Ad man pitches love to the world

A man of broad interests, Kevin Roberts keeps several balls in the air at once from his Manhattan office. Picture / Richard Robinson

It's after he sinks into the seat of the black Mercedes and the chauffeur clunks the door behind him that Kevin Roberts loosens up. For seven hours it's been supermarkets, pitches, people and Lovemarks.

Now he moves on to the subject that his critics accuse him of loving most of all - himself. That's when I realise they're wrong about Roberts.

The Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi may be open but he's hardly enthusiastic about telling how, as a high-achieving 16-year-old, he was expelled from school. The reason: "I got my girlfriend pregnant". And rather than opting for an abortion, they decided to have the baby.

Answering the questions with a yes or no, we piece together the story. Roberts, a promising student headed for university, instead left school, took two jobs and set up house. "My wages were £7.50 a week, rent three quid."

Today that baby, Nikki, 38, is a chef in London.

Roberts, 54, learned from the experience. In an industry where broken families are common, his marriage to Rowena has lasted 30 years.

He is in close contact with Nikki and son Ben, 25, who went through King's College in Auckland and works with S&S in London. Rebecca (Bex), 23, works with at-risk youngsters in Auckland and Dan, 21, is completing a degree in film at Otago.

Roberts also spends large chunks of his time, energy and money giving other young people the kind of breaks and support he got when he was young and broke.

It's 9.30 Friday morning and Roberts is at his desk at Saatchi & Saatchi's headquarters in Tribeca, lower Manhattan. This, the top floor of one of the world's biggest advertising agencies, is an exercise in minimalism studded with surprises.

Walls off-white, carpets cafe au lait, and the art funky, with an anatomically correct body with thumb prints for testicles: Billy Apple's Billy collecting art is a self-branding exercise.

Much of this opulence is surely fed by the agency's major client, Proctor and Gamble, maker of Pampers, Olay, Crest and more which spends around US$2 billion ($2.7 billion) a year. Upstairs there's a gym with four personal trainers and on the roof an all-weather cinder running track. Downstairs a cafeteria plus the Lovemarks creative room complete with a statue of Sisyphus pushing his rock, and a roll of honour of S&S employees "who achieved the impossible".

Roberts' office is glass, with a view across the water with its cargo barges and ferries, to Jersey, as well as the statue of Liberty.

Through a couple of glass walls sits Roberts' mate and S&S New Creative director Bob Isherwood.

Central to all of this is Roberts himself. Dressed in black, this guy is a powerhouse. Underpinning the gush is a powerful surge of ideas and an ability to listen to other people. Everyone's a mate, the best bloke, a creative genius, a truly brilliant person, and Roberts seems to mean it, especially when he switches his attention to his adopted homeland.

He is on the board of Soccer New Zealand (and the Rugby Union from 1995-98); a shareholder in the International Rugby Academy IRANZ (with Murray Mexted, Sean Fitzpatrick and Eddie Tonks); a columnist for New Zealand Rugby Monthly; co-founder of the New Zealand Edge networking organisation; and newly appointed (by Jim Bolger) Ambassador for the New Zealand/United States Council.

His role? To represent the private sector, complement government to government relationships with his own firecracker brand of bonding.

Originally from the back streets of Lancaster, UK, Roberts declared New Zealand his "lifetime family home base" in 1989. His New Zealand passport sits alongside his UK one.

He has a house in Remuera, the seriously cool cave-like pad a couple of blocks away that recently made a five-page spread in Marie Claire, and a country house in St Tropez.

Roberts fell in love with New Zealand during his eight years as CEO of Lion Nathan. He looks back triumphantly to the day he took a lion to a meeting with a group of financial analysts: "From that day no one ever forgot the lion in Lion Nathan". He also became one of the country's most vocal cheerleaders.

Today he runs the company from here in Tribeca and Auckland, with a secretary in London.

His wife, Rowena, who spends most of her time in Remuera, is a partner in M.A.C. cosmetics and handles her husband's travel arrangements through the travel agency she part-directs, Quay Travel in High Street.

He keeps her busy. In November he trailed the All Blacks round the world - Rome with his "best friend JK" (Kirwan) to watch the ABs, then Cardiff for another game.

Next day it's Brazil to launch Lovemarks. Built around one idea - for a brand to excel it needs to elicit loyalty beyond reason, it is now in 15 countries including Bulgaria.

"Did you know it's fourth in Amazon's editors' choice for business book of the year?"he says, thrusting a copy at me.

Back on the 16th floor Roberts slips off his shoes for a shine as nonchalantly as the rest of us accept a pile of mail and pulls on the beige T-shirt, sweat hoodie and cap of Falon, a subsidiary of S&S, "one of the hottest agencies in the US".

"They sent me this stuff. I'll send this pic of me in it back," he enthuses, posing while his secretary, Trudy, resplendent in red snakeskin stilettos and short skirt, obliges.

Bridget de Socio, "the genius creative editor of hip NY entertainment magazine Paper", and Roberts' first appointment after us, is ushered in.

