.”
The Corkman was ultimately promoted to marketing director for P&G’s fabric and homecare division. In 2000 came the first of several country moves when he took up the post of general manager of P&G’s Nordic operations, based in Stockholm. The Swedish capital was a great place: “You really feel everybody is treated equally despite position, money, gender or background . . . and there is a strong separation between work and private life.”
There were cultural differences in how P&G marketed its products too. “You can’t be derogatory about your competition; you have to be seen to be treating people fairly. So American-style advertising where you can attack your competitor is not at all acceptable.”
Another difference was around gender equality. “The advertising you see in the UK, you would not see in Nordic countries as it might paint women in the wrong light. The view is that the man should have equal responsibility in bringing up the baby, so an ad that shows only the woman playing that role is reinforcing a stereotype that they don’t want to see.”
De Buitleir’s next move was to Geneva as vice-president of pet care for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a division that he says was growing faster than the rest of P&G’s business. The snacks division, which includes Pringles, was added to his role.
Contrary to the perception that everything in Switzerland runs like clockwork, he describes Geneva as a “harder” place to live. “If you come to Geneva, you struggle to get a house, to find a school, and then you struggle to get anyone to hook up your phone . . . Geneva is expanding a lot and getting people to do things is extremely expensive and difficult.”
In 2010, there was a move to P&G’s global HQ in Cincinnati as vice-president of healthcare for North America as well as having global responsibility for the firm’s digestive wellness division. Brands under his wing included Vicks, Pepto-Bismol and Align, a pro-biotic supplement made by Alimentary Health in Cork.
He says the healthcare market, worth $180 billion a year globally, is set to grow. “Governments can’t continue to subsidise subscriptions paid for 100 per cent. A lot of drugs can now be sold over the counter at much lower prices. If you’re coming up to 50 as I am, you want to feel like you did at 40. People are taking vitamins and products that help.”
When, last year, P&G teamed up with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries to create a consumer healthcare joint venture called PGT Healthcare, de Buitleir was appointed chief executive. The business at the outset was valued at $1.4 billion. Headquartered in Switzerland, where de Buitleir is again based, the venture operates in all markets outside of North America to develop branded over-the-counter medicine.
“Teva is the world’s largest producer of medicines. It produces more over-the-counter drugs than any company on the planet. Combining their manufacturing capability with P&G’s branding capability enables us to create new products consumers don’t have today.”
He says the real potential for the company, a separate entity to P&G, lies in eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America where growth is between 10 and 20 per cent. Western Europe and the US are showing low single digit growth.
“On a global basis, I think the trend is to go first to the pharmacy. In many cases, you pay for a doctor’s visit. If it’s something that can be treated over the counter, you save a lot going straight to the pharmacist,” he says.
Now almost 30 years with the company, did he anticipate being a P&G lifer? “That I thought I’d never be. But you take the next job, you do the work, you work with people you really like and you enjoy it.” He’s enjoyed the emigrant experience. “I’ve been very open to the positive experience you can get from emigrating. For me it’s been about the people and the work. If it happens to be in another country, so be it.
“If I could have done it in Ireland at the time, I would have stayed, but I don’t regret having challenging work. I’ve found that really rewarding.”
