Word: firmness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...weeks ago, the news was far worse than anyone had feared. After 19 years of uninterrupted growth, Saatchi's pretax profits for 1989 collapsed, dropping from $217 million last year to just $34 million, an 84% decline. After taxes and other provisions were deducted, the world's largest advertising firm reported its first net loss, of $92 million...
...could a firm long heralded for its go-go brilliance stumble so badly? Somehow the company that transformed the advertising industry worldwide during the 1980s seems to have lost its alchemist's touch. Deepening the management mystery, Saatchi & Saatchi profits fell while its global advertising business continued to thrive: the company's revenues reached $1.5 billion this year, up from $1.35 billion...
Industry and financial experts could only conclude that the problem lay with the company's founders, brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi. Over the past four years, both men have increasingly withdrawn from the firm's day-to-day * oversight. Charles, 46, has spent much of his time becoming one of the world's most voracious art collectors, sometimes buying entire exhibitions at a single gulp. Now he is unloading scores of works at the hyperprices his frenetic buying helped create. Maurice, 43, though not as aloof as his sibling, spends less and less time with Saatchi & Saatchi employees and clients...
...Saatchis seem to have reached the same conclusion. In October the brothers announced that they were in effect demoting themselves and bringing in new management to salvage the firm. Their choice for savior: Frenchman Robert Louis-Dreyfus, 43, former president of IMS International, a New York City-based pharmaceutical and marketing firm. Louis-Dreyfus, a Harvard Business School graduate, will take over as Saatchi & Saatchi's chief executive on Jan. 1. Maurice will retain the title of chairman, and Charles will continue as the company's executive director...
From 1982 to 1986, Saatchi & Saatchi revenues increased more than elevenfold, from $62 million to $697 million. In 1986, with the $450 million purchase of the Ted Bates agency, the brothers reached their avowed goal: Saatchi & Saatchi was the world's biggest ad firm. By last year, their client billings had reached $13.5 billion (runner-up Interpublic billed $8.4 billion), and the company had offices in 58 countries...