Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: [00:01:00] Sir Martin Sorrell, you are the first Knight to join me on Some Future Day. Welcome.
Martin Sorrell: Uh, thank you, Marc. Delighted to be with you. I'm probably gonna be the last knight that you ever have on your program. Either.
Marc Beckman: Well, or, or a late night. But how did you trick the queen into giving you this immense honor? Like how did you go about fooling her
Martin Sorrell: didn't [00:02:00] trick the queen. I, I tricked the Prime Minister. The Prime minister. I was part of what was known as the millennial list, um, which was Tony Blair. It was the list for the 2000. The year 2000 and the, the process is the Prime Minister recommends to the queen. Um, the, the trickiest part Marc was that you get a telegram, uh, obviously the, the New Year's list.
So, uh, the list that was published on Jan after midnight on January the first 2000, and, um, you, you get a telegram from, from Buckingham Palace, if I remember rightly. Or was it the Prime Minister's office? One of the two. And that telegram in those days when they sent telegrams and the telegram says, if you were to be offered a knighthood, would you accept it?
So you have to accept it. They're not gonna offer it. You give you the opportunity to decline it. Uh, and the risk [00:03:00] was that my father, sadly, had died. This was, uh, obviously 2000 or 1999. My father died in 1989. And my mother was still alive, and my mother was being, being the only son of a Jewish Northwest London Jewish family.
My, my mother was prone to talk too much about her one and only son, uh, and indeed her grandchildren. And the great risk was that she would say something in the local Jewish community that would blow the whole thing. And of course, if it got out, you, you lost the night. So, uh,
Marc Beckman: Is that right? If it, if it, if it was disclosed or
Martin Sorrell: theory, in theory, yes.
Before it was published anyway, I said yes, I would accept it. And I took the risk of telling my mother, and God bless her. She didn't tell a soul, or to my knowledge, she didn't sell, tell a soul. So that was the bus risk, the what I know what is called the Jewish mother risk.
Marc Beckman: I understand the Jewish mother risk, but so did you know it was coming? Did you
Martin Sorrell: No, no, no, no. It was [00:04:00] totally outta the blue. I, I had no inkling. It was, uh, Tony Blair was prime minister of a labor government. And I've often thought, I wondered whether I would have got it if it had been a conservative Prime Minister. Um, but no, we, we, if you go back through the history, I mean, I was CFO Chief Financial Officer at s for about seven or eight years.
I then started WPP in 1985, and, and we had, you know, we, we had a successful years in 87 and 89, but we hit the buffers in the recession of 1990. Had a period of recovery, strong recovery through the, the nineties. And actually I, the knighthood came just before we merged with Young and Rubicon so-called merger.
We were two thirds the, the, the larger merger partners. So we effectively acquired Young and Rubicon in 2000. So that was after, after the night group. So, no, I never knew it was coming. I didn't actually think about it [00:05:00] to be honest. And we had our difficulties in the late. Well the, the early nineties, and I thought it was gonna be quite difficult for me to, um, to get something like that.
And really it didn't f figure in my mind until I got the telegram and until I had that conversation with my mother.
Marc Beckman: So, which night before you, prior to your knighthood, which knight inspires you the most?
Martin Sorrell: Ah, that's a really interesting question. There'll probably, uh, would be two, well, there'll be one night and one lord. So my father didn't get an honor. My father was a very successful retailer. He was, um, managing director, chief executive of the retail division of an industrial holding company, one of the first conglomerates in the UK called First Cleveland, which was a engineering metal bashing company from the middle of, uh, England, from Wolver Hampton.
He also owned, uh, Charles Hayward, sir Charles [00:06:00] Hayward, who. Who was the chairman and CEO, I think he was CEO as well. He also owned w Hampton Wanderers, quite a famous, famous premier league football club. Was a metal bacher in the war and had a retail division. And my father, my father ran that. But there were two people that my father came into contact with, both Jewish, um, who really made a lasting impression on me.
The first was Sir Jules Thorn, who is e who was even smaller than me. Jules Thorne was an Austrian refugee, uh, from Vienna, and he left Vienna at the time of the pogroms, um, before the war, about 1938, I think it was a set up, a lighting factory, a fluorescent lighting factory in Enfield, just outside London and built one of, uh, the UK's.
And in fact, probably the world's actually. Most successful [00:07:00] lighting, refrigeration, domestic appliance businesses called Thorn Electrical. And he was knighted, uh, ser Jewel Thorne. And my father knew him 'cause he used to buy fridges and television sets and God knows what from him. And so there was a big business relationship.
And Jules Thorn, I would go and see, uh, he had a very, very famous building in St. Martin's Lane where the Ivy Restaurant is now, uh, called Thorn House, where I used to go to the top floor. Uh, at the time it was one of the, the most, um, well-known skyscrapers. It wasn't a skyscraper in the American sense, in the British sense it was, uh, of his time.
I used to see him on the top floor and he would counsel me on this was when I was about 14 or 15. I would see him on a regular basis, maybe every six months, 12 months. And he would counsel me on what I was gonna do. So that was one person, and the other person was Lord Weinstock. Who was the [00:08:00] chairman and CEO of the General Electric Company, not the American one, but the British one, and he was an in, again, he manufactured domestic appliances, but more heavy engineering as well was one of the leading industrialists, like Jules Thorn in the Thatcher days, pre Thatcher days, post Thatcher days in the uk.
And Weinstock was regarded as being one of the leading industrialists. Again, he used to sell stuff to my father. My father was a big buyer and I went to see him on a regular basis and he influenced me as well, but thorn. In particular, uh, was heavily heavy influence in sort of fashioning what I was interested in from a business point of view.
So, you know, I owe my father an awful lot and had a very close relationship with him, and he got me to see these people when I was 14, [00:09:00] 15, 16. And I kept in touch with both until Thorn died, uh, and until Lord Weinstock died. In fact, I saw Lord Weinstock for many years after my father died as well.
Marc Beckman: So those are three very influential people in your life, including your father. What would you say, um, a positive trait that flourished within you because of their influence? Um, what would you say is a positive
Martin Sorrell: Well, it, it, it, it was, it
Marc Beckman: shape who you are today?
Martin Sorrell: yeah, it was my father really. I mean, my, my, my father and my mother were, my father was the one of six. Um, I don't know exactly where my father's grandparents came from. I think they came from Lviv. It was either Kiev, Lviv, it was probably u the Ukraine In 1899 when my mother died, I find, I found, uh, my grandparents on my father's side's marriage [00:10:00] certificate.
And it looked as though they had married again, either married again or married for the first time in the UK in 1899. And they both signed their names with crosses because they couldn't understand any English they got in right in Russian, I think at that time. And the four witnesses who were also, uh, Russian Jews or Ukrainian Jews, um, the distinction is important, I guess.
