Janmat's 'Commercial Break' features Nirvik Singh in mellow gear

President South East Asia and Chairman, South Asia of Grey Worldwide, Nirvik Singh is captured in a mellow mood on 'Commercial Break', aired at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, 28 January on Janmant, India's first 24 hour views channel. 'Commercial Break' focuses on the creative process, the highs and lows of the advertising world and the people who mould words and images to make us laugh, cry and think.

This half hourly show covers one leading Ad Agency every week. The discussion veers to the agency's memorable works, awards won and ad creatives that made the grade or fell by the wayside. Shot on location, Commercial Break captures the human angle behind the women and men who lead advertising agencies in India.

Nirvik Singh, who has seen the giddy highs and abject lows of the business, reveals how Founder Ravi Gupta's demise spelt disaster for Grey. The lean phase saw Grey give up on many clients. "We had to start from scratch," says Singh.

Grey now has rebuilt its reputation and manages Proctor and Gamble, Incredible India for the Government of India, Ambuja Cement, Kinetic Velocity among many other clients. But when asked about the India Shining campaign, which turned out to spark the debacle for BJP, Nirvik Singh said, "Powerful advertising can make or break a client, and we learnt that from the India Shining campaign." Grey's inimitable Thums Up campaign, considered by many to be inspired advertising, has helped Thums Up to maintain its dominant status in the Indian cola market.

Commercial Break departs from the current industry norms of having a very formal or structured interview format. Instead it also introduces segments on old Indian commercials that have entered Indian marketing lore - for example the 40-year old Hamam ad campaign was recently showcased. There are segments on international ad campaigns, a Vox Pop for the common man to react on current campaigns and a section on the top three ads of the week.

Positioned as India's first Views Channel, Janmat has brought a fresh breeze in the country's TV viewing landscape. Janmat is a 24-hour current affairs channel targeted towards the discerning Indian audience. Through its innovative positioning and its interactive programming Janmat is breaking old stereotypes.

Students learn how not to buy into advertising

Modern lessons - A Stafford Primary School counselor advises kids to be wary of what they see

The 9- and 10-year-olds in Kathy Kriesel's fourth-grade class look so innocent and trusting, so insecure and vulnerable.

They are exactly what many advertisers seek as they focus on preteens who want to find acceptance among their peers.

From body spray to Barbie cell phones, much of the advertising targeting preteens focuses on body image and the latest, usually expensive, technology.

Hoping to make the target audience and their parents aware of the potential for manipulation, Stafford Primary School this school year held a seminar for parents and a classroom lesson for students on the topic.

"I don't want students to be pulled into the pressure of advertising, (buying it) only because they want to be cool or fit in," said Laura Barbour, a licensed school counselor at Stafford. "There are students here who are very aware of that."

Children between the ages of 8 and 12 are especially vulnerable to such ads because they are beginning to develop their sense of identity and want a "sophisticated" self-image, she said.

Nearly 50 parents swapped suggestions at a seminar on the subject sponsored by the school's Parent Teacher Student Association. Many of them, however, had already been aware of the problem.

It's the parents who don't see the harm in such advertising who worry Suzi Anderson, vice president of the Parent Teacher Students Association.

That's where the kids come in.

During lessons to fourth- and fifth-grade students, Barbour urges them to talk with their parents about what they see in advertisements and how it affects them.

Clad in Nike, Quicksilver and other clothing labels, Kriesel's fourth-grade students weren't about to be manipulated. Their hands shot into the air with each of Barbour's questions.
"Where do you see ads?"
The list was long -- computer popups, radio, billboards, magazines, television, newspapers.

People see an average of 3,000 advertisements a day, Barbour said.

She showed an Abercrombie ad that pictured a girl hugging a boy and had the words "classic cool" along the bottom. Both models appeared about 12. Barbour asked the kids to interpret the ad.

"I think they're using cool-looking people so you will buy it," a girl said.
Others linked the ad to having a boyfriend or girlfriend.

