Martin Sorrell

If you think AI is amazing, just stand by.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the British CEO who built WPP into one of the world's largest advertising empires.

I think consumers are adopting AI faster than companies are, which is the sad truth.

He's now going deep into AI and has a clear-eyed view of the benefits and the risks.

Often there is some sort of nominal pitch, I suppose.

But on a UK level, when Sorrell was running WPP, there was always lots of chatter around pitches and you want ...

You know, there was lots of conversations about you knew the big blue chip companies that he was searching for.

And when we were talking before, Gideon flagged the WPP picking up Barclays and which had previously been with Walker Media, which was owned by M&C Saatchi for years, and also winning M&S, which was also a kind of Walker Media client.

And there was this sort of sense in the market that Martin Sorrell was chasing these kind of Walker clients for a long time, and eventually they won them.

And then there were other clients, like a Vodafone or actually M&S from a, a creative perspective, where they just seemed to manage to keep them to a WPP pitch, and they sort of moved them around.

So Vodafone was in Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R, which is now VML, and then moved into Grey, and then obviously moved into Ogilvy.

It's now ended up at, um, Leo's, but that's an- another story.

It's like we're a team, uh, working together collaboratively, and I, I depend upon them to help ensure we're making the right decisions for the agency.

How do you set your growth goals then? I mean, is that something that is, uh, built up from those individuals, or do you say, and now I'm gonna give you other example, like a Martin Sorrell says, "Well, I think the world should be like this.

My people tell me it shouldn't be, but I don't know."

Well, the growth goals are set in part based on what's going on in the marketplace.

So I'm partnering with other very senior people throughout the agency to make decisions about what kind of investments do we need to make for organic growth, and then I make the decisions working with a smaller group about what kind of investments do we make in terms of acquisitions.

So I am very much involved in our growth strategy.

I don't do what Martin Sorrell did and said, "Well, I th- everybody else tells me this, but this is what I think it should be." We decide together what it should be.

What trends have been unfolding recently in your acquisition process? Like, have you been looking for, in general-

I mean, I could g- I can give you a million.

What about when I went globally viral, and then what about the second time I went viral? And then recently, you know, with Martin Sorrell, I did LinkedIn viral, which that was the first time I've ever-

What was the first viral occasion then? Come on-

Well-

I mean, he literally retweeted me and sent a whole pile of people, ban- warriors my way.

And, um, all I'd said, all I'd said, including to The Chronicle, was that, um, fairy tales have always been meant as...

We're back to storytelling, which, uh, [laughs] which is, oh my God, Martin Sorrell, I've come a...

I've just realized in my head I've come a 360.

Yeah.

Well, I think there's a certain Martin Sorrell about the accent too, if I'm really, I was, I listened to you the other day.

He's a

bit mid-Atlantic, I guess they'd call it.

this is a global production this is lbc from global leading britain's conversation cross question with ian dale

hello a very good evening and welcome to tuesday's cross question it's three minutes past eight uh on the panel with me tonight my far right sir martin sorrell founder and executive chairman of the marketing company s4 capital and and former founder of WPP, the world's largest advertising and PR group.

And we then have three doctors on the panel.

I'm not sure they're all medical doctors, so somebody says here we might need to have a medical question tonight.

discussion on a different aspect of this subject in just a few moments' time.

It's 18 minutes past 8 on LBC.

This will forever be known as the panel of the three doctors plus the advertising guru, who is Martin Sorrell.

I really feel