Conflicting Accounts
The Creation and Crash of the Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Empire
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- 62,99 zł
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- 62,99 zł
Publisher Description
In this fascinating and in-depth depiction of corporate greed and the politics of power, go behind-the-scenes of the ugly and bitter feud in an industry that is supposed to know the steep price for image run amok.
On December 16, 1994, a bloodletting took place in the stylish boardroom at Saatchi & Saatchi, once the world’s largest advertising agency. The cofounders of the company, Maurice and Charles Saatchi, were fired after threats by the firm’s shareholders but less than a month later, Maurice Saatchi started a rival ad agency and quickly and viciously snapped up former Saatchi & Saatchi clients.
With expansive research and eye-opening interviews, Kevin Goldman effortlessly explores this dramatic saga from the early, audacious start of the firm to the meteoritic rise of the Saatchi brothers and their ultimate fall. From the glitzy and extravagant lifestyle of the advertising industry of the 1970s and 1980s to the dramatic mergers and takeovers that altered Madison Avenue and London forever, Conflicting Accounts is an unputdownable and masterful work, perfect for fans of Mad Men and The Smartest Guys in the Room.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wall Street Journal advertising columnist Goldman's gossipy account of the rise and crash of Saatchi & Saatchi, the world's largest ad agency at its peak in 1987, unfolds as a Shakespearean drama full of greed, revenge, ambition and civil war. Charles Saatchi, wizard copywriter and art collector, and his mercurial brother, Maurice-both Iraqi Jews who emigrated to London in 1947-founded the agency in 1970 when Charles was 27 and Maurice 25. Their free-spending acquisitions binge, fueled by Maurice's obsessive quest to be the number-one agency, was undermined by expensive buyouts, client defections and a slowdown in ad spending in the U.S. Goldman offers a more critical, American-based view of the brothers and their wheeling and dealing than does British media journalist Alison Fendley in Saatchi & Saatchi: The Inside Story (Forecasts, Sept. 30). He also gives much more inside detail on Maurice's 1994 ouster as chairman in a shareholder mutiny spearheaded by no-nonsense Chicago fund manager David Herro, as well as on the ensuing internecine battle that erupted between M&C Saatchi, the brothers' new agency, and their former shop, renamed Cordiant. Photos.