Davos is a virtual boxing ring for ad rivals
The theme of this year’s World Economic Forum is “collaborative innovation,” but there’s still nothing like a bit of bare-knuckled verbal sparring from Davos veterans Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy.
There has never been much love lost between Sorrell (left), chief executive of UK advertising company WPP, and Levy (right), the CEO of its French counterpart Publicis. The not-so-friendly rivalry flared up on Thursday over Publicis’ recently unveiled partnership with Google.
According to the joint Publicis/Google announcement, the two firms have been working together for a year to combine Google’s technological know-how with Publicis’s analytical and media planning expertise. One executive familiar with the deal said each firm will “embed” staff within each other’s offices.
“Google is not a short-term friend and a long-term enemy,” Levy said. It was a barb aimed at Sorrell, who categorized Google in exactly those terms last year.
In Davos on Thursday, Sorrell was dubious that there was much substance in the partnership between his rival and the Internet giant, which he has also described as a “frenemy.”
“Next time I meet with (Google CEO) Eric Schmidt I think we’ll send out a press release,” Sorrell told Reuters in an interview , which was also broadcast into the virtual world Second Life (see picture of Sorrell’s avatar, right). “This morning I met with Maurice Levy, does this mean we’re putting out a joint venture?”
“What Publicis is doing represents a little bit of concern that they didn’t get the technology right,” Sorrell added. “I think Maurice is acknowledging a a bit of an Achilles heel when it comes to technology.”
Click here to listen to the audio of Sorrell’s comments.
Your move, Mr Levy.
In a mobile video interview with Reuters, he responded to Sorrell’s comments (View the full video at the bottom of this post).
“I’m sorry Martin said that — it’s really cheap, but it’s probably the result of his lack of understanding of technology,” Levy said. “He’s a financier, I’m an engineer, and you can see the difference. I’m pleased with what we have done, and I’m sorry that my dear friend has not understood it.”
The spat between the two advertising execs may have little effect outside the cloistered confines of Davos. WPP remains one of the largest clients of Google, spending some hundreds of millions of dollars per year on behalf of its advertising and media buying clients. And underscoring the limited scope of the Google-Publicis partnership, Schmidt said last week that Google “will never become an advertising agency.”
(Additional reporting by Nic Fulton in Davos and Dominique Vidalon in Paris)
