October 15, 2020 • 34 mins
Any good student of advertising and marketing should know Sir Martin Sorrell’s name! From his rising to star status as Saatchi & Saatchi’s CFO, to his building and shaping of WPP— growing it from a shopping cart maker to the world’s largest advertising holding company, Sir Martin is as well known for his legendary insights as his headstrong opinions. Listen as he and Bob discuss why you need to employ dissenters, how his father’s drive and work ethic shaped his career, and how a sabotaged memo almost prevented him from working with David Ogilvy.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Heart Radio. So that was the original vision, Bob. I
mean I worked at such As. I was in the
hot house, just like Harvard Business School would be in
the hot house. And really you describe such as as
being one of the largest advertising agencies in the world
(00:22):
with the brothers, with Morrison Charles, with what was then
called wire and plastic products. We were trying to emulate that.
I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to another episode of Math
and Magic. Stories from the Frontiers and marketing. Today, we
(00:44):
have someone who built the biggest advertising holding company in
the world and one that fully embodied both math and magic,
and he started it all with a tiny wire basket company.
One of the great media and advertising entrepreneurs all time,
Sir Martin Sorel. Sir Martin grew up in London, educated
(01:20):
at both Cambridge and Harvard, where he got his NBA.
He had a great career in advertising before he struck
out in his own creating w PP. He was the
star financial wizard behind Sachi and Sachi, which during his
tenure became one of the biggest ad agencies in the world.
He worked with legendary sports agent Mark McCormick, and he
also covered the nineteen Democratic Convention in Atlantic City for
(01:43):
a school newspaper. Most important, he has keen insights, strong
opinions and is not shy about sharing them. Welcome, sir Martin,
delighted to be with you. You know you have had
your own front row seat for history in the advertising business,
are very few people have THEIRS aspect if you do.
But first, I want to do a little feature which
(02:03):
is exploring you in sixty seconds. You're ready, I'm ready.
Do you prefer London or New York? I would offend
so many people by something many other I like them both.
Cricket or rugby, cricket, Cambridge, England or Cambridge Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sunrise or sunset, sunrise, beach or mountains, beach, spring or fall,
(02:26):
call or text, text jazz or blues jazz. David Ogilvie
or Don Draper David smartest person you know, well, the smartest,
but I didn't know it was my dad favorite film.
First job a salesman for my father in one of
his radio and electrical stores. If you could have one superpower,
(02:47):
what would it be to be even faster in terms
of response. That's impressive. By the way, you are very
impressive with how quickly would you respond to emails anytime
I reach out? Muses exactly. So let's jump into where
you and I met. I think the years seven you
were just beginning to put together this enormous company w
(03:10):
P P. And you owned about almost five percent of
J Walter Thompson. I had a group we owned about
five percent of J Walter Thompson. I think someone I
never forgot who it was, said, Okay, it's clear you
guys are trying to do a takeover of j w T.
So is Martin Sorrel. You guys should be and so
we set up a meeting with Lou Wasserman, Sid Sheinberg,
(03:32):
who ran m c A. Who were my partners, You
and a couple of folks. You said, you know, we
could do this together. You do all that creative stuff
you want to do, but I'll do the financial and structure.
Now I've never asked you this, Was that really true
or were you just trying to get us in? Well,
Bruce Boston said to me, we actually earned I think
eight percent we bought in the market eight percent of
(03:56):
j W T, and Bruce said to me, go and
find out what they're thinking of doing. So Robert Lowell,
who was our CFO and I we walked on. Got
to get this into perspective. So Robert level and I've
been working on wire and plastic products for a year
or so. We started in a D five eighty six,
and this was the middle of eighty seven, and here
(04:17):
we were in New York. We made our first deal
in in America, which was a small real estate advertising agency,
and we were walking down Madison Avenue or wherever it was,
and we were walking into this building, this huge building,
and we were shown into your office where you were
with Stid Sheinberg, and I always remember we started to
(04:40):
talk about a deal or work together with you, and
I was there as Bruce suggested to try and find
out the most that I could about what your intentions were,
what they weren't. And I remember Sid Sheinberg at some
stage slightly raising his voice and said to me, but
sorrel or mark him, whatever you called me, you haven't
(05:03):
even been elected yet. And you know, he was implying
that I was almost a thing, as though we owned
j w T already. And it was very funny and
I left the room with Robert Lowell, and as we
got to the elevator, I remember saying Robert, well, I
forgot to ask them something. And I went back into
the room. I don't know whether you remember this, and
I stuck my head round the door and I said,
(05:24):
by the way, one thing, I forgot to ask you
what sort of price you had in mind, because we
were talking about doing some form of joint deal, and
you never responded with a price, and I walked away.
You know, I said thank you very much. I came
away from that meeting thinking that you weren't serious. I
was there to try and find out whether you were
a potentially competitive bid. My feeling from the meeting was
(05:46):
that you weren't. You know, I was sent there and
now I might have been totally wrong. You have to
tell me what the truth was. Yeah, it's interesting. I
think we started buying the stock, as I recall, somewhere
in the twenties, and he got up into the fifties
by the time the deal was done. And I think you,
I think, had a better idea of all the assets.
What we missed was that there was that Tokyo real
(06:09):
estate that was about a third of the value of
the company, and I think have we known that, we
would have been more eager to go ahead. But a
fifty dollars a share, we started saying, you know, we've
got a nice profit here. But it was fascinating, and
of course I was interested in it because of the
media transformation going on at the time with this new
technology called cable, and the advertising was available there, and
(06:31):
I thought I knew something that the rest of the
world didn't really understand. Having come out of MTV Networks,
of course, you had a much bigger vision of what
you had in store. So tell me when you were
putting this together and you had this vision, give me
just two seconds on what the original vision was for WPP.
I mean, there's no way you could have understood or
(06:52):
thought it was going to be as big as it
actually turned out to be. If you go to the
original document, it says our objective was to build a
major multinational marketing services firms. So that was the original vision, Bob.
I mean I worked at sarch As. I was in
the hot house. Remember Bruce Wasserstein saying to me that
Sarches was a hot house just like Harvard Business School.