Uh, even to this day. Those four also signed with crosses. So my father was the son of immigrants, the youngest son of immigrants. Born in, born and bred in the east end of London, where most of the Jews con congregated. It was almost a, not a ghetto, but almost a, a, a ghetto in, in East London. And my mother went, met my father at the same school, uh, when, and, and they left school at 13.
My mother took a ter job. Uh, my father [00:11:00] studied elemental law, um, grew a mustache to look older in court. Um, he looked too young for his, his age, so you see pictures of him from that time growing a mustache to look older. And then when he was about 17, he, he, he became a salesman in a retail television, um, um, radio store.
It was called j and m Stone. And, um, quite funny, actually, it was two, two Russian Jewish brothers, max and Francis Stone, who built the largest retail. The chain of retail stores in radio and electrical goods in the uk, which was then acquired by that industrial holding company that Hayward ran, called Firth Cleveland.
And my father went from salesman in a branch to regional manager, national manager, sales manager, then CEO or managing director of it, and ran that retail [00:12:00] division. And I think, Marc, to your question, he ran that business as though it was his own, it wasn't his own, he didn't have a shareholding in it. Uh, which I, I think I probably regret that he didn't.
Um, and I know he regretted him, so he was an employee, but he treated that business as though it was owned. And, and it's an interesting conceptual thing because I, I think it's terribly important, uh, I think separation of ownership and control inside corporations, which I learned about. Fast forwarding to when I was at Cambridge studying economics.
One of the only books I can remember from my three years of Economics, Cambridge, was a book called Theory of Managerial Capitalism, was written by a left wing economist called Robin Marris, who I, I saw later on in life. 'cause it, I often quoted it as having made an impression on [00:13:00] me. And what Robin talked about was the separation inside the mon modern corporation between ownership, the people who owned the company and control the people who managed the company.
And I think linking the two, when you think about people like Buffet and the great investors, uh, the most successful investors, they suss out. They, they, they sort of ferret out. The companies where management has an ownership focus. Or an ownership attitude of mind. And I think that's terribly important.
So going back to my father, he didn't have that. I think that was something he always lusted after or always wanted, and maybe that made a really significant impression. Impression on me. So, net net, my father's advice was, find an industry that you enjoy. Find a [00:14:00] company within that industry you enjoy.
Build a a, the people you like there build a reputation, not a reputation that they, you know, comes, comes up, come onto your radio show and, uh, talk about these sort of things, but build a reputation where people sort of respect and trust you. And then he said, you know, if at the age of 40, 'cause at his, at his time of life, um, you know, the working life was what, from 20 to 60?
So midpoint was 40. If at 40 you wanted to go off and do something on your own. Uh, entrepreneurially. He said, do that. You'll build a reputation. Do that, if not carry on like he did in the company he built. So that, that was pretty influential in terms of my thinking.
Marc Beckman: So then going back to the knighthood piece of it, so your mom was still alive and uh, that must have been, you know, she must have been immensely
Martin Sorrell: Yes. I mean, my, my mother,
Marc Beckman: of this.
Martin Sorrell: my mother was over proud. She, she, uh, she ran the [00:15:00] reception to her dying day. She died when she was about 90. And to her, my father died when he was 74, and he was about a year older than my mother. Um, my mother was, was on the reception of what was the largest Jewish care center, uh, in, in Europe.
It was in gold, green, in northwest London. And, and every day, you know, a thousand Jewish men and women would be brought into this center and would pass through the reception area where my mother, I. Was, and, and that's why I was so, so worried about telling her about the knighthood because I thought she would drop into at least one of those people that went through every day.
But it was the biggest, uh, care center, day center, uh, in Europe, I think at, at that time. I don't know whether it still is something I still support, uh, philanthropically, not in a big way, but in a, in a significant way for me. And I think it's important. And it was something that she [00:16:00] actually, she got a lot of, um, out of it, as they say in Yiddish.
Um, she got a lot of joy and pleasure out of it, and, um, but unfortunately she was one of those rather boastful Jewish mothers. Um, she lost, she lost my brother a year before I was born. So I think, um, I carried the burden of being the only child. But even worse, there have been somebody before me who sadly died at birth.
And so I, there was an even higher premium on my head.
Marc Beckman: I get it. I get it. Do you consider knighthood a, um, an accomplishment and achievement?
Martin Sorrell: No, it's great. It's great for restaurant bookings and for airline seats, but, but beyond, yeah, it's, listen, uh, it, it, it's, it's nice people that people aspire to. I think it, it is become, it's interesting you asked that question and you asked me before whether, you know, I thought it was [00:17:00] gonna happen and I was never really conscious of it.
Um, people are much more conscious of it today. Marc. There are, there's almost an industry that has grown up around the honors programs in the uk. There are consultants that, um, you know, will develop programs. It's rather like, you know, college entry in the United States.
Marc Beckman: So like how to position yourself to, to, to achieve knighthood, that kind of a thing. I.
Martin Sorrell: well if not knighthood and honor an OB or a cv, you know, what do you have to do socially, philanthropically, business wise or whatever. Um, and I was never really conscious of it. I remember, it's a very funny story actually. You say that, uh, I had a CFO, I, I refer to the fact that we had difficulties in, in the recession of 91 92, the oil price crisis.
And, um, we, we had acquired JWT, which was [00:18:00] 13 times our size in 87, and then we acquired Ogilvy in 89. So Jay Walter Thompson in 87, Ogilvy in 89, uh, and Ogilvy was about twice or three times our size. And with JWTI did a half debt, half equity deal, 525 million pounds. And, um, we, we were fortunate enough to find a property in Tokyo that we sold for 200 million.
About, um, two or three months after we acquired the business, we knew there was a freehold. So long story, we knew there was a freehold property inside the business. 'cause you see it on the balance sheet. In those days you used to depreciate freehold property, so over 40 years. So after 20 years you'd written down half of the property, but the property had probably increased very significantly in value.
We sold it for 200 million pounds, I think it was, [00:19:00] and Morgan Stanley with the defending bank, and they told the JWT board that it was worth $30 million or something. So there was a big error there. We thought it was the London building that they had in Barclay Square, but it actually turned out to be out in Tokyo.
So that was a great deal. It was a great deal from a margin point of view because JWTs margins were low. And we managed to ignite growth by bringing Burt Manning in as a CEO, who had been thrown out of the business by Don Johnson. The, the, the acting, well, the CEO at that time, that we took it over the year previously.
So that went well. And then in 89 we went after Ogilvy, which was two or three times our size, uh, slightly bigger. I think we paid 825 million again, half half, um, debt and half convertible preferred. And I made a terrible mistake because in a recession, a convertible preferred effectively becomes [00:20:00] debt. In other words, the equity element doesn't take over.
