Jean Marie (John) Lepere, who died on November 27th, was a Belgian national who spent more than half his lifetime in this country. He is the acknowledged founding father of marketing in Ireland. Less widely known but equally impressive, is his contribution to society through many voluntary chairmanships.
He was dedicated, generous of spirit, and tireless in his attention to all matters that came under his scrutiny.
He was a big man in every sense of the word, and he enjoyed all the finer things life had to offer. He sported Louis Copeland suits lined with red satin and wore a flamboyant red-lined opera cloak to the Wexford Festival. He loathed all kinds of sports.
He came here from Britain in 1962 to work for P J Carroll & Company, at a time when the value of market research was not universally recognised. His parents, Achille and Elise, who were in the textile business, fled to Lancashire from Belgium after the war, having refused to work for the Nazis during the occupation.
The young John was enrolled at the Marist school in Blackburn at the age of thirteen, where he learned to play the violin well and became head boy. Armed with a double first and a gold medal in statistics from the London School of Economics, he began his career in 1956 with the J Walter Thompson company.
He worked in the tobacco industry with P J Carroll & Company from 1962 to 1988, leaving as chairman of the company to chair the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers Ltd (CECCM). He retired in 1994.
In the Ireland of the early 1960s, the concept of market research was in its infancy. Irish business under Taoiseach Sean Lemass had emerged from a long recession and was ripe for the expertise of the marketing whizzkids who emerged at the time.
Carrolls grew under John Lepere's guidance to become one of the success stories of the 1960s. He also acted as a consultant to a number of other companies with which the tobacco company was associated. He was a founder of both the Market Research Society of Ireland and later the Marketing Society. For many years he was a director of the IMS Group and of the Irish Council for the European Movement; governor, and later honorary treasurer of the National Maternity Hospital, and director of the Dublin Grand Opera Company. His commercial roles included directorships of Tedcastle McCormack, Dublin Gas, the Irish Sugar Company, Crawford's Motors and Colin McIvor & Associates. It was characteristic of his sense of commitment that John Lepere was conducting board meetings and dispensing financial advice from his hospital bed until a few weeks before he died.
He is survived by his wife Celia (nee Ryan) and two sons, Marc and Bruce. Jean Marie (John) Lepere: born 1934; died November, 1999