(07:13):
To be in the hot house. And really you describe
Sarches as being one of the largest advertising agencies or
holding companies. I think at one stage it was the
largest in the world with the brothers with Morrison Charles,
and we were trying to emulate that with what was
then called wire and plastic products. We didn't know, as
you suggest, that we would grow so so significantly and
(07:36):
we will make such an impact as we did. But
you know, we were very ambitious, and just like with
S four, which is our new digital vehicle that we
started two years ago, here we are what two billion
pounds too and aft to point six billion dollars the
market cap two years on. And when people say to me,
what do you think we can do with S four,
(07:57):
I'm hesitant to lay out specifically one. I think it
is possible because, as Morris and Charles used to say
it Sarches, nothing is impossible, but nothing is impossible. Let's
jump a little bit and I'm going to come back
to some of the w PP, but I'd really like
to get into some influences all of us, and certainly
I know you do this. You learned a lot from
(08:18):
every situation you were in and every person you encountered
what did you learn from Mark McCormick, the biggest sports
agent of his time and the founder of i MG,
And you spent some time with him very early in
your career. He basically spent his life doing what he
enjoyed doing. You know, he was a scratch golfer. I
think he met Arnold Palmer at Wake Forest. Arnold Powler
(08:39):
was a ten percent shot at shareholder in i MG,
which I think used to drive Jack Nicholas nuts. Mark
represented Arnold power, Jack Nicholas and Gary Player, the big
three all at the same time. And I think Jack
resented a little bit the fact that every time you
played Arnold was was interested in ten percent of his
winnings things. But I think one of the principal things
(09:02):
about Mark was that there was no defining line between
work and business. I mean, what he did he really enjoyed.
It was fun. You know. He was a lawyer by training.
He loved golf and he applied his legal training to golf.
I remember the case at the Harvard Business School that
(09:23):
that's how I met Mark. He was the subject of
one of the cases in a course called Management of
New Enterprises M n E. And I remember that in
that case study it referred to how Wasserman when he
managed m c A, he managed talent. There was a
famous conductor, band conductor orchestra conductor who he managed, and
(09:46):
at every concert Wasserman made sure that his baton was there.
And Mark used to say, if Arnold Palmer I had
six and half shoes or whatever it is, he would
make sure that Arnold always had the right shoes at
the tournament. And his attention to detail. That was the point.
Not only your career should be around what you regard
(10:07):
as being fun, but also attention to detail. Let's jump
to the SARChI brothers, Maurice and Charles. They, as you
point out, created the biggest ad agency at the time,
and they were the first big disruptors of the modern
day ad business. What did you learn from them? Very
interesting thing about them. They were not members of the
i p A, the Incorporated Practitioners of Advertising, because there
(10:31):
was an unwritten rule that you didn't pitch for each
other's business if you were a member of the i
p A. So they weren't members of the i PA
because they pitched everybody's business and they were disruptors. And
what did I learn from them. I learned that nothing
was impossible and think that was one of Morris's favorite phrases.
But again, you know it was about fun. I mean
(10:52):
that era of Sarches in the seventies, that era from
about nineteen seventy seven five was an incrediblera. I mean
every week campaign magazine would cover another account win. In
those days of million pounds was a lot of billings,
and every week on a Thursday morning, the headlining campaign
would be Sarch's Winds another one million, two million, three
(11:16):
million pounds account. They were very ambitious, so I would
say nothing is impossible. Global ambition, speed, persistence, all those
sort of things were really important in a SARCHY framework.
They did win an enormous amount of business. Were they
winning an ideas or on price? Now they were doing
on ideas. I mean there was an aura. It came
(11:37):
from the advertising that Charles was always credited with originating
around the work they did for the Jaffer account, or
the Israekie citrus fruit account, the Pregnant Man, and there
of course Manhattan Landing for British Airways, that very extravagant,
expensive set of TV commercials of British air Ways I
(12:00):
mean there was a mystique, you know, the work they
did for the Conservative Party, the relationship that Tim Bell
forged with Margaret Thatcher being credited with labor isn't working
that famous outdoor post of that long wavy line of
unemployed people and the headline laborers and working that that
(12:20):
resonated culturally to an incredible degree. So it was the
creative reputation of Sargeants that were so strong. Let's stay
on ideas for a minute. Let's talk about what did
you learn from someone who you fought with initially and
then became your friend. David Ogilville. Well, David, you know
I met through the Ogilvie deal in he famously called me.
(12:42):
According to the Financial Times, it was an odious little jerk.
Actually it was odious little ship that at that time
the Financial Times wouldn't print four letter words. But we
knew that he was going to be quite vitriolic when
we launched our so called facts attack. We launched it
on a Friday evening, pressed the button on me, the
(13:03):
Bear Hugg letter, as it was called, to Ken Roman,
who was the then chairman and CEO of Ogilvy. We
knew that they were aving away day in upstate New York,
and we're sending it by facts. And it was also
the day that they were moving the Ogilvy headquarters from
one part of Manhattan to the other to Hell's Kitchen
to their new building. The last paragraph of the letter
(13:24):
contained an offer to David Ogilvy to become chairman of
the combined company, of the combined w PP and Ogilvy Company.
And of course David, when Ken Roman told him about
the Facts attack or the bear hugged letter, came out
with this odious little ship comment. Never met me and
(13:46):
we've never spoken a word together. So I asked to
see David and I met with him, and you know,
I mugged up on all of his books and went
to see him with our lawyer Phil Reason one or
two others. And I think I disarmed him a bit
by being able to quote significant chunts of his own
(14:07):
writing from him. But the interesting thing about the meeting
was I said to him during the course of the meeting,
after we're talking about fifteen or training minutes, I said,
have you seen our letter? And he said, yes, I've
seen the letter. And I said, have you seen the
last paragraph? And he said, what do you mean the
last paragraph, And I said, well, in that last paragraph
(14:28):
we suggested that you become chairman of the joint company.
And he had been sent the letter, but Ken Roman
or whoever, had removed the last paragraph from the letter,
so he was not aware of the fact that had
been offered the chairmanship. Now we knew there was friction
between Ken Roman and David, you know, purportedly they got
(14:49):
a well, but we knew from our our own intelligence
that that was not the case. And that was one
of the ways of unlocking that particular situation because David
was keen on becoming chairman and he helped me a
lot in those years as chairman of the company. That's
a great story and I'm not sure I've heard it
in that detail before. So let's jump to what did
(15:11):
you learn from your dad, who I know you admired
love so much and was a businessman who really pulled
it all together and built his career himself. Well, I
would say everything. I mean, some of the elements that
mentioned in relation Tom McCormack or the Sarchie brothers, or
indeed David Ogervie, I mean, were elements that he taught
me that he was a retailer. He ran seven hundred
(15:33):
fifty radio and electrical stores in the fifties and sixties.
This was a division of an industrial holding company called
Firth Evelandend a bit of stock in it, but really
didn't have an ownership interest, but he treated the businesses
though it was his own. He worked seven days a
week as a retailer. He would go to the office
on a Saturday. I mean he came from an Orthodox
(15:55):
Jewish family, but he used to travel on the Sabbath.