"It looks like he's having fun with his girlfriend," a boy said, setting off giggles.

Barbour said, "I worry about advertising I see that targets younger people that are giving a clear message about body image, sexuality . . . alcohol and tobacco."

"I wonder how it affects a young person's self-esteem."

Headed Out

Increasing attrition rates in the advertising industry prompt agencies to look into their people polices and work culture.

TEN years ago, if you had wanted to do something offbeat, unconventional and creative, the obvious choice would have been advertising. The glamour associated with the industry would have been such a strong pull that compensation and remuneration would have hardly mattered.

As Kalpana Rao, Training Director, Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), puts it, "I joined advertising only because I wanted to be there."

But ten years down the line, the advertising industry, despite its growth and specialisation, seems to be lacking individuals with passion for their profession.

The industry witnessed an all-time high attrition rate of nearly 35 per cent last year. What's more, people did not join rival agencies, but moved to new fields such as telecom, financial services, outsourcing and media.
According to industry players, although the attrition rates are not as alarming as those in the IT sector, it is cause for concern. John Goodman, CEO, O&M, says, "The single biggest problem is that of poaching of our people by clients, often in the financial services sector. Since we have a very good reputation, our people are often their first targets."

Nirvik Singh, President (South East Asia), Grey Global Group, says high attrition rates are a grave concern for the industry. "Whenever a company wants to enter the marketing services industry, they end up poaching talent from the ad industry as our people are well trained to handle the kind of pressures one encounters in this sector."
Sapna Srivastav, HR Head, JWT, admits that JWT witnessed a high attrition rate last year. "The year 2005 saw a comparatively high churn in JWT because we focussed aggressively on our core disciplines — servicing, planning and creative, and implemented performance-driven employment and evaluation. This enabled us to bring in new talent and add different skills. When recruiting new talent, we look for future-focussed skills."

Industry observers attribute attrition to the multiple avenues that are open to advertising talent and the low compensation packages most agencies offer. Says Nita Joshi, Director of placement company K&J Enterprises, "Most sunrise sectors such as telecom and financial services have been able to attract more talent as the growth in these sectors is faster and they also offer 20-30 per cent higher salaries than the advertising industry."
Rao of O&M says attrition is something the industry has to live with. "Most youngsters today join a particular industry not because they are passionate about it, but because they want to gain experience and move on later. The attitude of youngsters has changed."

"Therefore, one has to be careful while recruiting. Agencies have to talk to candidates in detail, especially at the entry level, as they are often confused. That is one reason we prefer to recruit summer trainees, as they would have had a feel of our organisation," she adds.

Agreeing with Rao, Savitha Mathai, HR Head, FCB Ulka, says attrition is a natural phenomenon and is here to stay. More than retaining talent, the real challenge is in getting the right talent, says Mathai. "Agencies have to be focused about their human capital planning."

Mathai says the problem of retention is more acute in middle management, as, after having spent five-six years in the industry, people tend to become restless and are on the lookout for other avenues.
On whether advertising industry salaries are actually low, Goodman of O&M says, "I think the pay scales are reasonable and rising all the time. The issue is one of desperate new entries to the Indian market who will pay silly money to try and break in."

Tarun Rai, Vice-President and General Manager, JWT, says that while a plethora of opportunities lure advertising professionals, the churn of accounts has also contributed to the high attrition rates. "Nowadays, it is pitch season the whole year. An agency wins an account and there is a requirement for people. So you contact a head-hunter. And this goes on 12 months in a year."

Rai also points out that shortage of trained manpower has added to the crisis. "We never had too many institutes for advertising professionals and that has not changed. As far as the business schools are concerned, a combination of more opportunities and higher salaries on offer has made it difficult for us to recruit."

Focus on training

As people retention is increasingly becoming a challenge, agencies are becoming more and more HR-focused, and training programmes are being looked at as an important retention tool. In fact, agencies such as O&M are investing close to 1.5 per cent of their turnover in training.

