Sibling Setbacks

By Janice Castro

For nine months advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi has admitted that it was enduring a rough year. But when chairman Maurice Saatchi faced investment analysts in the company's luxurious London boardroom two 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.

How 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 in 1988.

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 Over the past four years, both men have increasingly withdrawn from the firm's day-to-day * oversight.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. Says the chief of a rival advertising firm: "You can't run an agency by remote control."

The 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.

Louis-Dreyfus has no background in advertising but has earned a hot reputation as a financial whiz. His chief accomplishment is the brisk turnaround of IMS. The company, capitalized at $232 million when Louis-Dreyfus took over in 1982, was sold to Dun & Bradstreet last year for $1.7 billion.

By hiring Louis-Dreyfus, the Saatchis have harked back to the skill that transformed their small agency in London's Soho district into an international behemoth: hard-nosed financial know-how. The Iraqi-born brothers convinced London investors a decade ago that the ad business was an intriguing play. The logic of global corporate expansion, they argued, demanded an agency that could provide one-stop shopping for multinational firms interested in advertising and marketing services that stretched from Asia to North America to Europe. Such an agency could help companies build worldwide markets for their brands and could reap extra profits from efficiencies of scale.

Investors agreed. They flocked to place money with the brothers, who had earned a reputation for creativity and bareknuckle competitiveness in the genteel British ad market. The Saatchis went on a billion-dollar spree that sparked panic on then complacent Madison Avenue and helped fuel a merger frenzy as other agencies joined forces to stay in the game. Meanwhile the brothers bought and bought. Among the dozens of U.S. firms they scooped up were top names like Compton Communications (purchased in 1982 for $55 million), Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (1986, $75 million) and Backer & Spielvogel (1986, $100 million).

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.

Until the brothers hit the apex of the ad world, no one questioned their claim to have a grand strategy that would turn their empire into a finely tuned global machine. But the first crack in that facade occurred in January 1986, just two months before the purchase of Bates, when longtime finance chief Martin Sorrell departed to start his own agency. Sorrell, who had grown restive as a Saatchi subordinate, has since assembled an agency group, WPP, with annual revenues of $1.2 billion. Close observers of Saatchi & Saatchi date the firm's financial drift from Sorrell's departure. Says a marketing executive in London: "He guided them. When he left, they did not know how to do it."

The Saatchis soon learned that bulk can have its downside. Many advertisers objected to being crowded into the same corporate tent with rival products. Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Warner-Lambert and other major firms have pulled nearly $600 million worth of accounts from Saatchi-owned agencies since 1986.

To halt the exodus, the Saatchis divided their advertising empire into two separate international networks. Backer & Spielvogel was merged with Ted Bates, while Dancer Fitzgerald Sample and Compton were combined to form Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. Says Carl Spielvogel, chairman of the merged Backer Spielvogel Bates network: "We don't cooperate with the other network in any way. We compete for the same clients." Simultaneously, lesser Saatchi- owned agencies were arranged in smaller groups.

In some cases, the global concept succeeded brilliantly. Typically, a worldwide Saatchi campaign is custom tailored to the styles and tastes of local markets, though sometimes only a translation of the ad copy is necessary. The parent firm's memorable campaign for British Airways, in which the island of Manhattan is seen coming in for a landing at London's Heathrow Airport, has run in 40 countries. Customers have liked the global idea: Saatchi agencies now represent more than 100 clients in five or more countries, including Fisher-Price toys and Allied-Lyons foods.

In 1988, however, investors grew nervous as the Saatchis began building a new kingdom in the consulting business. The move continued the company's record of steep revenue growth through acquisition. During 1988 alone, the company purchased 17 consulting firms, branching out into such new areas as market research and executive recruiting.

But as Saatchi & Saatchi wandered afield, its management seemed to become increasingly inept. The company's debt swelled to $250 million while costs mounted unchecked. At the consulting firms, key managers, skeptical about whether their operations could thrive in the Saatchi confederacy, began to quit.

Maurice finally sounded a tocsin last March, warning that profits would decline for at least the first half of 1989. He also announced plans to sell off much of the firm's $360 million consulting investment. Calling the move "ham-handed," Alan Gottesman, an advertising analyst at the Paine Webber brokerage firm, noted that Maurice "managed to depress morale and performance in the consulting arm at the same time that he was letting potential buyers know they could pick up the firms at a discount." Fearing a messy auction, clients began to switch to other consulting agencies. So far, only three of the smaller agencies have been sold, for a total of $38 million.

Saatchi management launched an overall restructuring program. Starting last spring, more than 800 corporate employees lost their jobs. Plans were laid to close corporate offices in Washington and to trim operations in New York City and in London, where the corporate staff last year moved into a glossy new global headquarters on sedate Berkeley Square. In addition, five of the firm's twelve directors left. As rumors of further shake-ups spread, Carl Spielvogel offered in July to buy the Backer Spielvogel Bates network. Charles Saatchi declined.

More pain probably lies ahead. Louis-Dreyfus has his work cut out for him -- and a compensation package geared to inspire success. On top of a reported salary of $785,000, Louis-Dreyfus will control stock options worth at least $3 million. That value will rise substantially if he does his job well. Earlier this month, Louis-Dreyfus pledged to boost the value of the company's shares, which have traded as high as $10.70, from their current price of $4 to at least $7.85 within three years. More than another increase in its global reach, that is the kind of growth figure that Saatchi & Saatchi now badly needs.

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CAPTION: Net earnings breakdown (1988)

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CAPTION: SHORT ON PROFITS

Revenues spiraled as the Saatchis bought up rival ad agencies, including Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, Backer & Spielvogel, and Ted Bates in 1986. But returns on the investments dropped sharply as management failed to meld the pieces into a smoothly run global company.

With reporting by Anne Constable/London and John E. Gallagher/New York