Would slightly lighted on the Saturday, but on the Sundays,
but a full day. He had to leave school when
he was thirteen because he was one of six family
of six, so you had to go out and earn
a living. Despite the fact that he left school at
such a tender age that he could recite the Talmud
(16:15):
and Shakespeare. When I say recite significant chunks, not one
sentence like friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, but
I mean speeches and fantastic memory for detail. He was
also a very good musician. He was a violinist. He
got a scholarship to the Royal School in Music when
he was thirteen as a violinist, but couldn't take it
(16:37):
up because again he had to go off. So you know,
I'd go through all that because you know, it sort
of taught me a lot about the importance of education.
I was a spoilt child from a Jewish background in
the ghetto as I call it, at Northwest London. I
was born in Golders Green in a block of flat
school queens were re coort and we graduated through mill Hill,
(16:58):
which was also in north as lom so I would
say a traditional education at I started at Asmanian Prep School,
which was a Jewish primary school, then went to Goodwin
as we moved to mill Hill, and then on to
have an ASHES and then as you said, to Cambridge
and and Harvard said, my father really made it possible
(17:19):
for me to have an education that he didn't, and
he valued it extremely highly and laid a path out
for me. Often described as having come from a fairly
wealthy background, but I didn't really mind. My father really
really fought his way up and never had any of
the benefits that he gave me. And my relationship with
(17:40):
my father was very close. For example, when you and
I were tussling over j W two, I would talk
to my father probably four or five times a day
about what was going on. He knew nothing about the business,
but he knew about people. Maybe it's the fact that
he had been in a salesman a sales manager. It
dealt with people in a consumer industry selling radios and
(18:02):
televisions and fridges and whatever. Began to moraccle facility to
understand people their emotions, objectives, and likes and dislikes. Learned
a lot, but basically he was a counselor. You did
very well on the parent lottery. More on math and
magic right after this quick break. Welcome back to math
(18:31):
and magic. Now let's hear more from my conversation with
sir Martin Sorel. So let me jump a little bit
from your dad. What kind of influence or or what
did you learn from your competitors in the advertising business.
I mean, you've had legendary competitors, Maurice Levy, John Wren,
(18:51):
Michael Roth, etcetera. Well, how did that shape you? They
all had different characteristics. Michael Roth, you know picked up
it was I think a non executive director at IPG.
He'd been an insurance business beforehand. But you know he's
done a good job, particularly in the latter years, but
taken IPG from very difficult position to a much stronger position.
(19:13):
It's not one of the biggest of the Big six,
but they've done extremely well. And then Omnicom and John Wren.
I don't think he has a strategic bone in his body,
but he executes tactically extremely well. It's a bit more
of a black box. There's very much less disclosure on
Omnicom and the way that it works and others, and
(19:33):
I think that works to its detriment. But it's key
assets around BBDO, tv W, A, DDB amongst the finest,
if not the finest, creative assets, but maybe more of
the traditional variety. And they haven't adapted strategically as much
as perhaps they should have done. Publicists I think strategically
(19:55):
very strong. Mostly he took what was a very small agency,
the French agency, and you build the business phenomenally well
and strategically strong. And say, if Omnicom was more about
tactics and strategy, I think publicism was more about strategy
than tactics. So you answer to your question is you
(20:17):
know you learned different things from different people. Let's move
a little bit to probably the biggest disruption of your
life and mind, which was the emergence of the Internet.
Suddenly we have digital advertising, we have data. I mean
here you are today as four is focused on that
as the future. How did you see that initially and
(20:39):
what surprised you about the way it turned out? Well,
I I think there are two buckets here. I mean,
one is the geographical bucket. I think you know w
pople Sarchie model was about globalization. It goes back to
Ted Levitt in his article in the Halvard Business of
View in three I think it was in October of
(21:00):
eighty three where he laid out this theory that consumers
are going to consume everything in the same way everywhere.
I mean w PP was about the continued growth of globalization.
But the other part of it, the other bucket, it
was the technology bucket, and we started to see that
ninety ninety seven. I think I remember being interviewed by
(21:23):
Harvard Business Review and we're talking about the role of
the Internet around I think it was and we started
to build our business around technology. And when I left
him in two thousand and eighteen, you know, we it
was very difficult to calculate what the true digital share
of the business there was a w people. We we
(21:46):
calculated around. We sent an objective to grow it by
one percent a year. It's share of our business by
one percent a year. What am I surprised about? What
I'm surprised about the fact that we're now seeing a
little bit of the dismantling of globalization and this friction
with the U S and China and then on the web.
You know, you always underestimated the speed at which this
(22:07):
was going to change. And if I have regrets, it
would be that we didn't move further faster at w
VP to adapt to the technological development. We move fast
enough on the geographical side. You know, we had the
Chinese market fifty percent of the Indian market. But what
(22:29):
we're seeing now is the potential growth of two technology
systems and the friction around by way, the friction around
TikTok or emblematic of the desire of the the the
US to have its technological system and the desire of
the Chinese to have their technological system. And then we
may even have a third system. You know, you see
(22:50):
the index wanting to buy a bank, and you know
we may have a third Russian based system. So this
makes it much more complex from a geographic core point
of view and of course from a technological point of view.
So changing from analog to digital has been exceptionally difficult,
(23:10):
and you almost have I mean with the advertising hold
income is they're not fit for purpose anymore. The market
has changed that past their sell by dates. Coming back
to where we started our relationship, that was about consolidation,
I think there should be deconsolidation. Now let's jump to
a sport. You said you're focusing on the holy trinity
(23:30):
digital content, programmatic, ad delivery, and first party data. Tell
me exactly how you see that and how you're putting
it together. Well, we said, we've got four basic principles. Firstly,
we've focused as I said, this is a growth model.
We think that that what markets concentrate on and private
equity and everybody else's total shareholder return. It's true, which
(23:50):
which includes share price and and dividends, etcetera. But essentially
the driver of TSR now is like for like topline growth,
not to the Truman and margin. Margin is still important,
but it's not as balanced as it used to be,
and it's really more about top language. That's number one.
Number two is we have this holy trinity model that
first party data driving the creation of digital advertising, content
(24:14):
and programmatic. So that's the holy trinity. The third basic
operating principle is faster, better, cheaper agility d key corporate attribute,
So agility and then better means understanding the digital ecosystem
that is Google, Facebook, Amazon, tens and Alabama TikTok, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM,
(24:38):
s A P Pinterest, Twitter, Snap, LG, Samsung jall me
by the Heart Radio epic. Understanding all those companies and
understanding how the balance is changing between the platforms, between
the hardware companies and the software companies. And then the
last fourth principle is unitary structure an out spent work.
(25:00):
You have to bring together people into a fully integrated structure.
It doesn't work to out people separated by announced You know,
we're interested and as for in people, not only people
want to sell out. We're interested in people who want
to buy in to the idea of building a new age,
new era advertising and marketing services model and a model
(25:23):
that disrupts the old. I mean there's a missionary zeal
here to disrupt the older. As I said, we think
that model has past itself. By date has to change.