The theory is, you know, that you, you improve the value of the business. The convertible preferred goes well above the conversion price, and then they convert into equity, so it becomes equity. Unfortunately, we went into a recession and in 91, 92. We had to, we went through a difficult period where we had to reschedule the debt.
We never missed a, an interest payment or a debt, debt, uh, repayment. But we had to reschedule the debt. So we got into difficulties. Uh, coincidentally that was when, when Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway bought into the business. I always remember that, um, at the time we were in great difficulty. He always buys, buys at the bottom and sells at the top.
Um, and we had a difficult period in the early nineties. We rescheduled the debt and then, as I said before, we, we really progressed very well in the nineties. And that's in the end of the nineties is when [00:21:00] I received the knighthood. But it, I go through that because I thought probably, I remember our CFO at the time, Robert Lowell said to me, when we got into financial difficulties, he said, bang, those, the knighthood.
Marc Beckman: So, you know, it's interesting, Martin, because you, you built WPP into the largest agency on the planet. So you have this experience of building the agency, building this asset. And then if you pull back a little bit from that, I know that you are a salesman and like a, a, a tremendous salesman at your core, maybe inspired a little bit from your father.
And then I also know that you're super creative. I know that you ha you do wear a creative hat. You do. I've spoken with you now quite a bit. I know you do. And then finally, um, you remain a curious person. You're inspired by technologies and, and emerging technologies that can transform a relationship between a brand and a consumer.
So I'm curious, like with all of those different hats that you wore, [00:22:00] if you could put your finger on one grand achievement in your career from like a groundbreaking ad campaign all the way through a. Building the largest holding company in the advertising community, what would you say is like the single most noteworthy achievement that gives you Naas?
Martin Sorrell: Uh, it is not for me. Not for me. I mean, I would point out that when I was CFO of SARS with the Morrison, Charles, the, the brothers, um, and Tim Bell, who was the, the, the, the managing director of the agency, and Jeremy Sinclair, our creative director, bill Muir, head the counter. We, you know, that group was an incredibly talented group of people that did it.
Did what you said, built. We, we built ES into the biggest agency. Uh, and then we did it again, uh, building WPP from scratch, starting in, in 1985. Um. It's a very difficult question to answer. I, you [00:23:00] know, if you set, if I, let me put it another way. What sort of gives me the, what do I think is the, the, the most satisfaction I, I think the most satisfaction, uh, was probably, um, when we, when we did, and by the way, I didn't mention this.
When we did JWT and Ogilvy, they were both described as hostile transactions, hostile takeovers. And as Jimmy Goldsmith, who was a quite a famous, um, Raider, uh, asset Raider, um, in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, uh, sir James Goldsmith, Jimmy Goldsmith said, there is no such thing as a hostile takeover. It's only hostile to the CEO.
It's certainly not hostile to the share, share owners or shareholders. It's not hostile. In the case of our, of what we are talking about to the clients. It's not hostile to the people inside of the business. It's certainly [00:24:00] hostile to the CEO because he's in the position or she's in the position of being, of being, of being attacked.
And, um, I, I think in those days, uh, in 19, go jumped back to 1987, you know, we had, I'd started Wire, I, I took this company called Wire and Plastic Products. Okay. It was a shell company in the, in the UK million pounds market cap. That's all that my partner and I, Preston Robble could achieve, could, could afford.
We had between us, I don't know think it was about 250,000 or 300,000 pounds. And so we wanted a company, we didn't want to make a takeover offer for the company. And the rules were if you bought more than 30% of the company, you had to take it over. And make a full offer, which would've cost a million pounds if it was worth a million pounds.
We only had 300,000. So we, we settled on a company with a market capitalization of a million pounds, [00:25:00] but we could only put 300,000 in, roughly, put in 50% each. I put in slightly more than he did, and I ended up with 16% of the company. Preston had
Marc Beckman: Of wire basket.
Martin Sorrell: of wire and plastic products, and we go out and this is a manufacturing company and we said we wanted an old, but not senile management.
A, a company that was manufacturing that had not lost money, didn't have any debt, and that we could manage, but we wanted to expand it into a marketing services business. And within 18 months, we had done 18 acquisitions in the US and the uk and built the market cap from 1 million pounds to about 150 million pounds.
And JWT at that time, which was 13 times our size, was only valued at about two 50 million. And as I mentioned, we, we bought it for 525 million. We, we had [00:26:00] Bruce Wasserstein of who were there was then at first Boston, whose nickname was Bid up. Bruce was our investment banker, and we started the two weeks, and it was exactly the same with Ogilvy, with the share price at 45.
At the end of week one, we went to 50, and then the end of week two, the board agreed the deal at 55, uh, ping. Now, in the case of JWT, it was 13 times our size. It was an industrial icon. I mean, it was, if not the, I think NWA was the oldest advertising agency in America, but it was certainly the first or second oldest advertising.
It was institution on Madison Avenue.
and then the end of week two, the board agreed the deal at 55, uh, ping. Now, in the case of JWT, it was 13 times our size. It was an industrial icon. I mean, it was, [00:27:00] if not the, I think NWA was the oldest advertising agency in America, but it was certainly the first or second oldest advertising.
It was institution on Madison Avenue.
Marc Beckman: Incredible brand. Same with Ogilvy though, like the, the, the blue chip value of the brand name Ogilvy, I think is just as prestigious.
Martin Sorrell: and, and I agree and, and in fact, ironically, both companies had had two sets of takeover talks before because their pattern of clients with Ford newly in two in in particular, fitted together. But in the case of JWT, we went through this two week hostile. I spent, you know, I shuttled between London and New York, and we finally secured the company.
And I used to, you know, you were talking about my relationship with my father, I would talk to my father. I'm not exaggerating, Marc. This is before the era of mobile phones. This is on landlines. I would talk to him about stuff that was going on. I would say six or seven times a day, even, [00:28:00] even in the course of a two week hostile bid.
I remember, you know, I was in New York, I was in London. And I would talk to my dad and, and he, look, he didn't know anything about hostile bids. He was a retailer, but he knew about people. He had a remarkable, you asked him about insights. He had a remarkable understanding and a remarkable because he knew about consumers because of retail and retail, electrical goods and TVs and record blurs and refrigerators, et cetera.
He knew how people reacted and he was really great to talk to. 'cause he gave me a lot of good advice. I think this is an important thing for everybody. You have to have a sort of mentor or who, who has your agenda at heart, who is objective, might be subjectively in your favor, but is objective about the events around.
