Search results matching tag 'Sir Martin Sorrell'

Sir Martin Sorrell, please enlighten us

1225254 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Do we need Sir Martin Sorrell to remind us that we go in and out of recession every ten years or so? Whether that be bath shaped, L shaped or turkey twizzler shaped?

No. What Sir Martin could usefully tell us is what, in these troubled times, his agencies should be saying on behalf of their clients.

HSBC was a famous WPP win. But what should HSBC be doing about their proposition now the banking sector is so discredited? Does "the world's local bank" still have resonance? Are messages about global strength now falling on deaf or even hostile ears?

What about Ford, WPP's biggest client? What sort of things should they be saying as the iconic manufacturer reports a 46% drop in US sales for February? Does the automotive industry need to reposition itself?

The messages created by Sir Martin's companies inform much of the world and set the agenda for brands. That is a massive achievement, but you can pay Deloitte for expert advice on spend trends and economic forecasts.What would be truly enlightening is hearing what the man in charge thinks about the work.

Loose Talk #4

2458936 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The Financial Times has gone St Bernard-mad. First, the paper made Sir Martin Sorrell (note his fetching "Obama" hat in our picture) pose with a St Bernard in Davos, Switzerland, then it swamped London's media agencies with large dogs bearing nips of brandy as support in the rocky financial climate. All very well-intentioned, but it will take more than a shot of brandy for agency chiefs to forget their woes - perhaps the FT should have just left them the bottle...

Meanwhile, Titan's slimming club (Loose Talk, 13 January) has reached the half-way mark of the challenge, with the team collectively losing 70.8kgs, an average of 4.7kgs per person. In the lead is Bertie Bassett, who has shed 10.9kgs, or 10% of his former body weight, going - in his own words - from "colossally fat to just fat".
Bertie told Bitch: "Everyone has noticed that not enough food is going to my brain. But you can never be too rich or too thin." But while Bassett is set to hit his target weight, Ged Weston sabotaged his slimming regime by attending a four-day cooking course at Rick Stein's restaurant in Padstow. And Andrew Gibson, who "went skiing and ate loads of fondue", has lost no weight at all. Better get back in the gym if you want to beat your US colleagues guys.

Martin Sorrell with a dog in Switzerland. No seriously.

255762 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:56:00 GMT

We've been sent a picture of Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP chief executive, at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos with a St Bernard dog. Oh and an Obama beanie. This is a picture caption competition waiting to happen - please let's be having your suggestions.

I should say, (as if you couldn't work it out) that the pic is in support of the Financial Times and its Davos coverage. The St Bernard is apparently "heroically emerging from an alpine storm, demonstrating the role played by the Financial Times in these challenging times and importance of reliable, accurate news, comment and analysis". Got it?

Sorrell is also blogging for FT.com from Davos, alongside guest bloggers including foreign secretary David Miliband, and Sir Howard Davies, LSE head as part of the FT’s coverage.

Anyway so captions?

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GroupM revises web ad revenue down sharply in 2009

255762 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:20:00 GMT

WPP's GroupM has reduced its forecast for headline UK internet ad growth dramatically from 20% to 4% for 2009. That's huge almost too huge.

It does temper this by saying that some of the fall is due to a maturing internet market and not all is downturn related, but still. The radical predictions for next year compare to 27% in its May forecast to 22% in 2008.

The report says that demand for paid search and online display is still good, but paid search growth has been slowing markedly across 2008 and display is subject to price deflation as more activity becomes cost-per-action or 'performance'-based. That's as it should be, CPA and CPP are how things should be done.

Better news GroupM says is that premium display inventory, which includes pre-roll, high-quality publishers and portals; cost-per-thousand-based rather than cost-per-action, remains in strong health, but advertiser arbitrage between per-thousand and per-action chains their respective pricing.

Premium display is typically used by larger brand advertisers, which means they are maintaining high profile usage campaigns and not cutting back online as some other reports have suggested.

GroupM does not see any sudden recovery (saying only it remains possible) because it says consumer retrenchment is simply too deep to make this likely in 2009.

However, like Sir Martin Sorrell (I recently blogged about how he expected a bounce back sooner, rather than later), GroupM does see some conditions are already improving. It points to the monetary and fiscal taps are at least open (by the US government and its $700bn bailout plan), even if the flow is sluggish.