Let's jump for a minute to you. You have strong opinions,
You've always since I've known you have a strong point
of view. Got me. Jeff Bezos famously talks about disagree
(25:45):
and commit. How does dessent fit into a company that
you manage? Well, I think you know today. You know,
every day we have a meeting for half an hour
and hour with a top eight people in our company,
which talk about people. We talk about our clients, we
talk about financis. Everybody expresses their view and then we
(26:06):
make on our minds about where we're going to go.
So you people do have different points of view. We're
talking yesterday. There were differences of you, but we hammered
it out and we came up with what we thought, well,
that was the best point of view given the fact
we're trying to build a unitary company. That makes us
very different to the holding company model, where it is
by its nature fragmented and diffuse. And so this is
(26:29):
really important in terms of that fourth principle of unitary structure,
so you can have descent and look good. People are
by nature difficult, average people by nature cooperative, you know,
because they co operate because they're average. Now that's a
dangerous thing to say, because you know, average people sayn't
think it would would be good. They should be difficult.
(26:51):
But getting great people who are team players is very difficult.
Those are the exceptional people. And I think you know
as for we do have people who are team players,
and they are exceptional in that they are extremely good
at what they do. They are entrepreneurial and therefore are
by nature, going back to your question, full of dissent,
(27:12):
and they have different views about how to doing, but
they're coming together and they're bound together by this mission
to create the new, new age, new era model and
to disrupt the old. We have a point to prove
of and and the point we're trying to prove is
the model we're coming up with is a different one,
uniquely positioned for today's times. So you're dealing with first
(27:34):
party data's quite different than the third party data that's
out there. There are three big pools of first party
data from the big digital giants. Do you think the
government steps in to break up that control of that
first party data? Well, be careful what you wish for.
The GDPR legislation in Europe really has made those three Google, Facebook, Amazon,
(27:56):
and those ones you're referring even more powerful, and so
it hasn't really hindered them because the small medium sized
companies and not coming at it, you know, to try
and compete with them, as perhaps the regulators in Europe wanted.
I'm not sure that increased regulation or splitting them up
is the answer. I think they have responded. I think
Facebook as a responded and Google has responded. Twitter has responded,
(28:19):
Amazon responded. As they've crossed a trillion dollars in terms
of market cap, they obviously attract a lot of regulatory
attention and with power comes responsibility. For example, Facebook, they
will band political advertising a little before the election, but
they've hired thirty five thousand people to monitor content. They've
changed the algorithms, They've got rid of some of the
(28:42):
the extreme groups, the boogleoo groups and things like that,
so they have may change. Google band political advertising. Twitter
have done the same, so they are responding. Some people
would say not enough. I don't think boycotts get you
very far. I think the best way to deal with
situations like this is like the w done all the
ana have done just recently in relation to hate speech,
(29:04):
is engaged with the platforms effectively. What you do is
you firmly say what you think you need and work
with them. And the other thing I think that is
really important is that these platforms are the engines of
entrepreneurship in the West. It's six of the AD revenues
of Google and Facebook and Amazon come from small and
(29:26):
mean sized businesses. And so be careful what you wish for.
I'm not wishing, I know you generate you you'd be
careful because these these companies are generating opportunities for smaller
sized businesses, which, as Jack mar says, is the engine
room of the economy and creates a lot of unemployment.
(29:47):
So let's talk a little bit of just a second
before we finish up in IBC, We're on a podcast.
I'm going to ask about podcasting. You know, it was
video for so long, it's been searched, it's been social,
and suddenly audio has its moment and podcasting, I mean,
and our company all the way AD revenues down. We
announced in second quarter are AD revenue and podcasting was
(30:08):
of a hundred percent. We're racing quickly to build this.
What do you think of podcasts? Well, I think another
good way of our clients developing their media programming, if
you like, and another good way to engage with consumers.
Now whether it becomes mainstream or not is another question.
(30:28):
It's a bit like influencer marketing, you know, in terms
of content, I see influencers being a subset of content
and the development and creation of content. So I think important,
but not mainstream necessarily, which is probably not what you
wanted to hear. But no, no, no, no, I'm look,
(30:49):
I'm interested in your opinion, and it is. We're on
the it's probably the only thing right now we're on
the front end of And it reminds me back at
the days I went to a o L in the
mid nineties and I was at Century twenty one real
estate briefly, and I remember someone who is very smart said,
I know why they want you, but I can't imagine
why you want to leave Century twenty one for a
(31:09):
O L. And that's what That's how little people thought
of the future of the Internet. Fortunately things turned out differently. Hey,
we end each episode by focusing on math and magic,
the analytics and the creative sides of marketing, and you
had this unique perspective. Usually ask people about people who
are analytical or creative in your case, I want to
(31:30):
ask you about past or present. If you had to
pick an agency that you thought was the best math
agency all about analytics, which one would you give that to? Well,
I had to say Mighty Hive okay, which is part
of this four? Okay? That just aboard, and I'd say
I would say Essence would be the one that I
(31:50):
know came back on the math side of it, I
would say Essence and Mighty Hive okay. So let's flip
to the other side. What's the greatest creative agency? The
magic I think SARCH is in its early days obviously
media amongst today, which is the other part of the
content part of S four. But if I went back
in a history, I think SARCH is from when I
(32:12):
was there from seventies seven, and before I was there,
it was probably even better. But you know when I
was there and I knew it well. From seventy seven
through to stand Sir Martin, this has been fantastic. You
have wonderful stories, and you're continuing to build your legacy
and continuing to stay at the forefront of what's going on.
(32:33):
Thanks for joining us, and thanks for thank you for
I loved it. Great fun and good good to catch
up with you again. Well we were caught up over
the years, but we go back to eighty seven seven
seven that that seems like yesterday to me, But I
guess it was a woman. I can still see you
with stip Si Sheinberg and telling me I wasn't elected.
(32:54):
That's very funny. Good luck. By the way, everything new.
Here are a few things I've picked up in my
conversation with Sir Martin. One, pay close attention to your adversaries.
As Sir Martin says, you can learn something valuable from
every encounter, even with your competitors. By paying close attention
(33:14):
to rivals, like David Ogilvie, he learned that there can
be various strategies that lead to a successful company. To
dissent is an important tool. There's a difference between what
Sir Martin refers to as average people who stick to
the status quo and team players who are willing to
disagree to aid in company growth. Although team players might
be difficult, they're more successful because their way of thinking
(33:37):
is naturally entrepreneurial. Three. Nothing is impossible. When asked what
S four is capable of Sir Martin hesitates to answer
because he doesn't want to hinder its potential. He picked
up this philosophy from the Sacchi Brothers, whose key to
success wasn't the size of their accounts, but they're limitless ideas.
