Meeting Maurice, man of self-acclaimed brilliance

By DITA DE BONI

Genius, sheer genius and brilliance are commonly-heard words when one interviews British advertising mogul Maurice Saatchi.

And in this part of the world, he tends to use those words solely in reference to himself, his Asia Pacific region head Tom Dery and his advertising agency, M&C Saatchi.

It is five years since Iraqi-born Jewish brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi were ousted by the board of the agency they had founded in 1970, Saatchi & Saatchi.

After years of public and private wrangling between staff, shareholders and other principals, the two brothers were not-so-politely shown the door, after which they publicly vowed to knock a serious dent in their namesake business.

This year marks five years of growth for rival upstart M&C Saatchi. The more public face of the famous Saatchi partnership is in Sydney to celebrate the occasion with his "brilliant" Asia Pacific executive chairman, Tom Dery, and Australian staff.

His brother Charles - notorious for shunning the limelight - is not present.

Maurice - Lord Saatchi since 1996 - says he is more interested in his clients than in anything creative.

He is famous for his nous with journalists - leaks to the media were once his forte.

Now he is calm, cool and elusive to the point of farcical under questioning.

He throws a wet blanket over talk of today's Saatchi & Saatchi, and disdains the idea that lessons could be taken from misfortunes suffered between 1987 and 1995.

"[M&C Saatchi] was not born out of analysis of strengths and weaknesses or correct or incorrect methods," he says.

"It was an accident of history, and a very happy accident.

"There was not time to spend making a plan in the sense of saying we are at point A, we would like to get to point B.

"It just happened. A unique experience in my life, because all the other stages had been an act of war, a determined effort to get from A to B.

"This wasn't like that. There was definitely a tide in the affairs of man, as they say, and we were swept along by it and it's brought us to this very happy place five years later."

Certainly M&C Saatchi seems to be a more contented fiefdom than the original Saatchi & Saatchi. Not one M&C staffer has anything less than a gush of pleasantries to offer about the company and its famous founders.

This ubiquitous image of joyful defiance has been inevitably more well-planned than outsiders might be led to believe.

The agency has 700 staff worldwide (250 in the Asia Pacific region), $A1.5 billion in billings globally and revenue growth of 100 per cent each year.

A client roster boasting the accounts of corporate notables such as Glaxo SmithKline, One World Vodafone and Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd has grown atop foundation clients Qantas and British Airways.

Kevin Roberts' Saatchi & Saatchi still dwarfs M&C, with 10,000 worldwide employees and billings of more than $US7 billion this year.

But Lord Saatchi attributes Saatchi & Saatchi's success to the company's original "outstanding architects."

He doesn't know Mr Roberts "at all," he says, and claims to know little of the political furore that erupted in New Zealand when M&C Saatchi nabbed the Tourism Board account off its rivals after an infamous dinner between Mr Roberts and then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley.

Mr Dery pointedly fills him in during the interview, explaining that while the episode was portrayed as a political stoush in New Zealand, "in truth, Saatchi & Saatchi didn't deliver."

Lord Saatchi is happy to hear that, but doesn't seem to need any more assurance about the superiority of M&C. Asked who he admires in advertising today, he returns to his favourite topic.

"I admire Tom Dery. We all adore each other, because we are all so brilliant.

"And so this place is so full of very brilliant people. The agency ... had its blessed foundation accounts in British Airways and Qantas but apart from that no clients, no business, no office, nothing.

"So to have gone from that situation five years ago to a position where we now have offices in five countries in the region, profits of this year more than five million dollars, is, to me, a brilliant achievement.

"If that is not brilliant, I don't know what is. So if you admire brilliance ... "

Success, Lord Saatchi opines, is "having great clients, doing great work and having a happy ship - probably the last is most important."

Awards are also important, creative awards more so than effectiveness awards - "we've won lots of those too," Mr Dery reminds his boss - and growth will be pursued.

M&C Saatchi now sticks to its knitting, with an agency focused on creative and customer relationships.

The company has forecast a profit this year of more than $A5.7 million.

It has said Asia Pacific, which contributes 37 per cent of the agency's worldwide profit, may not be able to sustain its current growth, a growth which can be solely attributed to "sheer genius," says the agency's satisfied over-Lord.

He has one wish: that the "happy ship" continue on its present course.

"I would like to think that people in this company think that nothing is impossible."