"We are taking every step possible to make a career at Ogilvy so interesting, enjoyable and rewarding that nobody would ever want to leave," says Goodman.

Investment in training is vital, agrees Srivastava of JWT. "We as employers have to invest in our people and ensure that their learning curve is always up. If the staff knows that the agency takes keen interest in their personal and professional development, then there is no reason why they would not stay with us long enough for mutual ROI."

"I have always maintained that opportunity, investment and growth are very important in retaining people. Money, of course, is important, but we do overestimate its importance. If we can provide enough opportunities to our people to realise their potential, invest in them through training to develop their skill-sets and chart their career paths, we will be able to do a better job of retaining our people," says Rai of JWT.

It is culture that matters

However, Singh of Grey is not too sure whether training could be used as a tool to retain people. "It is a tool to make people better. People stay in a company because of its culture, the clients they work with and also the work environment."

Nitin Bhagwat, Executive Director, Interface, also believes that using training as a carrot to hold people will not help. "The glue would be the culture of a company. People have to believe that their company is a winner company. Only few quit a company because of money. Most of them do so because they are unhappy." However, Singh believes quality demands good money. "The industry is aware of it, and salaries revisions are being looked at," he says.

Mathai of FCB and Rao of O&M say talent crunch is definitely here to stay, and that the onus is on the agencies to offer a culture that will hold back people.

Grey Worldwide bags Deutsche Bank credit card business.

(Friday, Jan 20, 2006 - 06:00 pm)
Televisionpoint.com Team

Close on the heels of bagging the Rs 15 crore retail banking operations of Deutsche Bank, Grey Worldwide has snapped up the bank's Rs 10 crore credit card business in a high-pitched battle.

Grey has also cornered the Rs 5 crore 3M Bangalore and the Rs 5 crore Manipal Group account, catering to Manipal Hospital and educational institutions. The size of accounts snagged this month is Rs 20 crore. Deutsche Bank (DB), had a clear target when it set up operations in India last October. The bank, which offers current and savings accounts as well as investment and credit products, is targeting the increasing number of wealthy customers in the country.

Confirming the win, Nirvik Singh, president, Grey, said that it was a tough fight. "We had bagged the retail operations earlier and the recent rollout of creatives has been well received. We will now launch the credit card business in the country," he said.

Note, After a long phase of stagnation, the advertising spend in India has gone up strongly since last year and this year it jumped 14% to Rs 13,200 crore. Driving this has mostly been sectors like airlines, luxury brands and financial services. Ad spends of financial services companies almost doubled this year to over Rs 1,000 crore.

M&Ms are Mmmmm Good!!!!!!!!!

Fact: Mangos are valued for their reputation as an aphrodisiac in countries such as Guatemala and India.

Soldiers in WWII helped solidify the popularity of a new candy. In their ration packs, they got paper tubes of button-shaped chocolate candies, coated with a sugar shell. It made them convenient to carry, handy for quick munching, and the heat of their hands didn't melt the chocolate. They were snacking on M&Ms, first produced in 1941.

Originally just a plain chocolate center, with a non-flavored candy sugar and corn syrup outer shell, M&Ms came in a rainbow of colors: red, yellow, green, brown, orange and violet. The only shifts in the rainbow, would be replacing violet with tan in 1949, and then replacing tan with blue, in 1995.

The milk chocolate centers are formed in a special machine, and then "tumbled" to achieve the smooth, rounded shape. The centers then go into another machine for "panning", a process whereby the candies are placed in pans that rotate while being constantly covered in the liquid outer coating. The constant movement eventually results in a smooth, even shell.

The finishing touch is their trademark name: M&M, which is stamped on each candy with a machine designed not to crack the delicate shell. The letters stand for Forrest E. Mars, the candymaker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.

The Real Thing

Fact: In 1886, Coca-Cola was first served at a pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia for only five cents a glass. A pharmacist named John Pemberton created the formula for Coca-Cola.