(33:58):
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by
Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and
wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikki
Etre for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for
(34:19):
their recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdoch, and of course
Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped
bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Heart Radio. So that was the original vision, Bob. I
mean I worked at such As. I was in the
hot house, just like Harvard Business School would be in
the hot house. And really you describe such as as
being one of the largest advertising agencies in the world
(00:22):
with the brothers, with Morrison Charles, with what was then
called wire and plastic products. We were trying to emulate that.
I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to another episode of Math
and Magic. Stories from the Frontiers and marketing. Today, we
(00:44):
have someone who built the biggest advertising holding company in
the world and one that fully embodied both math and magic,
and he started it all with a tiny wire basket company.
One of the great media and advertising entrepreneurs all time,
Sir Martin Sorel. Sir Martin grew up in London, educated
(01:20):
at both Cambridge and Harvard, where he got his NBA.
He had a great career in advertising before he struck
out in his own creating w PP. He was the
star financial wizard behind Sachi and Sachi, which during his
tenure became one of the biggest ad agencies in the world.
He worked with legendary sports agent Mark McCormick, and he
also covered the nineteen Democratic Convention in Atlantic City for
(01:43):
a school newspaper. Most important, he has keen insights, strong
opinions and is not shy about sharing them. Welcome, sir Martin,
delighted to be with you. You know you have had
your own front row seat for history in the advertising business,
are very few people have THEIRS aspect if you do.
But first, I want to do a little feature which
(02:03):
is exploring you in sixty seconds. You're ready, I'm ready.
Do you prefer London or New York? I would offend
so many people by something many other I like them both.
Cricket or rugby, cricket, Cambridge, England or Cambridge Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sunrise or sunset, sunrise, beach or mountains, beach, spring or fall,
(02:26):
call or text, text jazz or blues jazz. David Ogilvie
or Don Draper David smartest person you know, well, the smartest,
but I didn't know it was my dad favorite film.
First job a salesman for my father in one of
his radio and electrical stores. If you could have one superpower,
(02:47):
what would it be to be even faster in terms
of response. That's impressive. By the way, you are very
impressive with how quickly would you respond to emails anytime
I reach out? Muses exactly. So let's jump into where
you and I met. I think the years seven you
were just beginning to put together this enormous company w
(03:10):
P P. And you owned about almost five percent of
J Walter Thompson. I had a group we owned about
five percent of J Walter Thompson. I think someone I
never forgot who it was, said, Okay, it's clear you
guys are trying to do a takeover of j w T.
So is Martin Sorrel. You guys should be and so
we set up a meeting with Lou Wasserman, Sid Sheinberg,
(03:32):
who ran m c A. Who were my partners, You
and a couple of folks. You said, you know, we
could do this together. You do all that creative stuff
you want to do, but I'll do the financial and structure.
Now I've never asked you this, Was that really true
or were you just trying to get us in? Well,
Bruce Boston said to me, we actually earned I think
eight percent we bought in the market eight percent of
(03:56):
j W T, and Bruce said to me, go and
find out what they're thinking of doing. So Robert Lowell,
who was our CFO and I we walked on. Got
to get this into perspective. So Robert level and I've
been working on wire and plastic products for a year
or so. We started in a D five eighty six,
and this was the middle of eighty seven, and here
(04:17):
we were in New York. We made our first deal
in in America, which was a small real estate advertising agency,
and we were walking down Madison Avenue or wherever it was,
and we were walking into this building, this huge building,
and we were shown into your office where you were
with Stid Sheinberg, and I always remember we started to
(04:40):
talk about a deal or work together with you, and
I was there as Bruce suggested to try and find
out the most that I could about what your intentions were,
what they weren't. And I remember Sid Sheinberg at some
stage slightly raising his voice and said to me, but
sorrel or mark him, whatever you called me, you haven't
(05:03):
even been elected yet. And you know, he was implying
that I was almost a thing, as though we owned
j w T already. And it was very funny and
I left the room with Robert Lowell, and as we
got to the elevator, I remember saying Robert, well, I
forgot to ask them something. And I went back into
the room. I don't know whether you remember this, and
I stuck my head round the door and I said,
(05:24):
by the way, one thing, I forgot to ask you
what sort of price you had in mind, because we
were talking about doing some form of joint deal, and
you never responded with a price, and I walked away.
You know, I said thank you very much. I came
away from that meeting thinking that you weren't serious. I
was there to try and find out whether you were
a potentially competitive bid. My feeling from the meeting was
(05:46):
that you weren't. You know, I was sent there and
now I might have been totally wrong. You have to
tell me what the truth was. Yeah, it's interesting. I
think we started buying the stock, as I recall, somewhere
in the twenties, and he got up into the fifties
by the time the deal was done. And I think you,
I think, had a better idea of all the assets.
What we missed was that there was that Tokyo real
(06:09):
estate that was about a third of the value of
the company, and I think have we known that, we
would have been more eager to go ahead. But a
fifty dollars a share, we started saying, you know, we've
got a nice profit here. But it was fascinating, and
of course I was interested in it because of the
media transformation going on at the time with this new
technology called cable, and the advertising was available there, and
(06:31):
I thought I knew something that the rest of the
world didn't really understand. Having come out of MTV Networks,
of course, you had a much bigger vision of what
you had in store. So tell me when you were
putting this together and you had this vision, give me
just two seconds on what the original vision was for WPP.
I mean, there's no way you could have understood or
(06:52):
thought it was going to be as big as it
actually turned out to be. If you go to the
original document, it says our objective was to build a
major multinational marketing services firms. So that was the original vision, Bob.
I mean I worked at sarch As. I was in
the hot house. Remember Bruce Wasserstein saying to me that
Sarches was a hot house just like Harvard Business School.
(07:13):
To be in the hot house. And really you describe
Sarches as being one of the largest advertising agencies or
holding companies. I think at one stage it was the
largest in the world with the brothers with Morrison Charles,
and we were trying to emulate that with what was
then called wire and plastic products. We didn't know, as
you suggest, that we would grow so so significantly and
(07:36):
we will make such an impact as we did. But
you know, we were very ambitious, and just like with
S four, which is our new digital vehicle that we
started two years ago, here we are what two billion
pounds too and aft to point six billion dollars the
market cap two years on. And when people say to me,
what do you think we can do with S four,
(07:57):
I'm hesitant to lay out specifically one. I think it
is possible because, as Morris and Charles used to say
it Sarches, nothing is impossible, but nothing is impossible. Let's
jump a little bit and I'm going to come back
to some of the w PP, but I'd really like
to get into some influences all of us, and certainly
I know you do this. You learned a lot from
(08:18):
every situation you were in and every person you encountered
what did you learn from Mark McCormick, the biggest sports
agent of his time and the founder of i MG,
And you spent some time with him very early in
your career. He basically spent his life doing what he
enjoyed doing. You know, he was a scratch golfer. I
think he met Arnold Palmer at Wake Forest. Arnold Powler
(08:39):
was a ten percent shot at shareholder in i MG,
which I think used to drive Jack Nicholas nuts. Mark
represented Arnold power, Jack Nicholas and Gary Player, the big
three all at the same time. And I think Jack
resented a little bit the fact that every time you
played Arnold was was interested in ten percent of his
winnings things. But I think one of the principal things
(09:02):
about Mark was that there was no defining line between
work and business. I mean, what he did he really enjoyed.
