Sir George Bull, who has died aged88, was Britain’s pre-eminent wines and spirits salesman as head of International Distillers & Vintners, co-creator of the Diageo conglomerate, and finally chairman of Sainsbury’s.
A descendant of the Hennessy cognac dynasty, Bull was a natural grandee of the drinks trade who maintained throughout his business life the bearing of the Coldstream officer he had been as a young man and who, in his own words, “had no difficulty whatsoever in leading from the front”. But he was also an ardent moderniser who introduced marketing techniques and disciplines previously unknown to a sector long set in its ways.
At IDV, which became part of the Grand Metropolitan group in 1972, Bull promoted traditional brands such as Croft port as well as Hennessy cognac and Gilbey’s gin, for which he deployed an Isle of Wight ferry as a floating gin palace for a publicity stunt on the Thames. A great delegator – “It’s your plan, you run it” was one of his stock phrases – he also encouraged the development and promotion of products that set new fashions for drinkers.
Smirnoff vodka (though founded in Moscow in 1864) took off in the UK in the 1970s thanks to slogans such as “Accountancy was my life until I discovered Smirnoff. The effect is shattering.”
Bailey’s Irish Cream, launched in 1974, was a mixture of Irish whiskey, emulsifiers and cream from Grand Met’s Express Dairy arm. Malibu was a coconut-flavoured rum developed in South Africa but given a Caribbean image by IDV’s marketing team; and on the wine shelves, a loss-making Beaujolais was triumphantly relaunched in 1978 under the cheeky slogan “Les Français adorent le Piat d’Or.”
Bull became chief executive of IDV in 1984 and joined the Grand Met board a year later, taking command first of the drinks side and later of its food interests, which ranged from Häagen-Dazs to Burger King; he succeeded as group chairman in 1995.
Two years later he found himself dining at Dukes Hotel in St James’s with Anthony Greener, the chairman of Guinness, and proposed a merger. The result was Diageo, one of the world’s largest food and drinks conglomerates with a vast portfolio of brands and some 40 per cent of the global Scotch whisky market.
Bull, by then 61, served for a year as joint chairman of the new group before moving on to become the first non-family chairman of JSainsbury, the supermarket chain.
Born in London on July 16 1936, George Jeffrey Bull was the younger son of Michael Bull, a Canadian barrister, and his wife Noreen, daughter of SirGeorge HennessyMP who was ennobled as the 1st Lord Windlesham.
George’s grandparents were notable in very different ways. On his mother’s side, Richard and Marthe Hennessy were first cousins in the Franco-Irish family that had been making Hennessy cognac since 1765. His paternal grandfather William Perkins Bull was a distinguished Ontarian lawyer and historian who fell into an entanglement with Mabel Sibley, heiress to the Horlick Malted Milk fortune.
After William Bull’s wife’s death, Mabel moved into his home and was found dead there in 1938 after willing her fortune to him. When foul play was alleged by her family, George’s father Michael returned to Canada to defend his father, who was cleared of wrongdoing. But Michael Bull never returned to England, leaving George and his brother to be brought up by Noreen and a Hennessy uncle.
George was educated at Ampleforth College and served as a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the UK and Germany before starting his business career in 1957 with the Dorland advertising agency, where Hennessy was a client.
He moved on to Twiss, Browning & Hallowes – the Hallowes family having been Hennessy’s UK agent since the 1840s – where he showed early promise as a salesman of Cognac and Heidsieck Dry Monopole champagne across the Middle East and Asia.
By merger the firm became part of International Distillers & Vintners, where Bull was promoted to marketing manager in 1967 and managing director for the UK in 1973.
On his retirement from Diageo, Bull declared it his mission to convince other British companies of the benefits of better marketing: “We are a fundamentally production-oriented society and have been since we led the world into the industrial revolution… but it’s no longer just a matter of producing widgets here. It’s much more a question of adding value to the widgets and then marketing and selling them around the world.”
An inspiration to younger executives who worked for him, he also observed: “The most important brand that everyone must learn to manage is themselves.”
Bull’s chairmanship of Sainsbury’s, from 1998 to 2004, was a less happy experience than his tenure at IDV and Grand Met. The supermarket chain had lost ground to Tesco and others during the 1990s; although Bull initiated a relaunch he found himself at odds with vociferous shareholders, notably in a row over the pay package of the chief executive Sir Peter Davis, the group’s former marketing director whom Bull had brought back on generous incentive terms to lead the revival.
Davis succeeded Bull as chairman of Sainsbury in 2004 but was forced out after only three months.
Bull was also a director of United Newspapers, BNP Paribas in banking and Maersk in shipping. He was president of the Advertising Association, a founding director of the Marketing Council, chairman of the Wine and Spirit Association of Great Britain and grand master of the Keepers of the Quaich, a society which celebrates “those who have shown outstanding commitment” to Scotch whisky.
A devoted Old Amplefordian, he chaired a £9 million bicentenary appeal and was a “confrater” of Ampleforth Abbey.
George Bull was knighted in 1998. He married, in 1960, Thérèse (Tessa) Freeland, whose family came from Rhodesia. Tessa died last year and he is survived by their four sons and a daughter.
Sir George Bull, born July 16 1936, died July 21 2024