But I spoke to him anyway. We went through this two week process and I was in New York when we won and it was, you know, a, a pretty electric mo up [00:29:00] moment. And I flew over, I remember it was on PanAm, on a, on a. A Boeing seven, I think, whether it's 7, 4 7, I don't think the seven four sevens were run again, but it was a big Boeing plane.
It was PanAm. And I was met by a guy called Jim Weeks who was the head of special services at PanAm in London with a copy of the Times Newspaper.
Marc Beckman: Oh wow.
Martin Sorrell: And the front page headline was, wire and Plastic Products takes over JWT. So, and if you asked me, if you asked me, and it was front page and back page, that was, it was on a Saturday morning.
That wa that was a, my parents of course, uh, uh, quite, quite interesting. Certainly from my point of my parents who always thought about the Times News newspaper as being sort of pretty much anti-Semitic from the war I.
Marc Beckman: Hmm.
Martin Sorrell: Or [00:30:00] before the war, there was this feeling of, they found it extraordinary that a little Jewish boy ends up on the front page of the Times and
Marc Beckman: you make the New York Times too? The New York Times was
Martin Sorrell: Yeah. I they, they covered it. The wall, the Wall Street. The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. There was a Joanne, uh, there was a journalist called Joanne Lipton, who still writes, she's at Yale now as a professor who was the media correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. And she ran two stories in relation to j Walter Thompson.
One was over payments made for an agency in Turkey, I think it was. And the other was a story that, um, the CIA had used one of the JWT offices in Chile. It was Haldeman or Ehrlichman, one of the two who worked for Nixon. In the White House at the time of the Watergate SEC handle who worked for j Walter Thompson.
And [00:31:00] she, I remember she wrote a story about the JWT offices in, I think it was in Santiago, in Chile, had been used by the CIOs. A front, it was quite a, and then there was a story about the Turkish agency that JWT had had bought a guy run by a guy called Ellie Asman, and payments had been made to him outside Turkey for his agency.
I remember that, that helped us a little bit in terms of shaking the trip.
Marc Beckman: Did you research it? Is it, was it true?
Martin Sorrell: Yeah, both, both floor were true. Yes.
Marc Beckman: the CIA was working with JWT.
Martin Sorrell: Yes. They u they, they used people in the agency in the sixties. I think the 1960s, if I got the timing right, uh, it was a CIA, if not front. Certainly facilities we use.
Marc Beckman: Wow, that's so interesting. Martin, when you talk about, um, like your dad had this instinctive nature about understanding [00:32:00] people, knowing how to like sell them effectively, what did you take away from that? Like, people are still people. Here we are, you know, years later it's 2025. Product is champion, but emotion matters.
So like from your perspective, in your experience, what do you look for? Like when you are selling somebody?
Martin Sorrell: Well, I think, I think the emotional trigger, um, there was a situation where, it was before I was working for Ches, I was working for a UK entrepreneur called James Gu. And without going into the details of it, it's too boring to go into. Um, but basically I was disadvantaged and there were three people involved in the situation.
Um, one who was highly competitive to me, and I described that situation to my father, and he, he, he said to me. Have sit down with this guy who's objecting to you sharing in something that we were, were both involved in. And [00:33:00] I think he said, use the word bias or bigger bigoted in, in that conversation. And I remember I inserted the word bias or bigot, whatever it was, into the, into the conversation.
And the guy collapsed. I mean, not physically, but mentally collapsed on the point. And the reason I go through that was that my father actually really understood what the emotional, and he had no formal education Marc. I mean no formal education past 13. Okay. So just think about it for a minute. And he used to come home from school after, let's say morning school, and to his dying day, he could recite.
When I say recite, I don't mean one line or two lines, or three lines or four lines, or five lines or 10 lines. I'm talking speeches of th 30, 40, 50, a hundred, a hundred, 200 line of [00:34:00] Shakespeare
Marc Beckman: Brilliant.
Martin Sorrell: and the Talmud. So you didn't have TikTok then, you didn't have Snapchat. What you had was sort of rigorous study and application and memory.
He had incredible memory, but, but in, in the course of his, from 13 years old and leaving school and working in, uh, as I say, legal, sort of the, the, the, the underworld of legal, I would think. And then working in retail, he developed an understanding of the emotional triggers. And I think that's really important because that's still important.
Like, um, I'll give you two examples of it from literally in the last couple of days. I was in New York last week and I had dinner with somebody, uh, from, uh, a major financial services company. And it's a company that spends about a billion dollars a year [00:35:00] on experiential, what they describe as experiential marketing.
Marc Beckman: Yep.
Martin Sorrell: Uh, what they, they, they're a B2B company rather than a B2C company. They work with banks and issuing financial instruments and what they look for is experiences now with consumers. So that was one thing I was thinking about. So, and what's important about that is the emotional triggers that experiences trigger. Secondly, yesterday with the major packages, companies, one of the biggest companies in the world, we were having a conversation with senior leadership and one of their senior people said. Well, you know, all this personalized advertising at scale, which, you know, we specialize in is all very well, but the consumer has been bombarded with all these, these messages and experiences are becoming more and more important.
And this was from a package was company. This wasn't a B2B financial services company. [00:36:00] So I go through that because the, and what are experiences that are about emotional connections? So they, they are, or I saw an ad last night, not one of ours, uh, for O2 by an agency here in the UK called VCCP, which is O2 Oxygen.
And the, the opening shot is as of a baby being born. Um, you know, maybe a bit trite for some, but I thought it's very good. Again, emotional triggers, um, that are terribly important. They're in different forms to what they were when I was at s. The big I, I suppose the biggest ad when I was at Sarchi's was Manhattan Landing, uh, which was the BA ad where the island of Manhattan comes across.
It wasn't Ridley Scott who did it. It was one of those commercial directors who wanted to be a feature film director like Ridley Scott. But it was, [00:37:00] um, it used modern what were then modern cinematic techniques for, for Manhattan to literally lift off the island of Manhattan to lift off from New York, come across the Atlantic and land in London, which is British Airways, you know, core route and establishing British Airways as a global airline.
The, uh, the, the management of, of BA was changed by Margaret Thatcher. It was a, a leading, or the leading British company and, uh, the, the CEO. Uh, the Chairman and CEO Lord King and Colin Marshall was the c were the CEO. They revamped the whole business. So I, you know, the emotional side of it is still critically important, but in a very different way.
It's in a very different way to what it was before.
Marc Beckman: But what, but what does it do? So like going back to the, the conversation with your father when he said, use the word bigot. Use the word bias in the conversation, [00:38:00] trigger the emotion. But remember the original question is how do you sell, how best to sell someone, how best to like tap into that live. Um, I guess in, in this instance we're
Martin Sorrell: Well, I, I,
Marc Beckman: like, where does the emotion take the sale, right?