Overall online and offline, GroupM suggests that only the US is likely to shed more ad dollars than the UK, which is going to be hard hit (as if we haven't already seen this in the tsunami of media job cuts).

"This has been a classic, hard-to-predict 'trend reversal' from our own springtime hopes of 3% UK media growth next year, with sentiment falling fastest alongside the grim September/October newsflow. Every medium is affected, and indeed nearly every country including the fast-growing BRIC/Next 11 as our forthcoming global forecast will show."

Sorrell: bounce back sooner than you think

255762 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:44:00 GMT

Writing in The Times today Sir Martin Sorrell makes his case for the economic bounce back coming sooner than other think (2009 he says) although the piece could have benefited from last minute editing regards India.

The WPP chief executive plumps for 2009 as opposed to others saying 2010 or even 2011. He says sooner because "the market is missing the extent of the fiscal stimulus that the Obama administration is expected to announce. It will be colossal – the number $500bn has started to appear in the past few days – although, for it to work, people must act together and not independently".

Looking at the emerging four Bric economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – he says India will do best next year.

The piece was clearly written before the Mumbai terror attacks and it is difficult to tell what impact they will have on business and investment the in Indian economy as people get nervous.

The case for these Bric economies, however, is undoubtedly strong as an indebted Europe, UK and US falters leaving the way open for the four to emerge.

WPP has long invested in the emerging markets and pegged future growth prospects to them.

In the article he compares Western Europe to "an ageing company with huge healthcare and pension liabilities that are difficult to fund" and because of this he says for WPP "there is no point in continuing to invest in Western Europe unless structural changes are made".

"For example, if we win a piece of business, we have to bear the severance costs of the company that lost the contract."

His gloomy view of the UK and Europe chimes with comments he made last week when he said there would be job cuts in its more mature markets in 2009 coupled with investment in emerging countries.

Sorrell said then that WPP would invest in emerging countries such as India, China or Brazil next year, in which WPP is strong and that promise growth, while cutting elsewhere.

"We will have to invest in those markets and take out head count in more mature markets. The key thing for us is to balance revenue and cost growth in terms of headcount."

In The Times today he also says that the ailing West needs Turkey inside the EU. He says entry should be a no brainer.

"It is the gateway to the Middle East, has a young population, is highly entrepreneurial and would be a huge boost to the EU's 450 million people."

As always, Sorrell has faith in America and recalls that while people wrote off the US in the 1980s and said that Japan would take over along came Ronald Reagan and shook it all up.

"He changed the dynamics. What the world really needs right now is leadership in the Reaganite, Thatcherite, Blairite mould to lead us out of this crisis."

He also wonders like everyone else if Obama could be the man to lead the change.

"Mr Obama could be that person. I look at Barack Obama and it takes me back to when I was 18, to when John F. Kennedy was elected. Mr Obama is young, smart, a wonderful orator and represents a new hope, a new era. JFK was just the same and he changed the attitudes of my generation. That’s what the world needs now from Mr Obama."

WPP: There’s enough to worry about without Armageddon

1699071 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:25:00 GMT

As Sir Martin Sorrell observed last week, WPP Group’s current budgeting exercise for next year may not reflect the Armageddon currently predicted by the fall in stock prices, but that’s not to say the picture will be a cheerful one either. Even Sir Martin acknowledged 2009 will be a “very tough year”.

So what can we read into the fact that, a week ago, WPP’s share price had dropped to half the value recorded six months ago (and was less than its previous low point in March 2003), but has since staged a modest 70p recovery?

The price recovery probably reflects a mixture of general market calming and relief that WPP’s predictions were not as bad as some had feared. Emotion is always a significant player in share pricing.

But none of this detracts from two underlying facts. First, WPP is about to spend over £1 billion in cash as part of the price it is paying for research group Taylor Nelson Sofres and for the existing borrowings it will assume as a result. The financing cost of that cash outlay will eat into next year’s profits while the group is busily rationalising the business it has acquired. No-one – not even WPP – expects an immediate payback on its investment.

The extra borrowing would not be excessive by normal standards – despite credit agency mutterings – but it could become more troublesome if the global economy is really heading downhill fast. Profits may prove hard to maintain. And margins are already under pressure.

