March 7, 2022
Sir Martin Sorrell in conversation with Arif Durrani, Media Consultant
Welcome to my media life an exciting new feature from the World Media Group. We’ll be interviewing some successful and interesting media and marketing leaders from around the world to get an insight into their career and some of their personal motivations. Stay tuned for some top tips and interesting insights!
Who better to start this global initiative with than arguably the most globally connected, internationally successful marketing leader of our time? The founder of S4 Capital and WPP, of course, none other than Sir Martin Sorrell.
So, what does the media industry mean to you?
What it means to me is ‘fun’ and ‘interest’. My dad said to me, “Find an industry that you enjoy and then find a company inside that industry that you enjoy. Build a reputation in it, and then, if you fancy, around the age of 40, go off and do something on your own.” My dad didn’t do that, because he worked in the same company for the whole of his working life. So, I would say, the answer to that question, is that the media industry is really interesting.
When I went into it with, I went [to Saatchi] in part, because I liked the industry and it reminded me of the sports and entertainment industry. The only barrier, particularly in the UK, was not about connection or who you knew, but the strength of your latest idea. You just needed a phone and somewhere quiet you could take or make a phone call. So that’s the reason – fun and interest; demanding, enticing, fast-moving and all those things. And virtually zero barriers to entry.
What’s the one piece of advice that has helped during your career?
Although it’s counter intuitive to what people get told now, it was sticking with the company and building. It’s not what people do now – people flip from flower to flower. Maybe corporate lives are so short now, it’s the right thing to do. But I think the best advice was to focus on something that you find enjoyable.
Mark McCormack, the founder and chairman of IMG, was a scratch golfer and he took his hobby into work. He met professional golfer Arnold Palmer at Wake Forest university and Arnold needed somebody to manage his contracts, so he decided to do that. The boundary between work and play was almost non-existent. I’ve been fortunate enough not to regard there as being much of a barrier between the two.
If you were starting out today, where would you like to begin?
I think my horizons would be different. The UK is still a really important economy, but if you look at things globally, you have to focus on countries like the US, China and India, so my gaze would probably be different. If I was starting out, I’d probably go to the US. North and South America are full of tremendous opportunities, particularly South America. I’d also be seduced by what’s happened in Asia Pacific, despite the difficulties currently of going to parts of Asia Pacific or China. But China and India are critically important now and will be in the future.
Like most British people, I’m appalling with languages. If I were starting again, I would focus very much on code and technology and engineering, and also on languages, particularly Chinese, in addition to English, and maybe Spanish.
I was fortunate – I was partly educated (or miseducated as my mother used to say) in America, so I got more of an international view, if not a global view. (In the 1960s although the US talked about global business, Proctor at that time was a big multinational with 10 percent of its revenues coming from outside the US. Global business had not really mushroomed like it did when the economist Ted Levitt got to grips with it in the 1980s with his globalisation pieces.)
So that’s what I think I would do differently. I would certainly still do the education I did. I was lucky enough to get into a great university in the UK, and one in America, and to do it immediately. I didn’t do work experience, which maybe was a mistake – maybe the best thing would have been to have had two years of work experience in between the first degree and post-graduate. But apart from that one qualification, I think, that’s what I’d do [today].
What’s your favourite thing about your current job?
I think it’s the growth of S4. If I think back, Saatchi was about globalisation, WPP was about the continuation of globalisation and the beginnings of technology. The great thing about S4 is that we continue to grow – I think that’s the most exciting thing about it. I’m not looking at my boots – I’m looking at the sky.
I think the clients we work with and the fact that 50 percent of our business is technology or technology orientated is a spectacular advantage. And I don’t want to lose that advantage, so we will continue to maintain that technological focus. We’re not making technology, but we’re deploying it for our clients in the most effective way to grow their top line. The biggest iss