So, so like, what are you, why do you want to use experience and emotion to sell that individual?
Martin Sorrell: but the way that we get to the emotion is, in my view, um, this is where it gets quite controversial, is through the data.
Marc Beckman: But this is when you're talking about massive advertising, I'm literally talking one-on-one.
Martin Sorrell: No, no, I mean, one, one-on-one. One-on-one. So, so David Ogilvy, who called me when we launched our, our, um, hostile
Marc Beckman: takeover, when you stole this company,
Martin Sorrell: uh, yeah, yeah. Well, he, by the way, he had sold it. Interestingly, when David Ogilvy went public, when I started WPP in 1986, I went public using Roth charges as a bank. [00:39:00] He sold every single share.
And he bought a chateau in the south of France, Chateau Tofu. Because, well, because, you know, you, you always, when you start a company, you always worried about whether it's going to, you know, go, go fat. Okay. And, you know, he had the, the, the, uh, entrepreneur's dilemma. So he sold out. He sold out. He didn't have any shares, had some options, but no shares.
I mean, he called me an odious little shit. The Financial Times never printed four letter words. So it was odious a little jerk, OLJ. And we put, we put a little cartoon of me on our annual report with OLJ next to it for odious, a little jerk. Anyway, um, the, the point, the point of the story is that David, if you went back and looked at his history, you researched him and he started the agency at the age of 40, which is when I started WPP.
Interestingly, before that, he was [00:40:00] an Arga cooker salesman. He was a Gallup researcher, and David understood the power of research. And when I met, when I met David Ogilvy for the first time, because he called me an odious little jerk or shit, I went to see, I said, I rang him up and I said, don't you think we should get together?
And he said, yes. And I went with my lawyer who was a guy called Phil Reese. Partner of Davidson Gilbert, the leading advertising lawyer at that time, to see David Ogilvy in a hotel in New York. And David, I can't remember who he had with him. And I walked into the room and I said, hello. And I, I had read every one of David Ogilvy's books.
David at that time had read written about three or four Ogilvy on advertising and
Marc Beckman: Tremendous
Martin Sorrell: and I knew it inside out. And I started to quote from the book in the course, of course of the conversation. And then I said, at the end of the conversation, went on for about an [00:41:00] hour and we got on well, and he, and he called me that odious little jerk before he'd even met me.
I said, have you seen the letter that we sent to Ken Roman, which was the bear hug letter containing the bid? The hostile bid, which was a fax attack. We used to call it a fax attack. 'cause I sent it by fax on Friday evening, London time at about 6:00 PM and the Ogilvy board were in. In the Hudson Valley, I think in New York, in a, a location where they had had no communication and they had moved their offices that weekend.
We knew they moved into their, you know, their plus new building in, in, um, devil's, I think it was called Devil's Kitchen in New York, uh, in a, in a, in a developing part of New York. Anyway, we caught them at a, at a good time and we sent them the letter and I said to David, have you seen the letter? And he said, yes.
And then I said, have you seen the last paragraph? And he said, [00:42:00] yes. I said, well, what do you think of it? He said, what do you mean? In the last paragraph, I had suggested that David Ogilvy become chairman of the joint company and we knew that he had a, again, through our research, which comes back to what I'm saying, data and research, completely important that he and Ken Roman, despite appearances of the country, really didn't get on. And David and Ken Roman had removed the last paragraph from the letter, which offered David the chairmanship of the joint company
Marc Beckman: How interesting.
Martin Sorrell: from it and David was unaware of it. And we went, we went in it and that Then I was then friend for life and David penned, um, an ad that we never ran. I've still got it in my study at home in London, which is headed my first public apology where David apologizes for calling me an odious little jerk and, and [00:43:00] all, um, and said, I, you know, I'd never met and I've not got gone into it.
But the point of the story is that research, and David understood this because of his history at Gallup and his romance with direct. If you read David's work, and there's a book, I think it's called Ogilvy Direct as well, whi, which solely on direct, he is, he, it's the forerunner of internet advertising.
It's the forerunner of personalized communication, except in his case it was by letter.
Marc Beckman: right.
Martin Sorrell: You use the, the, the mail, the US male or the royal male in the UK to write to somebody and tailor a piece of communication that reflected data and insight. So I, I think Marc that, you know, there's a lot of lessons. I mean they're this may sound a bit trite, but I think they're really pretty fundamental.
It's the use of data and the emotional triggers to, to trigger the response you want.
Marc Beckman: [00:44:00] So I think that's really interesting when you talk about data. We're also seeing a fundamental shift today with regards to ecosystems as it relates to many of the actors and players you're talking about. For example, brands. Um, corporations, consumers, the banking systems, content creators and beyond. So, like for example, I know with S4, with your new company, you're, you're very deep into digital first, um, policy and beyond.
But like, think about these new ecosystems. Like there are rumors today that Amazon, Jeff Bezos, I think he actually came out public now and said he wants to buy TikTok. So all of a sudden you have this ecosystem of brands, community, you know, the consumers content engine with regards to Amazon Prime, Amazon Video, TikTok, TikTok.
Um, on the, on the shopping piece of it is by far the leader, Instagram's number two. But for s commerce, tiktoks [00:45:00] blowing everyone out of the water and it brings an entire new young generation into play. How do these new ecosystems take shape in the new world? Like what, like what are brands really
Martin Sorrell: Well, we, we, we, we've also got Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg, uh, uh, in his, in, in, in his second day of testimony in the, in the case against, uh, against Meta. Um, you know, it's a bit ancient, you know, we wanna go after them for Instagram, et cetera. And it, it's, it's going, it's trying to wind the clock backwards and, and I think misunderstood and misplaced from a legal point of view.
But any, in any event, we'll see how that pans out.
Marc Beckman: I agree with, I agree with you by the way, and I think it's even, it becomes even more complex with LAMA and ai, uh, as a content generator.
Martin Sorrell: forget, they're saying that things like Reddit and Snap are not competitors, which I think is a nonsense, but come back, come back to the point. Look, uh, advertisers spent last year a trillion [00:46:00] dollars on advertising. Of that trillion dollars, 700 billion was spent on digital.
So 70%, when we started S4, six years ago, it was 50%. It's now 70%. We reckon by 2030 it'll be 80% and 300 billion on traditional. The 300 billion on traditional is going down each year. If you have live sports, by not to 5% like a Fox or a Disney, if you don't have live sports like a Warner Brothers discovery or not as much, can be down by as much as 10 or 15%.
So that traditional analog is under pressure. The 700 billion is concentrated in digital Google of the total of 1 trillion or the 700 billion in digital. Google is about 2 50, 2 60.