Secondly, questions may be asked about the book value attributed to WPP’s previous acquisitions if the economy causes their performances to deteriorate. Write-downs of past acquisition costs (called “impairment provisions” by accountants) not only make a dent in the profits for the year under review but also diminish the amount of retained capital contributed by shareholders. If that happens, the key ratio of shareholders’ funds to borrowings will deteriorate too and that’s what tends to excite bankers.

Perhaps such a scenario will prove to have been nothing more than journalistic scaremongering. Let’s hope so.

© Fintellect Ltd

Sir Martin O'Sorrell

1319935 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:46:00 GMT

Once upon a time in Ireland, if you earned your living as a writer, you didn't have to pay income tax. What a great way to encourage a creative culture, from the country that brought you Joyce, Behan, Yeats and Samuel Beckett. Now WPP is moving to Ireland to take advantage of the tax conditions.

Is the Irish government encouraging creative accounting as well? Of course it's not so simple. WPP is a holding company with hundreds of entities serving a variety of distributed client contracts around the world. It is, on one level, a British 'success story'.

As the Goverment launches its 'Creative Britain' campaign, it seems ironic that one of the major firms that capitalises on creative talent should be fleeing the country. I wonder if they'll all fly Ryanair.

Enfatico gets spoofed as Enfartico

255762 — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:39:00 GMT

A lot of people have had a good laugh at the name of the agency that WPP Group set up to handle its global Dell account, but some joker has taken it a step further with a spoof website Enfartico, which is amusingly close to the original.

WPP is reported to have gone through a string of names before settling on Enfatico (a musical reference in Latin languages) to handle the account, which is worth $4.5bn in billings over three years. It should have tried harder (well that's my opinion). I'm not the only one.

The name to me sounds like something it got from the bargain bin and to be fair the Enfatico website does say it's a "billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea". I think they should have rummaged for a bit longer.

When the agency first launched, somebody working there posted on the Brand Republic forums to say that people at the agency also thought it sucked. Sadly, this person realised, clearly after waking up in the middle of the night as a light bulb materialised over their head, that posting such comments in an industry forum was possibly career suicide. (I'm guessing here.)

The spoof Enfartico site looks like almost a direct copy of the original, although its one client is down as "Dull".

The problem for Enfatico is its shockingly easy to take the piss out of the few words that it does carry on its site. So rather than this on the Enfatico homepage:

"Building a new global agency required a delicate touch. There were loud noises. Broken rules. Crushed silos. Blown-up preconceptions. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-responsive, truly integrated marketing agency designed from the ground up to create value for our clients. Welcome to Enfatico. We're creativity with vision, strategy with heart, analytics with superpowers. We're a collection of wildly diverse talents reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-legacy environment. In the pursuit of faster and better, we've yet to find a convention we didn't enjoy demolishing."

You get this:

"Building a new global agency required a strong stomach. There were loud noises. Broken wind. Crushed chairs. Blown-up burritos. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-bored, truly unimaginative marketing agency designed from the ground up to create crap for our clients. Welcome to Enfartico. We're creativity with smell, strategy with taste, analytics with super-duper-powers. We're a collection of wildly diverse crazies reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-decorum environment. In the pursuit of cheap and tasty, we've yet to find a taco stand we didn't enjoy eating at."

Rather than a description of its proprietary analytics, Enfatylitics (is it just me or does this sound like a disease, you know in a "No doc say it ain't so, not Enfatyliticis"), like this:

"A billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea. To better allocate scarce marketing dollars, weve developed EnfatyliticsTM - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as X-ray vision to see inside customer behaviors and the forces driving performance. Enfatylitics combines technology and insight to enable strategic, media and creative decisions in real time as the market changes. It also enables predictive modeling that helps drive smart decisions about where and how to invest."

You get this: "An agency based on a 99-cent idea. To horde marketing dollars being pulled from traditional media, we've developed Enfartylitics - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as the ultimate in BS reporting technology. Enfartylitics combines Google Analytics, a 30-day trial of WebTrends and a couple of non-paid interns to create reports that answer none of the questions our clients would find useful. It's main goal is to help us look smart and convince our clients that we can handle their online marketing budgets."

