Just don't mention the debts
It's over," declares David Bell, rising angrily from the sofa and striding across the hotel lobby in the direction of the bar. Mr Bell, chairman and chief executive of Interpublic Group, the marketing services conglomerate, is not to be placated. The interview has come to a premature end.
Why? What could persuade a man heading a company that, in addition to advertising agency brands such as McCann-Erickson, Lowe and FCB, owns Weber Shandwick, one of the world's foremost PR consultancies, to behave in such a peremptory manner when dealing with the media?
The answer, as is so often the case when questions are raised about Interpublic, is the US-listed corporation's pile of debt. At June 30 this year, Interpublic's debt stood at $2.7bn. While this was down from about $3bn the previous year, that reduction was achieved largely through the $430m disposal of market research group NFO to Taylor Nelson Sofres. Of the proceeds, $142.5m was channelled into repaying the loans with the highest interest rates.
When it is put to Mr Bell that these debt issues must surely be undermining client confidence and that future disposals must be in the offing, he cuts our dialogue short. He knows Interpublic's balance sheet needs strengthening - even if he is unwilling to discuss it with me. But it is by no means the only challenge.
Second-quarter results saw revenues rise 0.6 per cent from the previous year to $1.5bn but operating margins were down to 9.8 per cent from 14.3 per cent. Net loss for the quarter was $13.5m. In its briefing note on the figures, Merrill Lynch described the level of new business - at a net $319m, down from $874m - as "disappointing". In the same quarter Interpublic spent $66m on severance pay, closing 30 facilities and cutting its workforce by 1,450. According to Merrill Lynch, the majority of the redundancies were in Europe.
Mr Bell has gone on record as saying he wants to shed the "embattled" and "beleaguered" epithets that are so often applied by commentators to Interpublic. Yet clearly there is a considerable way to go in turning things around.
Paul Richards, an analyst at Numis Securities, says: "It [Interpublic] has been pretty troubled in the last couple of years due to over-expansion in the late 1990s. It used to be that you'd say the doyens in the sector were Interpublic and Omnicom.
"Now you'd say the doyens are Omnicom and WPP. Some of the greatness has been lost."
Our truncated meeting took place in Seville last week, after Mr Bell had spoken at the fourth Global Marketing Communications Conference. The event was attended by senior figures from WPP and Omnicom, as well as high-ranking marketing representatives from advertisers such as Unilever and Deutsche Bank.
Mr Bell's aim in taking part was to hammer home the message that Interpublic is trying to engineer change for itself in a manner that will drive value and growth for clients. In fairness to Mr Bell, he was unwilling to blame the recent problems faced by Interpublic on the September 11 terrorist attacks of two years ago.
"While the terrorist attacks provide an easy ' hook ' - a simple explanation for the worst recession to have hit marketing communications in half a century - the seeds of our problems have been long in the making," he said. "They have also been largely of our own making. Largely because our industry stinks at leading change and does poorly even at following change. We're so-so 'reactors' and lousy 'pro-actors'."
In Mr Bell's view, the entire marketing services industry has been too afraid to assert itself with clients.
As a result, it has gradually given away "more and more of the compensation we deserved". Consequently, clients have come to have less respect for what advertising agency groups achieve for their businesses.
What can be done to reverse this? Mr Bell argues that the fixed-fee remuneration structure that is so popular following the shift from the commission system needs to be replaced with a model to reflect the positive impact agencies can make on a client's business.
Quantifying return on investment in relation to marketing spend has always been a thorny issue. Nevertheless, Mr Bell is adamant that this is the way forward, citing the strong recent performance in the US of Mitsubishi and Subaru - where car production has leapt to cater for an upsurge in demand - and a 15 per cent second-quarter rise in subscribers for telecommunications company Verizon, as being directly due to advertising and marketing campaigns devised by their agencies.
"Verizon, Subaru and Mitsubishi are great client partners who believe in fairness," says Mr Bell. "They aren't the problem. We are."