It was fun. You know. He was a lawyer by training.
He loved golf and he applied his legal training to golf.
I remember the case at the Harvard Business School that
(09:23):
that's how I met Mark. He was the subject of
one of the cases in a course called Management of
New Enterprises M n E. And I remember that in
that case study it referred to how Wasserman when he
managed m c A, he managed talent. There was a
famous conductor, band conductor orchestra conductor who he managed, and
(09:46):
at every concert Wasserman made sure that his baton was there.
And Mark used to say, if Arnold Palmer I had
six and half shoes or whatever it is, he would
make sure that Arnold always had the right shoes at
the tournament. And his attention to detail. That was the point.
Not only your career should be around what you regard
(10:07):
as being fun, but also attention to detail. Let's jump
to the SARChI brothers, Maurice and Charles. They, as you
point out, created the biggest ad agency at the time,
and they were the first big disruptors of the modern
day ad business. What did you learn from them? Very
interesting thing about them. They were not members of the
i p A, the Incorporated Practitioners of Advertising, because there
(10:31):
was an unwritten rule that you didn't pitch for each
other's business if you were a member of the i
p A. So they weren't members of the i PA
because they pitched everybody's business and they were disruptors. And
what did I learn from them. I learned that nothing
was impossible and think that was one of Morris's favorite phrases.
But again, you know it was about fun. I mean
(10:52):
that era of Sarches in the seventies, that era from
about nineteen seventy seven five was an incrediblera. I mean
every week campaign magazine would cover another account win. In
those days of million pounds was a lot of billings,
and every week on a Thursday morning, the headlining campaign
would be Sarch's Winds another one million, two million, three
(11:16):
million pounds account. They were very ambitious, so I would
say nothing is impossible. Global ambition, speed, persistence, all those
sort of things were really important in a SARCHY framework.
They did win an enormous amount of business. Were they
winning an ideas or on price? Now they were doing
on ideas. I mean there was an aura. It came
(11:37):
from the advertising that Charles was always credited with originating
around the work they did for the Jaffer account, or
the Israekie citrus fruit account, the Pregnant Man, and there
of course Manhattan Landing for British Airways, that very extravagant,
expensive set of TV commercials of British air Ways I
(12:00):
mean there was a mystique, you know, the work they
did for the Conservative Party, the relationship that Tim Bell
forged with Margaret Thatcher being credited with labor isn't working
that famous outdoor post of that long wavy line of
unemployed people and the headline laborers and working that that
(12:20):
resonated culturally to an incredible degree. So it was the
creative reputation of Sargeants that were so strong. Let's stay
on ideas for a minute. Let's talk about what did
you learn from someone who you fought with initially and
then became your friend. David Ogilville. Well, David, you know
I met through the Ogilvie deal in he famously called me.
(12:42):
According to the Financial Times, it was an odious little jerk.
Actually it was odious little ship that at that time
the Financial Times wouldn't print four letter words. But we
knew that he was going to be quite vitriolic when
we launched our so called facts attack. We launched it
on a Friday evening, pressed the button on me, the
(13:03):
Bear Hugg letter, as it was called, to Ken Roman,
who was the then chairman and CEO of Ogilvy. We
knew that they were aving away day in upstate New York,
and we're sending it by facts. And it was also
the day that they were moving the Ogilvy headquarters from
one part of Manhattan to the other to Hell's Kitchen
to their new building. The last paragraph of the letter
(13:24):
contained an offer to David Ogilvy to become chairman of
the combined company, of the combined w PP and Ogilvy Company.
And of course David, when Ken Roman told him about
the Facts attack or the bear hugged letter, came out
with this odious little ship comment. Never met me and
(13:46):
we've never spoken a word together. So I asked to
see David and I met with him, and you know,
I mugged up on all of his books and went
to see him with our lawyer Phil Reason one or
two others. And I think I disarmed him a bit
by being able to quote significant chunts of his own
(14:07):
writing from him. But the interesting thing about the meeting
was I said to him during the course of the meeting,
after we're talking about fifteen or training minutes, I said,
have you seen our letter? And he said, yes, I've
seen the letter. And I said, have you seen the
last paragraph? And he said, what do you mean the
last paragraph, And I said, well, in that last paragraph
(14:28):
we suggested that you become chairman of the joint company.
And he had been sent the letter, but Ken Roman
or whoever, had removed the last paragraph from the letter,
so he was not aware of the fact that had
been offered the chairmanship. Now we knew there was friction
between Ken Roman and David, you know, purportedly they got
(14:49):
a well, but we knew from our our own intelligence
that that was not the case. And that was one
of the ways of unlocking that particular situation because David
was keen on becoming chairman and he helped me a
lot in those years as chairman of the company. That's
a great story and I'm not sure I've heard it
in that detail before. So let's jump to what did
(15:11):
you learn from your dad, who I know you admired
love so much and was a businessman who really pulled
it all together and built his career himself. Well, I
would say everything. I mean, some of the elements that
mentioned in relation Tom McCormack or the Sarchie brothers, or
indeed David Ogervie, I mean, were elements that he taught
me that he was a retailer. He ran seven hundred
(15:33):
fifty radio and electrical stores in the fifties and sixties.
This was a division of an industrial holding company called
Firth Evelandend a bit of stock in it, but really
didn't have an ownership interest, but he treated the businesses
though it was his own. He worked seven days a
week as a retailer. He would go to the office
on a Saturday. I mean he came from an Orthodox
(15:55):
Jewish family, but he used to travel on the Sabbath.
Would slightly lighted on the Saturday, but on the Sundays,
but a full day. He had to leave school when
he was thirteen because he was one of six family
of six, so you had to go out and earn
a living. Despite the fact that he left school at
such a tender age that he could recite the Talmud
(16:15):
and Shakespeare. When I say recite significant chunks, not one
sentence like friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, but
I mean speeches and fantastic memory for detail. He was
also a very good musician. He was a violinist. He
got a scholarship to the Royal School in Music when
he was thirteen as a violinist, but couldn't take it
(16:37):
up because again he had to go off. So you know,
I'd go through all that because you know, it sort
of taught me a lot about the importance of education.