Minutes later the team from Air Tahiti arrive to see the campaign S&S have created to lure New Yorkers 12 hours non-stop to their golden sand. A burst of enthusiasm from Roberts, who runs the account on a cost-only plus 100 free tickets to Tahiti for the agency each year basis: "We're aiming for travel visionaries."
Visionaries? People who lead the way, set the trend and establish Tahiti as "a kinda cute thing to do".

Suddenly we're all downstairs in The White Space for the presentation. It may be 10.30 but it's Veuve Cliquot in the ice buckets, the orange juice squeezed, the mini quiches and croissants hot and tasty, the visuals the red-headed Australian account director, in patterned tights with leggings strapped over, shows this team of 14 men enticing. 

And so it continues. A phone interview with a Brazilian business magazine for the launch of Lovemarks, a grilled hamburger and salad from the caf, a call from Wellington art aficionados Jim and Mary Barr, more meetings, more phone calls, more cans of Diet Pepsi (one of Roberts' personal lovemarks along with Gillette Mach 23 Turbo blades) then the drive to Roberts' amazing pad a few blocks away.

Here the neighbours include Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and fittings are chunks of stone so solid authorities closed the street while they were winched up.
"Here's my kitchen," says Roberts, pointing to a niche in the wall. Hidden cupboards slide open to reveal refrigerator, microwave, George Foreman hamburger grill and a much more ambitious wine cellar.

Art includes Jenny Holzer, Yves Klein and Sean Landers, the Herald is delivered, the shower separates from the bath by a wall of water, a spiral staircase leads to an outside patio.

Everything - light, music, heat, taps - is remote controlled. The effect he's looking for is mystery, sensuality and intimacy. He got it.

But what I want to talk to Roberts about is his work with young people.

"What I'm trying to do is inspire, to try and make a difference, and I do it in a bunch of ways," he says.

"The primary way is I teach university."

Roberts is CEO in residence of business at Cambridge University, UK, as well as professor of sustainable enterprise at the universities of Waikato and Limerick, Ireland.

"It's a fulfilling thing to do to talk to young grads, 18, 19, 20 years old, about what business can offer them and how they should get prepared for life," says Roberts, who donates his fees to charity.

Through an MBA programme revolving around Cambridge with US outlinks including the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and Stanford, he talks to students on the lookout for "competitive, passionate and restless ideas people" for his young leaders programme.

Around 10 of the most exciting and interested - the ones who email him after the lecture, wanting to get involved - get invited.

"At the moment I'm more interested in female MBA students," he says. "They bring touch, empathy, feeling.

"I'm looking for people with high emotional intelligence, not just IQ. We ask where they want to live and put them to work right away."

Roberts believes young people want three things: responsibility, learning and joy.

"They got tired of greedy. They're after experiences, not things."

Once in the S&S organisation he keeps them there with challenges, an exciting workplace where office romances and a healthy social life are part of the landscape and "the best pub in town is part of the agency".

The Saatchi switch programme lets people throughout the 7000-employee, 130-country organisation swap jobs.

Everyone is eligible, all they need to do is find someone in a country they want to visit who wants to swap, providing each switchee organises a buddy to help the new person to settle in.

Explains Roberts, "The company doesn't get involved ... They do it all themselves. We pay their airfares and give them $3000 to live."

After three weeks, switchees take a week off to explore.

The payback? "I ask them to write me a story, no more than a page, telling about the switch."

At the other end of the spectrum is the Auckland-based Turn Your Life Around (Tyla) programme. Funded chiefly by Roberts with his daughter Rebecca as communications co-ordinator, the programme raises 130 at-risk kids' self-esteem, nurturing skill development and getting them into work.

Participants start at 11 years old and finish at 17 and early evaluations from the Crime Prevention Unit and Massey University (the first intake is now 15) suggest a breakthrough.

Tyla, he says, has a 75 per cent success rate - "the highest in the world".

There's more. Every year Roberts returns to Speech Day at his old school, Lancaster Royal Grammar, talking to 6th formers, offering the most promising work experience at Saatchis.

This year he took Sean Fitzpatrick and Bob Skinston (captain of South Africa) to coach the first XV. "They came for nothing, because they're mates."

Three teachers on staff get sabbaticals each year to let them recharge away from the classroom.

IT IS easy to dismiss Roberts as too cheesy, way too enthusiastic. On the other hand, consider the way he uses his time.

"I don't do anything I don't want to do," he says. "No obligations, no hierarchy, no shirt, no tie.

"I don't join country clubs, I won't play golf. I'm not going to have 'born to serve' tattooed on my ass.

"That way I get my revenge and my freedom. And by cutting out that crap I gain two days a week ... That's the time I use to promote New Zealand."

* Disclaimer: The writer's son was a recipient of financial support from Kevin Roberts for his studies in New York.

TOMORROW

Peter Gordon, the chef who brings the flavour of New Zealand to New York with the force of a slap on the face.