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Martin Sorrell: Uh, meta is one fifty, one sixty. Call it one [00:47:00] 60. Amazon is 60, my view gonna go to a hundred billion people laughed at me F 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago when I said Amazon will go to a hundred billion.
It will go to a hundred billion. Mark my words and TikTok outside
Marc Beckman: I, I agree with you, by the way. I totally agree
Martin Sorrell: outside mainland China, tiktoks about 40 billion including the us. Take those four platforms together. You get out up to over half the markets more than 500 billion and it's more than 70% of the 700 billion digital 'cause all those four are digital.
So the concentration is huge. That trillion excludes mainland China, Alibaba and Tencent. And the ByteDance. The 110 that's in ByteDance in China, by the way, ByteDance as a whole, China 110 plus TikTok outside 150 is roughly the same size as meta. And if TikTok is taken [00:48:00] over in the US I, I think it's probably around 15 billion.
So I'm not so sure that the Chinese will give up, you know, tempting providence here, but I'm not so sure that the Chinese will give up, I think the Chinese owners of ByteDance, whether it's the Chinese government or somebody else. We'll let that go down. We'll see whether that happens. I mean, a good, a good indicator at my view of whether US and China is gonna come together in any way, shape, or form.
I'm very worried about the split between US and China, but an indicator where a possible, you know, or some, some leniency in that is whether TikTok gets actually, you know, Oracle or Jeff Bezos or somebody buys. But the point about the story or the stats and the data is the concentration is huge. Marc. And that concentration I think is gonna [00:49:00] intensify, uh, because of the trends that we see in digital and in data and around AI and quantum and the metaverse and blockchain.
I don't get crypto, put that to one side, but certainly blockchain, you know, smoothing, removing the frictions, inside systems, um, marketing systems and other systems outside the world. The demands of AI mean that those companies, I mentioned the three Western and the three Eastern plus Microsoft, which includes open AI at Altman Plus, uh, apple plus, Nvidia plus Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe.
I, I would say those plus Musk, 'cause you can never count him out. All those, those are gonna be the key. Those are the key players and they are gonna get bigger. More powerful as the AI [00:50:00] revolution intensifies and the tariff situation and all the uncertainty that that brings, in my view, it creates huge uncertainty over the next 30 to 90 days.
As that gets sorted out, the next thing that will happen is that these technological advances are gonna become, and productivity improvements are gonna become super important. It's almost the the FOMO moment that we, the fear of missing out moment that we were looking for with clients in ai, because I think what happens is the world doesn't grow as much as it used to.
Inflation is gonna be higher and structurally more difficult to deal with, and interest rates are gonna be higher in that world. Picking the geographies you operate in. For all the reasons they've just sort of touched on, you know, China, US Russia, Ukraine, Iran, picking the JO geographies becomes really important.
And North [00:51:00] America, south America, middle East, and Asia win on that. Europe is slow growth, slower growth. Africa is very volatile. And I think the second thing that becomes really important is having efficiency and effectiveness in everything you do. So technology I think, is gonna become even more important in that changed world, by the way, which President Trump for good or bad, is driving it, is driving faster.
What? What he's doing on tariffs. I think the world did change in the world, in the Rose Garden at 9:00 PM on April the second. it is a change world. The, the era that I'm referring to, my dad's era, my era. Was a golden age. I think this is gonna be different. This is gonna be tougher. Growth is gonna be slower, inflation's gonna be more structural and more embedded.
And [00:52:00] I, I think the, the, the other thing is interest rates are gonna be higher than we an, than we were used to before in that world. Geographical differentiation, critically important. Pick your markets much more carefully and you have to be super efficient everywhere.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think artificial intelligence coupled with blockchain and crypto, will represent the two largest growth sectors in the United States over the next four to five years from a percentage perspective. But what's interesting is that with deregulation and also with certainty as it relates to the law in the United States, um, these two industries, crypto and.
AI will have a positive infa impact, almost like a rocket ship across different business sectors from finance to medicine, to, um, sports and entertainment, the creative industries and beyond. People don't really look at AI as like the underpinning when they're [00:53:00] evaluating businesses they see as a standalone business.
So I think it's gonna be very interesting, but when you lay out those big tech companies, Martin, what I'm starting and then you mentioned Trump on top of it. What I'm wondering is this, like, will the next generation, let's say young millennials or really Gen z, gen alpha, are they going to be more influenced?
Um, and, and will society be organized more because of the tech companies or because of governments like take Western, Western, um, uh, uh, governments today in particular? I think in, in terms of maybe the United Kingdom and the United States of America to start, will, will my children. Be organized more from the big tech companies that you mentioned or from like the United States, federal,
Martin Sorrell: Well, well, I think, I think big. I think big tech companies are super important. I think it's really interesting. President Xi several years ago said he was gonna cut up, remember when, when, uh, Jack Maher [00:54:00] was, was pushed out. When he made that, ill-advised speech to the Hong Kong regulator or whoever it was, pre, pre the, A financial IPO, and he disappeared and then, and President Xi said he was gonna cut Alibaba.
It was gonna be cut up. The regulators will cut it up into six pieces. Or to this day, it hasn't been cut up. I think. I think the Chinese government understands what, I think we have to understand that big tech, you, you've only gotta look at Ukraine. You've only gotta look at Iran. You've only gotta look at the Middle East War to to know that technology is a vital, not just from the point of view of efficiency and productivity in the country, but defense and offense.
So big tech, when you split these big tech companies up, you know there's swings of roundabouts here. You may think you're encouraging more competition, but you may be slowing [00:55:00] advances in some senses and you may be creating some discontinuities with it politely in terms of, of offense and defense. So I think big tech is here to here to stay.
The irony is that whilst all this is going on, it's like, you know, this court case comes up with, um, with meta. Right. And then they start talking about, you know, Google and Google search. And it also, you know, there's also an issue around Google and Google search. Google search is under attack. We know from the AI platforms, the l la LLMs, we know that that disin, you know, one of the reasons why Google may hallucination was one existential threat was another.
But Google may have been slower than they should have been to introduce, uh, LLMs. 'cause they were worried about the disintermediation, you know, the cannibalization of their search business. But there, there will always be technological shifts, but big tech companies are [00:56:00] super important. The capital expenditure demands that the, the Mag seven or the top four or five companies spend half a trillion dollars a year on expanding AI capacity.
You know, Amazon spends a hundred billion alone. On, on increasing ai AI capacity every year. So big tech is super important. One other thing I wanna say is this, and it sort of loops back to my dad. My dad said, find a ministry. You like a company, you like it within it, that you like. Build your career over 20 years, and if you want, you know, at the age of 40 to go off on your own, go off and do it.