Back in 1886, an Atlanta, Georgia, pharmacist by the name of John Pemberton, tinkered around with a little of this and a little of that, coming out in the end, with a syrup that when added to carbonated water, produced a refreshing drink. Jacob’s pharmacy down the street started selling the new beverage for a modest five cents a glass.

His partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, suggested the alliteration of the name Coca-Cola, and penned the famous brand name in his own unique script. The Cola part of the name came from a derivative of the kola nut. And as almost everyone knows, the Coca part came from just what it sounds like… the coca leaf, which also gives the world cocaine. That little bit of trivia, was long thought to be an urban legend, but it was in fact, true.

One of the "truths" that is actually an urban legend, is that the Coca-Cola company has only ever allowed two executives to possess the formula, and even then, each of them knows only half of it, so they would be unable to reproduce the drink on their own. In reality, two executives do have the formula, but it is complete.

So was the formula that Mark Pendergrast published in his 1993 book, For God, Country and Coca-Cola. Among the papers of John Pemberton, the inventor of Coke, Pendergrast had come across a formula that appeared to be the original recipe. It included fluid from the coca leaf, and citrate caffeine, or extract of the kola nut.

The Coke company immediately denied Pedergrast’s find was "the real thing". And in a sense, it wasn’t. Because Pemberton had sold portions of his holdings in Coca-Cola, in the two years between his invention of it, and his death in 1888. By the 1920s, the company that then manufactured Coca-Cola set their formula down in stone, chipping out and changing some of the original ingredients. Coca was no longer used, glycerin was added as a preservative, caffeine was reduced, and citric acid replaced phosphorus acid.

In 1985, executives of the Coca-Cola company would commit one of the biggest commercial blunders every, by introducing the "new Coke", and ceasing production of the "old" formula. Even though it had been pronounced the best in blind taste tests (and very close to the taste of Pepsi, which was nipping at their heels), consumers rose up in legions and demanded their real Coke back. And they got it, a bare 2 ½ months later. So important was the news, that Peter Jennings of ABC, interrupted the popular soap "General Hospital" to announce Coke’s return.

This Will Bowl You Over

The world's biggest bowling alley is located in Las Vegas at the Showboat hotel and has 106 lanes

 

Did King Tut play tenpin? It’s quite possible, because bowling is one of the world’s oldest known sports. The first recorded evidence of the basic equipment was found in a pyramid from around 5,000B.C. It consisted of a ball and set of marble bars that appeared to be the accompanying pins, in case the pharaoh had some spare time in the afterlife.

In more modern times or around 1200A.D. bowling for pins became popular in England, but it was strictly an outdoor sport. It would be at least another two centuries before the game moved indoors. The Brits still have lawn bowling, as well as other bowling related games such as skittles, nine pins and half-bowls.

In Europe, the game was first played with nine pins, and was carried to America with Dutch settlers, in that format. Not only did it become popular, it got to be a betting sport, and that propensity for wagering, is what caused the game to become "tenpin", according to popular legend. In 1840, the Connecticut legislature outlawed nine pins, due to excessive gambling on the outcome of games. Savvy players solved the minor problem by adding a tenth pin.

But they’d still be picking up those pins and setting them by hand, for another hundred years, until the invention of an automatic pinspotter in the 1940s.

Bowling remains such a popular sport today, that you’ll find one of the world’s largest bowling alleys in the Showboat Hotel, Las Vegas. It boasts 106 lanes. The former king of bowling, the now closed, was the Tokyo World Bowling Lanes Center in Japan, which had an unbelievable 252 lanes in one facility.

Global Post

Hello Sir, You Are Pregnant

A hospital in London, England, admitted that it mistakenly sent letters to thirty patients, including six elderly men, telling them they were pregnant. A spokesman for North Derbyshire Royal Hospital blamed it on human error. None of the surprised patients turned out to actually be expecting a baby, the spokeswoman said.

