WPP's Sorrell Calls Publicis' Levy "Callous" in Remarks on Recession
Mostly eclipsed in the Enfatico fiasco (Enfiasco?) is WPP chief Martin Sorrell’s latest punch in his personal fight against Publicis boss Maurice Levy. In an op-ed written for Italian pub Positano News on the global economy, Sorrell noted:
Some have said that, intellectually, recessions are exciting or fun. That is callous nonsense. Telling someone who has lost their job or business that their troubles are merely part of a cycle will provide little comfort.
That’s a direct reference to Levy’s earlier comment on how he loves recessions in an interview with Ad Age:
It doesn’t make me nervous; the reality is it excites me.
I’m excited because this is something that leads me to think about how we can make our organization more efficient, how we can reduce our costs to help our clients, take maximum advantage of our scale to make sure our clients are the winners, and to think about new organizations and new operations and new client wins. I love that.
So there it is: Sorrell thinks Levy is “callous” and talking “nonsense.”
Previously, the bitch-fight history has looked like this (see previous stories below for specifics):
Sorrell: “Maurice Levy tends to lose it on many occasions. He lost it last year at Davos in the session we did on the American president … — hysterically funny … I’ve seen him lose his rag before at Davos at a private dinner. He tends to lose his cool.”
Levy: in January said that Sorrell was “a little Englishman trying to stir things up.”
Sorrell: Levy has “a bit of an Achilles’ heel” when it came to technical matters.
Levy: said in December that Sorrell “recognized now that he’s been totally wrong” and is now “following us on all of our steps.”
- See previous coverage of Sorrell vs. Levy:
- Publicis CEO Levy “Loves” Recession; Says It “Excites” Him
- WPP’s Sorrell Says Publicis’s Levy Is “Hysterically Funny”
- Publicis’s Levy Calls WPP’s Sorrell a “Little Englishman Trying to Stir Things Up”
- WPP’s Sorrell and Publicis’ Levy in “Gossip Girl”-Style Rivalry, Sez Bloomberg
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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