That, that I don't think is a philosophy that would work today. I see things getting shorter and shorter term. The irony is the big tech companies are there, not in perpetuity, certainly for a long time. But at the same time, I, I was at a JP Morgan conference and there was a very, very, um, quirky [00:57:00] woman there who runs their future group out of Buenos Aires.
She has about 30 people. We have a board meeting coming up in Buenos Aires, and I've asked her to come and talk. I. To the board and our people about how she sees the future. And she tries to spot trends before certainly you or I, maybe not you, but certainly before I, I see them. And so she's really early and she said a very obvious thing it was, it was on in Lake Como and Jamie Dimon was there and all the, the JP Morgan people were there and she said it maybe an obvious thing, but she said, the stuff that you've seen, which, you know, you've seen it over let's say 10, 15, 20 years, your grandkids will see in a year or two years or even less so, the speed of the development and adoption accelerates
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I, I, I, I entirely agree with her. It's kind of interesting if you look at legacy media. And you look at, um, some of [00:58:00] the legacy like brands, the stalwarts, like the, these incredible, like, think, think in terms of like a Coca-Cola, for example. The way Coca-Cola tapped into legacy media to develop a relationship or that emotional experience with its consumer base is totally shifting because those consumers, the next generation, not only do they not care about legacy media any anymore, but they don't even care about the brand anymore.
So you got a guy like Jake Paul, who's a creator, right? So the creators are now delivering news, delivering entertainment, and also delivering brands. Mr. Beast, it's reported now. Mr. Beast earned more money. Get a, get a load of this. This is true. Mr. Beast earned more money from his chocolate brand. Did you even know that Mr.
Beast had a chocolate
Martin Sorrell: I know about Mr. Beast.
Marc Beckman: his chocolate brand generated in, you know, I think it was like a a 48. Um, month window, uh, a quarter of a billion dollars, a quarter of a [00:59:00] billion dollars in revenue. He is generating more profit out of the chocolate business than he is with regards to the videos he's making on YouTube.
So I think things are gonna shift, and I don't think people, that next generation, those, those Gen z, gen Alpha, I don't think they care so much
Martin Sorrell: yeah. But, but I think the consequence of that is that product life cycles and brand cycles become much shorter. So, so, so, and, and attention spans become much shorter. So, so, so everything is on a short, you know, the lives of CEOs in, in, in situ become shorter the lives of sit.
Marc Beckman: in tech too, Martin. It's happening in tech. Like you mentioned, AI search. AI search is already a 10% right now. 10% of searches are done on ai and like even you could admit, a Google search experience is substandard. They're pushing advertising in your face. It's a small text box, and then you gotta do the work.
If you go on perplexity, if you go on chat, GPT, it hands you everything you're looking for.
Martin Sorrell: One, one of the interesting things we've seen actually is the [01:00:00] rise of the LMS has actually stimulated the primary demand for search. So what you see in some markets is the search market expand because of the focus on lms. But well, you are right in time. You know, you take Google with Gini, Gemini, two big advances Quantum, they have there in the back of it as well.
They're gonna have to change the change the way contemporize what they're doing. But the point I'm making is I think the product life cycles shorten and I think is career cycles. So my father's advice is no longer, I think as relevant as it was that you, you, you, what you're gonna see, you know, for example, the number of conferences I go to go to where I meet, uh, young, younger, well I'm 80, so I'm old.
But when you meet younger people who in their first 10, 15, [01:01:00] 20 years have have three or four ideas created, three or four companies exited, three or four companies and moved on. So I think you are going to see much more fitful and much less longer. So my father's thing about long term brand building, I think it's very different.
This is anathema and this is heresy in our industry. I mean, it's heretical to say what I just said, but I really do believe it. I, I think, I think mid, mid funnel and lower funnel activation and performance is becoming more and more and more important.
Marc Beckman: Do you think advertising, or at least traditional advertising is going to disappear?
Martin Sorrell: Well, it's 30% now. Um. My view is it'll be 20% as you define it. Um, you know, it all starts to [01:02:00] blur to be fair, but yes, in its old forms, yes,
Marc Beckman: And then with that, do you think the legacy advertising agencies will disappear?
Martin Sorrell: Well, they already have. So, and you know, six, six is on the point of going to five, I mean, I have to say this, when the FTC refers a deal for an information request twice, which it is done for Omnicom and IPG, if you go to Gemini two, they will tell you the odds of the deal going through in its existing form is very, very, very small
Marc Beckman: Is that true?
Martin Sorrell: either it has to be amended or you don't.
Go ahead. So, so fi, let's say six, go to five, I think, of the holding companies, I think five could go to four, and four could go to three.
Marc Beckman: I
Martin Sorrell: Because I, because I think there is, there is, there are tremendous forces at work to force that. The old creative [01:03:00] agency is under huge pressure and, and the holding companies derive their profitability and growth basically from their media operations.
Marc Beckman: So other than like saying a applying digital as a tactic to a trend in advertising, what types of brands or individuals, what types of people do you see or, or brands or objects or businesses, um, in need of marketing in the future? Like what will shift? Like you and I have had some conversations confidentially where I'm saying, I'm showing you in my world.
The, the lessons and skillset that I've built in my career is now applying to a different, um, type of, uh, uh, client let's say. So will we see some kind of a fundamental shift with regards to the need for marketing from the, on the client side? And then if so, who will those clients
Martin Sorrell: Well, I think client [01:04:00] clients, you know, we've done a, a, a lot of work recently with General Motors and, and I think it's very interesting what they have done. Um, you know, look, look, it's some, it obviously plays to our strengths, but what, what the CMO there Norm Dere has done is, is he has upper funnel strategic agencies.
In, in, in this this case, four agencies that you would classify as being independents rather than networks. Two of them are part of a network, but the four are basically smaller creative shops because it was felt that they would provide better strategic inputs. Our agency Monks is the foundational agency for Cadillac.
Chevrolet, gm, GMC and Buick. And we take the big idea, we create the assets, we produce 'em and distribute them at [01:05:00] scale globally. But primarily, obviously GM is the eight, 11th largest advertising in the us, the 19th globally. So it's more a US company than than global. So probably a little bit structurally easier to do because it's more, more focused organizationally, but it's a very different way of doing it.
And I think that's the way talking to several other companies of similar scale, some even bigger, they are moving towards that. I mean, the bigger, in my view, the biggest block on change is not technological. It's not about. How do you implement ai? You know, how do you, how do you improve visualization and copywriting?
How do you develop hyper-personalization at scale? How do you develop better media planning and buying using algorithms? How do you stimulate greater efficiency? How do you [01:06:00] disseminate knowledge through democratizing it through S? That's not the issue. The issue is a sociological one. It's the unwillingness of people to change unless you put tremendous pressure, and I come back to tariffs for a minute.
