Conflicting Accounts: The Creation and Crash of the Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Empire [Paperback]

Kevin Goldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 1998

On December 16, 1994, a bloodletting took place in the stylish sixth-floor boardroom at Saatchi & Saatchi Company PLC, once the world's largest advertising agency holding company. Maurice Saatchi, the 48 year-old chairman who co-founded the company in 1970 with his older brother Charles, was fired by the board of directors under threat by the firm's largest shareholders. Less than a month later, Maurice started a rival ad agency and quickly snapped up former Saatchi & Saatchi clients, most importantly British Airways.

Kevin Goldman, the former daily advertising columnist for the Wall Street Journal, spoke to everyone connected with this headline-making saga -- including Maurice Saatchi and his reclusive brother Charles -- and witnessed important business meetings, including Maurice Saatchi's winning pitch to British Airways.

Goldman traces every step the Saatchi brothers took, from their youth as Iraqi Jewish immigrants in North London to their business merger in 1970, when, with little more than sheer audacity, the opened an ad agency with a full-page announcement ad in the London Sunday Times. Through bold and brash actions, the agency began an acquisitions binge, taking over many of the ad industry's giants -- including Ted Bates, Backer & Spielvogel, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, and Garland-Compton -- to become the number one ad company in the world. But, once they acquired a company, the brothers lost interest, often refusing to meet with its executives again. This disdain would come back to haunt them.

Also chronicled is the brothers' rich lifestyle, which critics claim was funded by the company.

This tale features a rich cast of supporting players: Jeremy Sinclair, a creative advertising genius who was fiercely loyal to the brothers, was one of the executives who resigned after Maurice was fired. Bill Muirhead, another loyalist, was responsible for keeping clients happy. Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a globe-trotting native of France, was brought in by the Saatchis in 1989 when the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Louis-Dreyfus brought in Charles Scott, a self-described numbers cruncher uncomfortable with the glitzy world of advertising, to help sort out the company's complex finances. And leading the anti-Maurice movement was David Herro, a thirty-three-year-old American money manager whose group owned approximately 10 percent of Saatchi stock.

Built into the Saatchi story is the bigger picture of the dramatic changes in advertising in the 1980s, such as the merger mania and ad agency consolidations that swept Madison Avenue, including the British takeover of major agencies.

The story of the decline and crash of Saatchi & Saatchi is a universal tale of corporate greed and ineffective management. It is the story of an ugly, publicly fought civil war in an industry that is supposed to know the steep price paid for an image run amok.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wall Street Journal advertising columnist Goldman's gossipy account of the rise and crash of Saatchi & Saatchi, the world's largest ad agency at its peak in 1987, unfolds as a Shakespearean drama full of greed, revenge, ambition and civil war. Charles Saatchi, wizard copywriter and art collector, and his mercurial brother, Maurice-both Iraqi Jews who emigrated to London in 1947-founded the agency in 1970 when Charles was 27 and Maurice 25. Their free-spending acquisitions binge, fueled by Maurice's obsessive quest to be the number-one agency, was undermined by expensive buyouts, client defections and a slowdown in ad spending in the U.S. Goldman offers a more critical, American-based view of the brothers and their wheeling and dealing than does British media journalist Alison Fendley in Saatchi & Saatchi: The Inside Story (Forecasts, Sept. 30). He also gives much more inside detail on Maurice's 1994 ouster as chairman in a shareholder mutiny spearheaded by no-nonsense Chicago fund manager David Herro, as well as on the ensuing internecine battle that erupted between M&C Saatchi, the brothers' new agency, and their former shop, renamed Cordiant. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Maurice and Charles Saatchi, Iraqi-born Jews whose family emigrated to Great Britain, established an advertising agency in 1970 and made it the largest in the world by 1987. Their financially questionable consolidations and mergers, as well as a general slowdown in the advertising business, created a crisis that resulted in their being forced out of their agency in 1994 by outside directors. The Saatchi brothers went on to form a new agency that captured many former clients and may eventually surpass the old firm. Goldman, advertising columnist for the Wall Street Journal, knows advertising; he describes some of the changes taking place in the business over the last 30 years. A good writer, he has an excellent eye for detail and tells many interesting stories. This is a much more insightful and critical work than Allison Fendley's recent Saatchi & Saatchi: The Inside Story (LJ 11/15/96). A business book that reads like a novel; highly recommended for all libraries.?William W. Sannwald, San Diego P.L.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (January 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684835533
• ISBN-13: 978-0684835532
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,740,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Barely readable for those outside advertising, March 25, 2010

By 

D.E. Wray (Tokyo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conflicting Accounts: The Creation and Crash of the Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Empire (Paperback)

As the other reviewer pointed out, there is no analysis in this book, which seems to have been cobbled together from newspaper reports.
Readers who were not involved in the advertising business during the period covered (roughly 1975 to 1995) will likely find the account difficult to follow, as the author seems to string together information as he found it, including in narrative passages, for example, needless material or material that would have been better relegated to scene setting sections.
Basically, the book shares much with gossip columns, being simply a chronology of who said what when, larded with pointless information about the characters' personal lives.
Many will find this difficult to finish.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, but unmemorable, September 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Conflicting Accounts: The Creation and Crash of the Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Empire (Paperback)

From this type of book (business history), I want to come away with more than just history and facts, I want insight and revelation. With Conflicting Accounts, I got little of the latter.