M&C Saatchi soared this year. So did BWM. That’s good for Jaimes Leggett. Ditto, Rob Belgiovane, Jamie Mackay and Paul Williams.
Droga5 put in a good effort, but its just deserts are still around the corner. Grey Aus is a work in progress.
But no one had a year as cruelly punishing as Maurice Levy.
He was an orchestrator of one of adland’s greatest flops, the Omnicom Publicis merger that failed to happen. Publicis’ planned $US35 billion merger with Omnicom would have created the world’s biggest agency network. Yes it hurts more when you fall from a greater height.
His agency network, Publicis Groupe, which owns agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Starcom MediaVest and Leo Burnett, reported organic/like-for-like revenue growth of just 1% in the 3rd quarter. In the 2nd quarter, reported revenue was -1.5% and organic growth was +0.5%. or in Levy’s words, Publicis had “a very bad year in terms of trading” due to the merger’s interference.
His nemesis behaved like a bitch with fangs towards him – so very often, so very publicly.
And he has no option but to resign. At 72, Levy has earned the right to focus on something other than retaining talent because of the constant competition in adland and now also startups, which he notes “are offering the possibility of the dream”. Other than the disarray he feels that digital is causing in adland. And other than the current economic situation, which he states “is not something that is bringing a lot of satisfaction and joy.” But when you’ve been begged not to retire several times, meeting no resistance must feel nasty.
And lastly, this is not the statement you want to be the hallmark of a long – and let’s not overlook, hugely successful – career at Publicis (Levy joined Publicis in 1971 and has been its chief executive since 1987): “Everything that happens at Publicis, I’m taking it personally except the joy. The joy is for my teams. The success is for my teams. Everything bad I am taking it personally. It is affecting my behaviour. It is affecting my morale, but at the same time it is giving me a lot of strength. The worst thing that can happen is the negative spiral. You have to avoid getting yourself into a negative spiral when something bad is happening.”
So let’s hope that Levy gets the 5% growth he is hoping for in 2015.
Watch Levy talk about “what keeps him awake at night” with Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg’s Leaders’ Lunch here.
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