I was a spoilt child from a Jewish background in
the ghetto as I call it, at Northwest London. I
was born in Golders Green in a block of flat
school queens were re coort and we graduated through mill Hill,
(16:58):
which was also in north as lom so I would
say a traditional education at I started at Asmanian Prep School,
which was a Jewish primary school, then went to Goodwin
as we moved to mill Hill, and then on to
have an ASHES and then as you said, to Cambridge
and and Harvard said, my father really made it possible
(17:19):
for me to have an education that he didn't, and
he valued it extremely highly and laid a path out
for me. Often described as having come from a fairly
wealthy background, but I didn't really mind. My father really
really fought his way up and never had any of
the benefits that he gave me. And my relationship with
(17:40):
my father was very close. For example, when you and
I were tussling over j W two, I would talk
to my father probably four or five times a day
about what was going on. He knew nothing about the business,
but he knew about people. Maybe it's the fact that
he had been in a salesman a sales manager. It
dealt with people in a consumer industry selling radios and
(18:02):
televisions and fridges and whatever. Began to moraccle facility to
understand people their emotions, objectives, and likes and dislikes. Learned
a lot, but basically he was a counselor. You did
very well on the parent lottery. More on math and
magic right after this quick break. Welcome back to math
(18:31):
and magic. Now let's hear more from my conversation with
sir Martin Sorel. So let me jump a little bit
from your dad. What kind of influence or or what
did you learn from your competitors in the advertising business.
I mean, you've had legendary competitors, Maurice Levy, John Wren,
(18:51):
Michael Roth, etcetera. Well, how did that shape you? They
all had different characteristics. Michael Roth, you know picked up
it was I think a non executive director at IPG.
He'd been an insurance business beforehand. But you know he's
done a good job, particularly in the latter years, but
taken IPG from very difficult position to a much stronger position.
(19:13):
It's not one of the biggest of the Big six,
but they've done extremely well. And then Omnicom and John Wren.
I don't think he has a strategic bone in his body,
but he executes tactically extremely well. It's a bit more
of a black box. There's very much less disclosure on
Omnicom and the way that it works and others, and
(19:33):
I think that works to its detriment. But it's key
assets around BBDO, tv W, A, DDB amongst the finest,
if not the finest, creative assets, but maybe more of
the traditional variety. And they haven't adapted strategically as much
as perhaps they should have done. Publicists I think strategically
(19:55):
very strong. Mostly he took what was a very small agency,
the French agency, and you build the business phenomenally well
and strategically strong. And say, if Omnicom was more about
tactics and strategy, I think publicism was more about strategy
than tactics. So you answer to your question is you
(20:17):
know you learned different things from different people. Let's move
a little bit to probably the biggest disruption of your
life and mind, which was the emergence of the Internet.
Suddenly we have digital advertising, we have data. I mean
here you are today as four is focused on that
as the future. How did you see that initially and
(20:39):
what surprised you about the way it turned out? Well,
I I think there are two buckets here. I mean,
one is the geographical bucket. I think you know w
pople Sarchie model was about globalization. It goes back to
Ted Levitt in his article in the Halvard Business of
View in three I think it was in October of
(21:00):
eighty three where he laid out this theory that consumers
are going to consume everything in the same way everywhere.
I mean w PP was about the continued growth of globalization.
But the other part of it, the other bucket, it
was the technology bucket, and we started to see that
ninety ninety seven. I think I remember being interviewed by
(21:23):
Harvard Business Review and we're talking about the role of
the Internet around I think it was and we started
to build our business around technology. And when I left
him in two thousand and eighteen, you know, we it
was very difficult to calculate what the true digital share
of the business there was a w people. We we
(21:46):
calculated around. We sent an objective to grow it by
one percent a year. It's share of our business by
one percent a year. What am I surprised about? What
I'm surprised about the fact that we're now seeing a
little bit of the dismantling of globalization and this friction
with the U S and China and then on the web.
You know, you always underestimated the speed at which this
(22:07):
was going to change. And if I have regrets, it
would be that we didn't move further faster at w
VP to adapt to the technological development. We move fast
enough on the geographical side. You know, we had the
Chinese market fifty percent of the Indian market. But what
(22:29):
we're seeing now is the potential growth of two technology
systems and the friction around by way, the friction around
TikTok or emblematic of the desire of the the the
US to have its technological system and the desire of
the Chinese to have their technological system. And then we
may even have a third system. You know, you see
(22:50):
the index wanting to buy a bank, and you know
we may have a third Russian based system. So this
makes it much more complex from a geographic core point
of view and of course from a technological point of view.
So changing from analog to digital has been exceptionally difficult,
(23:10):
and you almost have I mean with the advertising hold
income is they're not fit for purpose anymore. The market
has changed that past their sell by dates. Coming back
to where we started our relationship, that was about consolidation,
I think there should be deconsolidation. Now let's jump to
a sport. You said you're focusing on the holy trinity
(23:30):
digital content, programmatic, ad delivery, and first party data. Tell
me exactly how you see that and how you're putting
it together. Well, we said, we've got four basic principles. Firstly,
we've focused as I said, this is a growth model.
We think that that what markets concentrate on and private
equity and everybody else's total shareholder return. It's true, which
(23:50):
which includes share price and and dividends, etcetera. But essentially
the driver of TSR now is like for like topline growth,
not to the Truman and margin. Margin is still important,
but it's not as balanced as it used to be,
and it's really more about top language. That's number one.
Number two is we have this holy trinity model that
first party data driving the creation of digital advertising, content
(24:14):
and programmatic. So that's the holy trinity. The third basic
operating principle is faster, better, cheaper agility d key corporate attribute,
So agility and then better means understanding the digital ecosystem
that is Google, Facebook, Amazon, tens and Alabama TikTok, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM,
(24:38):
s A P Pinterest, Twitter, Snap, LG, Samsung jall me
by the Heart Radio epic. Understanding all those companies and
understanding how the balance is changing between the platforms, between
the hardware companies and the software companies. And then the
last fourth principle is unitary structure an out spent work.
(25:00):
You have to bring together people into a fully integrated structure.
It doesn't work to out people separated by announced You know,
we're interested and as for in people, not only people
want to sell out. We're interested in people who want
to buy in to the idea of building a new age,
new era advertising and marketing services model and a model
(25:23):
that disrupts the old. I mean there's a missionary zeal
here to disrupt the older. As I said, we think
that model has past itself. By date has to change.
