The Curse of Saatchi Strikes Again! Ad Agency Steered British PM's Losing Campaign
British prime minister Gordon Brown resigned yesterday after losing the election there, and nowhere was the pain of the loss more acute than at Saatchi & Saatchi, the ad agency Brown's ruling Labour Party used for their election campaign. The rub: Incoming Conservative PM David Cameron was backed by M&C Saatchi, the rival shop spawned in revenge after Saatchi's founders were booted from their own business in a 1995 boardroom coup.
The fact that Saatchi & Saatchi backed the losing candidate is, in some ways, not a surprise: Although Saatchi has a splendid record advertising traditional consumer goods such as Procter & Gamble (PG)'s Tide laundry detergent or Toyota (TM) cars, whenever the agency's leaders step into nontraditional areas such as politics or sport, disaster follows. Among those debacles:
- When the late Saatchi CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus arrived as owner at Olympique de Marseille in 1993, the club was an eight-time winner of France's Ligue 1. Marseille hasn't won a trophy since. (Dreyfus died in 2009.)
- In New Zealand in the late 1990s, Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts' involvement with former prime minister Jenny Shipley led to calls for Shipley's resignation. The right-wing National Party leader had dinner with Roberts right after Saatchi won the country's $16 million tourism ad account.
- Roberts was a board member of New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team between 1997 and 2000. The team last won a rugby World Cup in 1987, despite being perennial favorites.
- In 2005, Roberts persuaded the U.S. Department of Defence to "rebrand" the War on Terror. Roberts' suggested name? "The Fight for a Better World." The plan was ditched shortly after it was hatched.
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