A Finance Wiz In Ad Wonderland

There has been a lot written about the sudden exit of Sir Martin Sorrell from the agency group that he assiduously built over the last 30+ years. Many reasons have been floated and Indian industry leaders have been gushing forth about how he was a great believer in India and did Indian industry a great service through his long innings as CEO of WPP(by visiting us as often as a few times every year, etc).

- Ambi Parameswaran

So a disclaimer will be in order before I write my piece. I never did work for an agency that belonged to WPP. And the only time I met Sir Martin was when the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Board was invited for a lunch with him on the successful completion of the merger (as he called it) or take-over of WPP-owned TAM by BARC. The conversation around the lunch table was very courteous and I was left at a loss to figure out why David Ogilvy had called him an ‘odious little jerk’. But more about this later.

A little trip into history would illustrate where Sir Martin probably drew his inspiration from. The first agency that went global was McCann Erickson and ad historians tell us that they went global as their lead clients like Coke went global. Under Marion Harper, they created the first holding company, Interpublic. Marion Harper under the Interpublic Group (IPG) umbrella integrated several allied marketing services companies, including research, public relations, promotions, training,etc(a lot of scribes believe that Sir Martin created the world’s first integrated agency model, sorry you are wrong!) IPG later acquired other agency brands including Marshalk& Pratt, SSC&B Lintas and FCB (disclaimer again: I worked with FCB).

Marion Harper started his life in the copy research department and then went on to become the head of McCann Erickson. He also conceived the idea of a holding company with multiple agencies handling competing accounts. But he was a true blue, dyed in the wool advertising professional. He passed away in 1989 at the age of 73. You will later realize why the age 73 has an interesting coincidence.