Let's jump for a minute to you. You have strong opinions,
You've always since I've known you have a strong point
of view. Got me. Jeff Bezos famously talks about disagree
(25:45):
and commit. How does dessent fit into a company that
you manage? Well, I think you know today. You know,
every day we have a meeting for half an hour
and hour with a top eight people in our company,
which talk about people. We talk about our clients, we
talk about financis. Everybody expresses their view and then we
(26:06):
make on our minds about where we're going to go.
So you people do have different points of view. We're
talking yesterday. There were differences of you, but we hammered
it out and we came up with what we thought, well,
that was the best point of view given the fact
we're trying to build a unitary company. That makes us
very different to the holding company model, where it is
by its nature fragmented and diffuse. And so this is
(26:29):
really important in terms of that fourth principle of unitary structure,
so you can have descent and look good. People are
by nature difficult, average people by nature cooperative, you know,
because they co operate because they're average. Now that's a
dangerous thing to say, because you know, average people sayn't
think it would would be good. They should be difficult.
(26:51):
But getting great people who are team players is very difficult.
Those are the exceptional people. And I think you know
as for we do have people who are team players,
and they are exceptional in that they are extremely good
at what they do. They are entrepreneurial and therefore are
by nature, going back to your question, full of dissent,
(27:12):
and they have different views about how to doing, but
they're coming together and they're bound together by this mission
to create the new, new age, new era model and
to disrupt the old. We have a point to prove
of and and the point we're trying to prove is
the model we're coming up with is a different one,
uniquely positioned for today's times. So you're dealing with first
(27:34):
party data's quite different than the third party data that's
out there. There are three big pools of first party
data from the big digital giants. Do you think the
government steps in to break up that control of that
first party data? Well, be careful what you wish for.
The GDPR legislation in Europe really has made those three Google, Facebook, Amazon,
(27:56):
and those ones you're referring even more powerful, and so
it hasn't really hindered them because the small medium sized
companies and not coming at it, you know, to try
and compete with them, as perhaps the regulators in Europe wanted.
I'm not sure that increased regulation or splitting them up
is the answer. I think they have responded. I think
Facebook as a responded and Google has responded. Twitter has responded,
(28:19):
Amazon responded. As they've crossed a trillion dollars in terms
of market cap, they obviously attract a lot of regulatory
attention and with power comes responsibility. For example, Facebook, they
will band political advertising a little before the election, but
they've hired thirty five thousand people to monitor content. They've
changed the algorithms, They've got rid of some of the
(28:42):
the extreme groups, the boogleoo groups and things like that,
so they have may change. Google band political advertising. Twitter
have done the same, so they are responding. Some people
would say not enough. I don't think boycotts get you
very far. I think the best way to deal with
situations like this is like the w done all the
ana have done just recently in relation to hate speech,
(29:04):
is engaged with the platforms effectively. What you do is
you firmly say what you think you need and work
with them. And the other thing I think that is
really important is that these platforms are the engines of
entrepreneurship in the West. It's six of the AD revenues
of Google and Facebook and Amazon come from small and
(29:26):
mean sized businesses. And so be careful what you wish for.
I'm not wishing, I know you generate you you'd be
careful because these these companies are generating opportunities for smaller
sized businesses, which, as Jack mar says, is the engine
room of the economy and creates a lot of unemployment.
(29:47):
So let's talk a little bit of just a second
before we finish up in IBC, We're on a podcast.
I'm going to ask about podcasting. You know, it was
video for so long, it's been searched, it's been social,
and suddenly audio has its moment and podcasting, I mean,
and our company all the way AD revenues down. We
announced in second quarter are AD revenue and podcasting was
(30:08):
of a hundred percent. We're racing quickly to build this.
What do you think of podcasts? Well, I think another
good way of our clients developing their media programming, if
you like, and another good way to engage with consumers.
Now whether it becomes mainstream or not is another question.
(30:28):
It's a bit like influencer marketing, you know, in terms
of content, I see influencers being a subset of content
and the development and creation of content. So I think important,
but not mainstream necessarily, which is probably not what you
wanted to hear. But no, no, no, no, I'm look,
(30:49):
I'm interested in your opinion, and it is. We're on
the it's probably the only thing right now we're on
the front end of And it reminds me back at
the days I went to a o L in the
mid nineties and I was at Century twenty one real
estate briefly, and I remember someone who is very smart said,
I know why they want you, but I can't imagine
why you want to leave Century twenty one for a
(31:09):
O L. And that's what That's how little people thought
of the future of the Internet. Fortunately things turned out differently. Hey,
we end each episode by focusing on math and magic,
the analytics and the creative sides of marketing, and you
had this unique perspective. Usually ask people about people who
are analytical or creative in your case, I want to
(31:30):
ask you about past or present. If you had to
pick an agency that you thought was the best math
agency all about analytics, which one would you give that to? Well,
I had to say Mighty Hive okay, which is part
of this four? Okay? That just aboard, and I'd say
I would say Essence would be the one that I
(31:50):
know came back on the math side of it, I
would say Essence and Mighty Hive okay. So let's flip
to the other side. What's the greatest creative agency? The
magic I think SARCH is in its early days obviously
media amongst today, which is the other part of the
content part of S four. But if I went back
in a history, I think SARCH is from when I
(32:12):
was there from seventies seven, and before I was there,
it was probably even better. But you know when I
was there and I knew it well. From seventy seven
through to stand Sir Martin, this has been fantastic. You
have wonderful stories, and you're continuing to build your legacy
and continuing to stay at the forefront of what's going on.
(32:33):
Thanks for joining us, and thanks for thank you for
I loved it. Great fun and good good to catch
up with you again. Well we were caught up over
the years, but we go back to eighty seven seven
seven that that seems like yesterday to me, But I
guess it was a woman. I can still see you
with stip Si Sheinberg and telling me I wasn't elected.
(32:54):
That's very funny. Good luck. By the way, everything new.
Here are a few things I've picked up in my
conversation with Sir Martin. One, pay close attention to your adversaries.
As Sir Martin says, you can learn something valuable from
every encounter, even with your competitors. By paying close attention
(33:14):
to rivals, like David Ogilvie, he learned that there can
be various strategies that lead to a successful company. To
dissent is an important tool. There's a difference between what
Sir Martin refers to as average people who stick to
the status quo and team players who are willing to
disagree to aid in company growth. Although team players might
be difficult, they're more successful because their way of thinking
(33:37):
is naturally entrepreneurial. Three. Nothing is impossible. When asked what
S four is capable of Sir Martin hesitates to answer
because he doesn't want to hinder its potential. He picked
up this philosophy from the Sacchi Brothers, whose key to
success wasn't the size of their accounts, but they're limitless ideas.
(33:58):
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by
Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and
wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikki
Etre for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for
(34:19):
their recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdoch, and of course
Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped
bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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