S4 Capital: An Integrated Offering
Founder of WPP and Founder, Executive Chairman S4 Capital
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Why is this interview interesting?
- Benefits of integrating content and media buying and options for S4 to add more services to the client
Sir Martin Sorrell
Founder of WPP and Founder, Executive Chairman S4 Capital
Sir Martin Sorrell is Founder and Executive Chairman of S4 Capital plc, which is building a purely digital advertising and marketing services business for global, multinational, regional, local clients and millennial-driven influencer brands. Sir Martin was CEO of WPP for 33 years, building it from a £1 million “shell” company in 1985 into the world’s largest advertising and marketing services company. When Sir Martin left in April 2018, WPP had a market capitalisation of over £16 billion, revenues of over £15 billion, profits of approximately £2 billion and over 200,000 people in 113 countries. Prior to that, Sir Martin was Group Financial Director of Saatchi & Saatchi plc for 9 years and worked for James Gulliver, Mark McCormack and Glendinning Associates before that. S4 Capital plc merged with MediaMonks, its content practice, in July 2018 and MightyHive, its programmatic practice, in December 2018 and has added eight further content programmatic and data companies to both practices in 2019 and six in 2020. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange under SFOR.L and after a little over two years, S4 Capital plc has over 2870 people in 30 countries, with a market capitalization of over $2.7 billion. Sir Martin supports a number of leading business schools and universities, including his alma maters, Harvard Business School and Cambridge University and a number of charities, including his family foundation.
Interview Transcript
What is the advantage in having MediaMonks and MightyHive closer together or more integrated, versus the Accenture’s of the world?
Again, it comes back to the motor torpedo boat versus the aircraft carrier; to have a fully integrated business, where people work – that much overworked word – seamlessly, together. On the call to Australia, I had our content people and our data and analytics and digital media people and they work extremely closely. We are moving towards one office in each city. We operate in about 46 cities, in 30 countries. Actually, the great thing about Covid – if there is a great thing about it, as at least 1.6 million people have been killed by this virus; it’s probably higher, given the lack of the veracity of the statistics – is that one of the things it has done has made us eject offices and reduce the number of offices much more quickly than we would have done anyway. Sydney is a very good example. Melbourne were probably in one building already because of jettisoning leases but, in Sydney, we’ll move together as well.
Can we focus on the consultancies, for a moment, and the deep relationships they have with the C-suite and doing digital transformation?
Accenture had a deep relationship with BMW and it didn’t do them any good in the review.
Why do you think that is?
You’ll have to ask them; I’ve got no idea.
Would you be looking to move S4 somewhat into that realm, potentially?
We have continuous debates. I think there is a fourth leg, if you like, beyond first-party data, digital advertising content and digital media, into something more strategic. On the other hand, a lot of what we do is very strategic. I don’t want to take on board these heavy structures that the agencies have. The problem the agencies have is their most highly-paid people are the overpaid people. They’re overpaid and you get this imbalance. The growing parts of the business are the ones that are probably underpaid, which is natural. It’s the analogue that the resources were devoted to, historically.
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