I think tariffs, in a funny way, the biggest Ben benefit that's gonna be from an efficiency point of view and from our point of view is it will push people to change at speed. I mean, it the shock to the system. As somebody said to me at lunch, there's nobody else in the world who can do this, like President Trump does it.
Marc Beckman: That's for sure. I agree. the media and individuals tend to look at tariffs in a binary way. Good or bad, too much or too little, but they're not considering it in the broader ecosystem as it relates to the new American economic policies. That includes balancing a budget with Doge and Onshoring jobs.[01:07:00]
Um, other topics like we have a massive amount of debt that we're taking on this year. I think it's above 9 trillion, and they need to shave down that yield a little bit. There are other issues, but. He also, I think you're getting at this, he triggered a global conversation that might create a new world order as it relates to economies and alliances.
I'm not talking about warfare, I'm talking about the way that commerce is conducted between these different entities and when Scott Besson says, Hey, 75 nations have already come to us, they picked up the phone and called us. He's not talking about, you know, nation number one 50 out of, you know, as many countries there are as it relates to GDPs and the ability to do business.
He's talking about the United Kingdom, France, Italy,
Martin Sorrell: in, in, in, in my view, like the unintended consequences you is, you poke the bear. So, so I remember I was in Beijing the month before the election last year [01:08:00] when the Chinese government were wrestling with, you know, what do they do if President Trump gets a second term, or according to him a third term, and, or President Trump, you know, uh, and decides to put tariffs on what, what do they do?
And what they said then was, if. Tariffs do come in. If Trump, if President Trump does win that election and tariffs come in, they will move their trade policy to the 60 trillion that is outside the US and China, easy to say, and it's much more fragmented. But the simple fact is America's 28 trillion of GDP China's 18, that's 46.
There's 106 in the world. There's another 60 bricks next 11 global south. That, and today, as we sit here talking, where is President Xi? He's in Malaysia. He's just been Vietnam, he's going through Ian. He's going in through [01:09:00] Southeast Asia and the Chinese, I mean, we're just publishing our annual report and I've got two maps in there.
One which shows the biggest trade partner of every South American com country in 2000 versus 2023 or 24 in 2000. Red for China, blue for the us, and green for Brazil. In 2000, no red on the map. 2023, all Red Mexico has just gone blue because until the terrorists, certainly Mexico, as big as trading partner had just become the US Africa, not dissimilar, not quite as red.
But what I'm saying is China has already extended its influence, soft power, we can call it, or trade or investment to those parts of the world. What this does forces them even to do it even faster. So maybe, [01:10:00] maybe President Trump accepts that, but what it does is it creates that multipolar world much quicker, I think, than it would've otherwise have, uh, arisen.
And, and, and then the Russia, Ukraine. An Iranian situation. I mean, of those three things, I'm probably most bullish about Iran and the Middle East. 'cause I think Saudi will, you know, you sort of feel that Saudi is pushing hard. Some of the, the, the mood music coming outta Iran seems to be that, you know, there'll be some form of movement there.
But I remain,
Marc Beckman: needs that deal. I honestly, I think Trump needs that deal with Iran, the nuclear deal with Iran, so he could focus on China. It's a distraction right now. China's gonna be a big thing for him to deal with. I, I predict he'll get the Iran deal done, the nuclear deal done. But it's going to look like, uh, it's not gonna be no nukes, it's gonna end up being like a, a modified, ver watered down version of [01:11:00] what Obama, what the Obama administration had put into place, uh, before Trump took, took in, um, took in that first deal.
And that's not gonna be like a big win for him. And I know a lot of Americans who are already against that, but he's gotta, he's gotta be thinking that Iran's nuclear, um, deal is a distraction. He's gotta get to China.
Martin Sorrell: Well, uh,
Marc Beckman: I know that sounds insane, but it, it's got like, just think about the massiveness China, the Chinese implications are far and wide.
It's not just with goods, right? It's with technology, it's with, uh, what the AI piece explodes into weaponry on a global, global scale. Energy and power. You talk about quantum computing. You are the only guest I've had on the show that talks about quantum computing coming into play. I know Google's leading in that.
Theoretically out of all the companies you mentioned, like that's a big issue too. There's so many different things here that could become a distraction, uh, to chi as it relates to the importance of, of getting chi the Chinese,
Martin Sorrell: But, but, but that, but that, but that's why I think, you know, coming back to [01:12:00] where we started, this, it, my, my, my dad, dad. When, when I was talking to my dad in the sixties and seventies, it was very difficult in the uk. And we had the Thatcher years, the Thatcher and Reagan years, and we had golden years stemming from the mid 1980s all the way through into the first or second decade, um, of the, of this millennium.
I I think now we've entered a new era where it's gonna be much more difficult, uh, to discern the patterns. Um, you know, the, the technological shifts are huge and they will be, I think, largely beneficial. There'll be big challenges around them too, but largely beneficial. But I think it's gonna be much more difficult to run a business in a world where the US and China at loggerheads, where, yeah, I think President Putin's ambitions remained.
Undimmed might be wrong on that, but I, that's my view. And [01:13:00] where I think the third area, Iran, I think you're right. I think. The progress will be, will, I hope, be faster there, but I think Saudi, Saudi Arabia plays a, a huge role in that, in trying to exert some pressure to get it done.
Marc Beckman: Martin, you've given me a tremendous amount of your time, but more importantly, your insight, and
Martin Sorrell: Hopefully. Hopefully there is a little bit of insight in there.
Marc Beckman: A lot of insight. I appreciate it. I want to continue with you offline. I always enjoy talking to you, but I'm not gonna let you off the hook yet. Every one of my shows, every episode ends, um, in a similar way.
I use the name of the show Some Future Day, which was inspired by James Joyce. Actually, it's a, it's a, a very small, uh, part of the James Joyce world, but it struck me, um, and I create a leading sentence and then my guest finishes that sentence. I ask all of my guests if they'd like to participate, but I'm [01:14:00] not asking you.
I'm telling you,
Martin Sorrell: And
Marc Beckman: you have no choice.
Martin Sorrell: you, you have no choice.
Marc Beckman: have no choice. Um, anyway, uh, would you be willing to participate?
Martin Sorrell: of course.
Marc Beckman: Okay. So in some future day advertising will fundamentally shift the relationship between brands and consumers by.
Martin Sorrell: Well, I think two, two things. Geography and technology. I think those are the two buckets. I mean, everything we do is conditioned by changes in the balance of power geographically and by technological developments. So it's those two things.
Marc Beckman: Sir Martin Sorrell, thank you so much for being the first knight on Some Future Day. I really appreciate you. You know, I, you know, I love you very much and I appreciate it. Thank you so
Martin Sorrell: Great. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you.