The View | The billionaire Mars family leveraged this one personality trait to drive global success
Forrest E Mars Jr helped transform the confectionary company into a US$35 billion colossus using his father’s focus and a corporate culture that some say was paranoid
There are no prizes for identifying either the company nor the product associated with the name Forrest E Mars Jr who died last week because its iconic Mars Bar is produced in an astonishing number of countries and, for people like myself, this sticky and quite wonderful confection was very much part of their childhood.
The same goes for the ubiquitous Milky Way, possibly the Snickers bar, not forgetting M&Ms. In other words there is absolutely no mystery over what Mars Inc. does. Nor can its success be underrated given its vast global expansion and dominance of the confectionary market.
...not only did the scions respect their father’s business acumen but they closely followed his business philosophy
The secret of Mars’ success can be summed up in a single word: focus. Added to this is a fanatical devotion to quality. This is reflected in the company policy of throwing away M&M candies when the “M”, supposed to be stamped in the dead centre of the chocolate buttons, is found to be off-centre.
As for serious commitment, many obituaries of Mars Jr noted the often repeated anecdote about his father, Forrest E Mars Sr who said he was a religious man who got down on his knees to intone: “I pray for Milky Way. I pray for Snickers.”
Yet, like almost every great business, it was not always plain sailing, Mars got off to a rocky start when the butter cream candy devised by Mars Jr’s grandfather failed to make any impact. According to legend it was Forrest Mars Sr who found a way of incorporating chocolate malt into what was then called the Mar-O-Bar, by the time the whole thing was coated in chocolate a new product emerged called the Milky Way, still one of the world’s biggest selling confectionary products.
Forrest Sr is also credited with inventing M&M’s and here lies another story that is rather typical of how businesses evolve, splutter and get into competition. M&M stands for the names of Mars and Murrie families who once worked closely together, with the later providing the chocolate for Mars’ confections. However William Murrie was also busy developing his own brand: you might have heard of it, it’s called Hershey, which like Mars became a roaring success and as both companies grew, they grew apart and developed a bitter rivalry.
