Vo101/1

Challengingthe traditionalbusiness model

.• • I.comSri lanka's firstmultinationalad agency!

11S

Prudential, Nokia. Even, sometimes,

presidents and prime ministers.

We are enablers, not empire builders.

We reSReel all people equally.

Americans and Uruguayans. French

and Albanians. Germans and Japanese.

British and Indians and Sri Lankans.

Some of our most exciting moments

come when we discover agencies inyounger or smaller countries, with a

passion for developing their own talents

beyond the limitations which the world

seeks to impose upon them.

Agencies who fly the flag for their

countries as well as themselves. Jeh

United in ~~and,ifank in Estoni

Happiness inielgi .

Agencies t t thin

Iittlehel

Rather - we create alliances. We

create partnerships. We introduce

independent agencies topthers

in different countries, or wit~

complementary skills. We help them

fulfil their potential and maximise the

value of the services they offer to their

clients, locally and internationally.

But we don't own anyone.

And so, in 20031 left the big network

world and my new company,

thenetworkone, was born. We are

actually one of the world's biggest

networks, working with more than 350

agencies in almost 80 countries.

Then one day, I woke up and realised

that not every creative person want~

to be "owned" by a big foreigg

corporation. In fact, I discovered the

were hundreds of imaginative, talen

and motivated people working in

companies that weren't owned by

anyone else at all. Companies who

were open to new ideas, willing to

take risks (with their own money),

loyal to their clients rather than some

faraway holding company and striving

to succeed through merit, rather than

patronage.

I thought: wouldn't it be better to have

these agencies work with us, rather

than for us?

We help international marketing

companies find the best independent

agencies for their individual needs,

and provide"light touch" management

and co-ordination to ensure they wartogether efficiently and effectively. A

we have some prettyserious clients:

Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Jon

W up, left myoid globe at home and

the advertising business.

a lot of fun in my twenties at

ndent agencies in London,

i g hard and playing hard, staying

II Qight for pitches and parties.

I joined an American owned

I gency network where I stayed

rteen years, preaching the

I of Mars, Procter & Gamble and

ral Motors to our 55 offices around

rid. Like most global agency

rks, control was the name of the

and our objective was to buy and

very decent agency we could get

dson.

~had changed, but the spirit of

ire lived on.

mpires do good and empires do bad,

a ours was probably neither the

st nor the worst. We perpetrated

me scandalous crimes, but we alsoouraged the spread of literacy;

.nvented afternoon tea and most

, ortantly, cricket. But most of all, we

aged to let go of our empire, and

have never regretted it. We realised,

ually, that people prefer the

om to make their own mistakes

reate their own achievements. Very

ountries in the history of the world

e voted to cease being independent.

By luck rather than design,

was born in the capital city ofa faded

mpire.lt's true, the empire had been

rgely dismantled by the time I was

orn; but still, as a child, I owned a

iniature globe on which rather a lot of

e world was coloured pink.

I confess: I am British.