It is a question of whether Interpublic - and its rivals, for this is an industry-wide problem - are brave enough to insist to clients that they be rewarded on commercial results rather than on output alone.
Among the business growth opportunities that Mr Bell has identified for Interpublic are what has come to be known as "Madison and Vine" - the confluence of marketing and entertainment, including sport. This comes in spite of the group reporting an $11m impairment charge at its Octagon MotorSports division, which helped drag the division to a second-quarter $21m operating loss.
Mr Bell is delighted with the six Emmy awards garnered by Door to Door, a television show developed on behalf of its client Johnson & Johnson. He is also happy to concede that this is a "back to the future" approach, echoing the original US soap operas of 40-50 years ago that took their description from the detergent brands that sponsored them - albeit with a 21st-century twist.
"We're going back to those things," says Mr Bell, "but we're learning how to use more concentrated, broader global resources in ways that are reminiscent of how we did it in the 1950s and 1960s."
Although Mr Bell is upbeat about the future, he remains exasperated that past issues continue to haunt Interpublic.
The group is dogged by financial irregularities at advertising agency McCann-Erickson that emerged in October 2002. Earnings had to be restated downwards, triggering a formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr Bell was not at the helm then, ascending to his current job in February this year. However, the problems he has inherited from predecessor John Dooner, who remains a senior executive after standing down from the top job, cannot, it seems, be brought to as swift a conclusion as an interview with the Financial Times.
千万不要提债务
“采访到此结束，”戴维?贝尔(David Bell)一边说，一边生气地从沙发上站起来，大步穿过酒店大堂，向酒吧走去。他完全不听解释。采访过早地结束了。贝尔先生是营销服务集团公司Interpublic Group(IPG)的董事长兼首席执行官。
这是为什么呢？贝尔先生的公司旗下，除了拥有全球最领先的公关顾问公司之一万博宣伟(Weber Shandwick)外，还包括麦肯(McCann-Erickson)、灵狮(Lowe)和FCB等广告公司品牌。是什么使这样一个公司的领导者，在与媒体打交道时，表现得如此专横呢？
答案是:这家美国上市公司的债务庞大。当媒体就IPG提问时，答案通常如此。截至今年6月30日，IPG的债务达27亿美元。虽然这低于去年同期的大约30亿美元债务，但削减原因主要是把市场调查集团NFO以4.3亿美元卖给了Taylor Nelson Sofres(TNS)。收入中的1.425亿美元被用于偿还了利息最高的几笔贷款。