You get the picture.

I thought this had been created by spoof ad agency/blog the Tribble Agency, based in Austin Texas. Who promise "to consume companies ad budgets and deliver next to nothing by way of online ROI". But although they created another spoof, on this one.

Nice one whoever did.

This story is really getting around, after posting I just saw its got coverage in the New York Post, which goes with the big bold headline WPP'S ENFATICO IS EMPHATICALLY TRASHED. Ouch.

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Slow down for online newspapers grows

255762 — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:18:00 GMT

After the New York Times last week, more evidence that the lifeline of online advertising is not looking as strong as it once was, with more newspaper firms saying growth is slowing

It was reported last week after the New York Times Company warned that online advertising growth this year won't be as strong as the 30% it had projected.

Since then Tribune Company, which is in the process of being sold to Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell in a deal worth $8.2bn has also said that the growth rate for first-quarter interactive revenue was sharply lower than a year earlier. Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, which earlier in the week announced around 150 jobs at the LA Times with 70 of those in the news room. The story was posted on the newspaper's website.

Gannett, which owns Newsquest in the UK and USA Today, has also said online revenue growth slowed in the first quarter from a year earlier.

The Wall Street Journal quoted the chief executive of Washington Post's online arm, Caroline Little, as saying growth was "slowing slightly across the board but is still very healthy" while Journal publisher Dow Jones reported 30% growth in online ad revenue in the first quarter, up from 26% a year earlier. However, Dow Jones website has a different model and is subscription only.

The WSJ quoted analysts saying that the falls in online revenues at the NY Times and Tribune reflect a broader trend.

"We absolutely see slower growth coming," says Kip Cassino, vice-president of research at Borrell Associates, a media-research firm. "Generally, newspapers tend to believe things that have been good are going to get better. And that's not always the case."

It is expected that the growth rate in online ad spending in newspapers will likely fall to a percentage in the low 20s this year from 28% last year. Coupled with the decline in classified advertising, it's not good news at all.

Then there is the fact that advertisers are looking elsewhere from traditional news sites, which was a trend that began with blogs. Last week, social-networking site MySpace added a news feature and is boosting its ad-sales efforts.

According to Greg Smith, chief operating officer of Neo@Ogilvy: "Advertisers are getting less scared of blogs and newsgroups and now are beginning to take money away from the traditional newspapers' sites."

Newspapers need to attract new advertisers and sources of income online. Part of that is coming with moves into TV and radio type production, with UK papers, The Times, Telegraph and Guardian Unlimited as active as anyone.

They need more than that, however, particularly as search marketing continues to rise - but sadly for newspaper that market is owned by Google and Yahoo!. Newspapers are tying up deals with search engines, like Hearst Corp, MediaNews Group, and McClatchey signing a broad advertising deal with Yahoo!, but there is a worry that this only takes more power away from them and gives it to the search engines. The search engines already have the content (not their content of course, but it turns out that it is not content that is king, but other people's content if you are Yahoo! or Google).

No wonder that Sir Martin Sorrell said on Friday that the search giant is a long term enemy.

Dirty Des goes to New York

255762 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:30:24 GMT

Richard Desmond has gone to New York and he's having a go at everybody. He's even calling Sir Martin Sorrell short.
Desmond is surely one of those men who never just has a bee in his bonnet, but an entire hive.

As well as gratuitously laying into Sorrell (the two had a bit of a bust-up in February with legal papers flying back and forth as WPP sought £5.7m payment for work done on the launch of OK! in the US with Desmond counter-suing) with the rude but obvious, Desmond has been picking his targets as they come into range.

American Media (tabloid publisher of The Star, et cetera) chief David Pecker? Oh he's "shifty".

In an interview with Advertising Age, Desmond accused Time Warner of "putting out a lot of shit" about OK! in its defence of rival magazine People magazine.

Desmond is feeling a little sensitive that sales of OK! in the US are going to be a little below expectation. So what about that?

"You can tell all those wankers to fuck off because these are the figures."

As for the advertisers OK! is attracting, they should thank their lucky stars.

"The people who are advertising with us, which there aren't many, are getting the bargain of a fucking lifetime." posted by Gordon @ 9:59 AM 2 comments links to this post