Killer Posts Personal Ad For Online Friend

A convicted killer, who used hammers to kill two ex-girlfriends, has started posting ads on the Internet in search of cyber friends. The ad reads, "Hi, I'm Bill. I'm compassionate, 6' 2" 200 lbs. athletic guy who enjoys Mediterranean food, the poetry of Keats and Kavafy and baroque music." The ad also included a picture of the convict apparently smiling.

Teacher Feels Smacking Children Should Be Allowed

A teacher at a British school feels that smacking children that misbehave should be permissible. The teacher, Phil Williamson, at an Independent Christian Fellowship School located in Liverpool will ask three judges to change the laws regarding corporal punishment in schools. In 1986, smacking children at school was banned in state schools in Britain. About four years ago smacking children as a form of punishment was also not permitted for fee paying schools. Williamson with the aid of a group of teachers and parents lost a fight last year regarding corporal punishment allowed in schools with the agreement of parents. Williamson feels that it should be allowed because of a passage from the Bible. "Your rod and staff they comfort me." From this passage, he believes corporal punishment should be allowed since it is part of Christian beliefs. However, the judge felt that teachers have no right to punish children in this manner even if parents felt it was okay for the teachers to physically punish the children.

Cats Get Humans Attention Through Certain Type Of "Meow."

A study was done that claimed that cats have learned the art of meowing. There is a certain type of meow that can attract humans to take the cat in. Even though cats do not have a specific language, they have learned to sound pleasant when meowing. Nicholas Nicastro, a graduate student who is working under a psychology professor, says that the cats that sound angry are seen to be too demanding and the ones that are pleasant to the ear are more likely to be picked by people that go to an animal shelter to adopt a cat.

Soda Tax To Slim Down Fat Kids?

A California lawmaker has proposed slapping a tax on popular soft drinks to help reduce rocketing rates of childhood obesity. A number of U.S. states, including Arkansas, Virginia and Washington, currently impose excise taxes on soft drinks. But most use the proceeds to fight litter, not the "epidemic" of overweight children in U.S. schools.

Customer Billed For Being Arrogant
James Storrie was charged $140 on his monthly mobile phone bill for being arrogant. Telecom Corp., New Zealand's largest phone company apologized to Storrie for charging him a fee for being an "arrogant bastard." The phone company is investigating as to how that charge showed up on his bill. Martin Freeth, Telecom spokesman, said, "We've apologized and taking steps to stop anything like this... it's an aberration."

Bin Laden Costumes Now Available In Israel

Shops in Israel are now selling Osama bin Laden masks for the traditional costume holiday Purim. The holiday is when perceived enemies of the Jewish people are held up for ridicule.

Get Their Butts In Here. I Want A Cup Of Coffee!

Would you pay $5 for a cup of coffee that came out a monkey's butt? There are those in the U.S. who are willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee made from beans that were swallowed by one end of Indonesian monkeys and collected from the other end. It is believed that these monkeys, which live in the palm-woods of Sumatra and Java eat only the best of the coffee beans, without chewing so therefore what comes out of them must therefore quite obviously be the best of the coffee beans. Want to know what we think? If indeed they were the best of the coffee beans at the time the monkey swallowed them, they certainly aren't the best any longer! But it's not just Americans who have taken a liking to the "monkey poop roasting method." People in Indonesia have been drinking this for hundreds of years and so do, apparently, Europeans.

Apparently Money Does Buy Happiness

The next time that someone tells you that money can't buy happiness, tell them that they are wrong. New research published in Britain has shown that even winning a small lottery or receiving an inheritance can produce contentment in average people. Professors Andrew Oswald and Jonathan Gardner of Warwick University in central England tracked 9,000 families over the past decade to study whether there was a link between cash windfalls and contentment. "We find a very strong link between cash falling on you and higher contentment and better mental health in the following year," said Oswald.