当我对贝尔先生说，这些债务问题一定会挫伤客户的信心，公司就一定要处置更多资产时，他中断了对话。他知道IPG需要强化资产负债表，尽管他不愿意与我讨论这个问题。但这决不是唯一的挑战。
IPG第二季度的业绩报告显示，营业收入较去年同期增加0.6%，达到15亿美元，但营运利润率从14.3%下降至9.8%。该季度的净亏损为1350万美元。美林公司(Merrill Lynch)在其简报中，称新业务的规模“令人失望”。IPG的新业务净值从8.74亿美元下降至3.19亿美元。同一季度，IPG支付了6600万美元的离职金，关闭了30处设施，裁减了1450名员工。据美林称，主要是在欧洲裁员。
贝尔先生曾公开表示，评论界常常用“困难重重”、“四面受敌”等词来形容IPG，他希望摆脱这些形容词。但很明显，要扭转形势还有相当一段路要走。
Numis Securities的分析师保罗?理查兹(Paul Richards)说：“由于上世纪90年代末过度扩张，最近几年它(IPG)麻烦重重。过去你会说，业内的老前辈是IPG和安历琴(Omnicom)。”
“而现在你会说，老前辈是安历琴和WPP。IPG的重要地位已有所丧失。”
我是上周在塞维利亚对贝尔先生进行了这次提前结束的采访。此前，贝尔先生在第四届全球营销传播大会(Global Marketing Communications Conference)上发表了讲话。参加大会的有安历琴和WPP的高层人士，以及来自联合利华(Unilever)和德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)等广告商的高级营销代表。
贝尔先生参加大会的目的，是为了深入传递这样一个信息，即IPG正努力改变自身，而这些改变将推动客户价值增加，加快成长。替贝尔先生说句公道话，他不愿把IPG最近面临的问题归咎于两年前发生的“9.11”恐怖袭击事件。
“虽然恐怖袭击提供了一个方便的‘借口’，可以用来解释营销传播业半个世纪以来遭受的最严重的衰退，但我们问题的根源早就形成了，”他说，“这些问题也基本上是我们自己造成的。主要是因为我们行业在领导变革方面表现极差，甚至在追随变革方面也表现得很差。我们是平庸的“被动反应者”，拙劣的‘积极行动者’。”
贝尔先生认为，整个市场营销服务业一直不敢在客户面前维持自己的主见。
因此，该行业逐渐放弃了“我们理应获取的、越来越多的报酬”。结果便是：尽管广告公司为客户取得了许多业务目标，但客户对此所给予的尊重却减少了。
如何才能扭转这种局面呢？贝尔先生表示，薪酬结构已从佣金制转变为固定费用制。虽然固定费用制一度非常流行，但有必要用另一种模式加以取代，以反映广告公司对客户的业务所产生的积极影响。
如何量化投资回报率相对于市场营销支出的高低，历来是个棘手的问题。然而，贝尔先生坚信，这是未来的发展方向。他以下面两例来说明这一点。最近，三菱(Mitsubishi)和富士重工的Subaru汽车在美国取得了良好业绩。为满足不断高涨的需求，两家公司的轿车产量飙升。而电信公司Verizon的用户数量第二季增长15%。广告公司策划的广告和市场营销活动，直接促成了上述公司取得良好业绩。
“Verizon、Subaru和三菱都是了不起的、信奉公平合理的客户，”贝尔先生表示，“问题不在于它们，而在于我们。”
问题在于，IPG及其竞争对手（因为这是整个行业都存在的问题）是否敢于向客户强调，应该以商业结果而不仅仅是自己制作的广告作品来给予报酬。
贝尔先生为IPG发现了一些业务增长机会，其中包括后来被称作“纽约麦迪逊大街加好莱坞葡萄藤街”(Madison and Vine)的业务模式，即市场营销与娱乐（包括体育）的融合。尽管该集团的Octagon MotorSports分公司公布了1100万美元的资产减值费，拖累公司第二季的业绩，出现经营亏损2100万美元，但该集团仍实现了市场营销与娱乐的融合。
电视节目《挨家挨户》(Door to Door)获得了六项艾美奖(Emmy)，贝尔先生十分欣喜。这是IPG为客户强生公司(Johnson & Johnson)制作的。另外，他很高兴地承认，这是一种“回到未来”的方法。这种方法仿效40至50年前美国的原创性肥皂剧，只不过带了一点21世纪的味道。“肥皂剧”这种说法便源自为之提供赞助的洗涤剂品牌。
“我们在回归过去，”贝尔先生表示，“但是，我们也在学习如何利用更集中和更广泛的全球资源，而利用方式令人回想起20世纪50年代和60年代的方式。”
尽管贝尔先生对未来怀抱乐观的态度，但过去的问题依旧困扰着IPG，这仍使他非常恼怒。
2002年10月份，该集团下属的麦肯广告公司暴露出财务违规问题。集团不得不把利润数据下调后重新予以公布，引发美国证券交易委员会(SEC)对其展开正式调查。自那以后，该集团一直未摆脱这一问题的困扰。
贝尔先生当时尚未执掌帅印，他是今年2月份升迁至现职的。虽然他匆匆结束了《金融时报》对他的采访，但前任约翰?杜纳(John Dooner)遗留的问题似乎无法这样迅速地获得解决。
