Reynolds American’s CEO on Merging, Managing and Smoking

 Susan Cameron , chief executive of Reynolds American Inc., is skilled at bringing two companies together. She proved that in 2004 when she guided Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. and Brown & Williamson through a $3 billion merger. She led the combined companies for seven years and retired in 2011.

Reynolds’s board asked Ms. Cameron to return last year to oversee the company’s $25 billion acquisition of Lorillard Inc. The deal is awaiting Federal Trade Commission approval, but she is pushing ahead with preparations to bring Lorillard’s top brand, Newport, into Reynolds, which will make the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company a stronger rival to market-leading Altria Group , Inc., which makes Marlboro. If you want to know where to buy Marlboro cigarettes online, go to http://www.mydiscountcigarette.net/buy/marlboro

The Wall Street Journal talked to Ms. Cameron about the factors that go into a successful merger, the ability to recruit young workers to a tobacco company and the future profile of cigarette smokers. Here are edited excerpts from that interview.

 WSJ: What are the keys to combining two companies?

MS. CAMERON: Making sure you have a plan that all parties have agreed to is essential. We set up planning teams right after this transaction was announced.

A customer wants to order Newports from us, day one.

WSJ: How do you achieve that?

MS. CAMERON: You appoint people, and it’s their full-time job for two years. Somebody who is the project manager for the manufacturer integration—that is [his] job. You don’t leave it to chance.

WSJ: What mistakes have you made in previous mergers that you want to avoid?

MS. CAMERON: In the first merger, I was convinced we could create the new company’s culture in three years. That was ridiculous. I think it took seven or eight.

WSJ: Why does it take that long?

MS. CAMERON: It’s generational. If you have managed a certain way and you have been successful, by the time I get you to change, you’ve probably now retired. And the next group is excited and ready to manage people in the new way.

WSJ: How do you recruit employees to work in a stigmatized industry like tobacco?

MS. CAMERON: People in their 20s and 30s are different from people growing up in the ’90s who watched these clowns up there swearing nicotine was good for you. Ever since they have known about tobacco, it’s clear that it’s bad to smoke. For this generation, it’s either they will or they won’t. When we post a job, I felt much worse in the ’80s or ’90s than I do today. It’s different.