Ouch. Michael Roth of Interpublic, the advertising group, does not seem to have much time for the high profiles enjoyed by his fellow chief executives Sir Martin Sorrell and Maurice Lévy.
Mr Roth ended his interview in the FT today with this withering observation on the leadership styles at WPP and Publicis, two of his biggest rivals:
The finger-pointing and whispering of Soho and Madison Avenue is not a game he is keen to play.
“I don’t talk about other businesses. I would say John Wren [Omnicom's chief executive] and I are more similar in that regard than Maurice and Martin. I don’t make it about me, I make it about our agencies.”
Make it about me, indeed. Well, it is true enough that both Sir Martin and Mr Lévy are often in the news and are seen as personifying their companies.
Mr Lévy, after flirting with the idea of stepping down from Publicis at the end of 2011, decided to stay on after all. As for Sir Martin, there is no sign of him departing from the helm of the business he built from its humble origins as Wire and Plastic Products.
Unlike Mr Roth, however, I cannot see anything wrong with today’s large advertising groups being run by leaders with an eye for a headline and a good quote. If they had to leave all that to the creative types in their agencies, the world would be duller.