Man Wins Lawsuit Over "Bin Laden" Jokes

An Arab man in Swedan has been awarded $16,000 by a court after he filed a lawsuit against his employer for letting colleagues continue calling calling him "Osama bin Laden." The Svenska Dagbladet reported that he had been harassed by his workmates and managers, who also called him "terrorist" and "damned Arab," The case had found that the employer was aware of the harrassment but did nothing to stop it.

Woman Lives In Car For 26 Years

A London woman, Ann Naysmith, lived in her car for 26 years. The woman, who was a former music teacher, decided to reside in her car after she had been evicted from her flat in London. She has been living in her Ford Consul since 1976. Her car was however removed by the local council as it was said it could be a possible health hazard. The neighbours, who became used to the 60 year old lady, decided to buy her a red Mercedes in replacement of the Ford Consul." "It seemed a straightforward and sensible solutions," said the owner of the Mercedes, Sian Lines. The owner of the Mercedes also added that it was sensible since the lady had threatened to set herself on fire in protest.

London To Install Pop-Up Toilets

In a bid to dissuade lat-night males from urinating on walls and doorways, the coty of London plans to install pop-up toilets that will rise from the ground. The city plans to have these self-cleaning telescopic urinals, in place by autumn. They will emerge from under the ground and be retracted in the day via remote control.

Too Cold To Claim!!!

Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.

Antarctica is a place that nobody wants. But then, some of them don't want anyone else to have it either. As a consequence, several countries with scientific and other interests have signed treaties stating that no one of them owns the region/continent, and that research may be carried out by anyone. However, in one of their wisest moves, there have been two conventions signed since 1988, to protect Antarctica from mineral exploration, and preserve its natural image.

Recently, restorers working on a 230-year old landscape by British artist Thomas Hodges, discovered that the canvas appeared thicker in some places than others. Using x-ray machines, they discovered that underneath the lush tropical view of New Zealand, was a region further south and much colder.

Beneath the New Zealand landscape, painted during Captain Cook's 1772 voyage to discover the mythical southern continent, was the stark scene of two icebergs. Up until this peeling back of paint layers, it was thought the only early images of the Antarctic were the rough sketches done by sailors and explorers.

Not so. Hodges had accompanied Cook on his epic voyage, one would assume to record the triumphant discovery of a non-existent land. Instead, he painted scenes of the lands and people that were already known. So why did he cover up the iceberg painting, and why are there no more of them?

Theories suggest that Hodges either ran out of supplies, or lost some to damage during the voyage, and when presented with the impressive scenery of New Zealand, opted to capture that, rather than hold onto the rather dull scene of ice floating in the water. Whether he painted any other Antarctic scenes is unknown. But perhaps they lay waiting under other of his pictures.

DID YOU KNOW !!!!!

The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.

Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."

If you keep a Goldfish in the dark room, it will eventually turn white.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.

The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction

The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.

A snail can sleep for 3 years.

China has more English speakers than the United States.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 other million people in the world.

The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

Cat's urine glows under a black light.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

Polar bears are left-handed.

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.

A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.

Butterflies taste with their feet. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Starfish haven't got brains.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

The average secretary's left hand does 56% of the typing.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is"screeched."

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

Almonds are members of the peach family.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "- dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

In most advertisements, including newspapers, the timedisplayed on a watch is 10:10.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z, hence "Oz."

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

China's Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration

To young Chinese shoppers, it seemed not to matter that some of the products, like New York Yankees caps or Japan's Astro Boy dolls, clearly have little to do with South Korea. Or that most items originated, in fact, in Chinese factories.

"We know that the products at Korea City are made in China," said Wang Ying, 28, who works for the local branch of an American company. "But to many young people, 'Korea' stands for fashionable or stylish. So they copy the Korean style."

From clothes to hairstyle, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half decade. As part of what the Chinese call the Korean Wave of pop culture, a television drama about a royal cook, "The Jewel in the Palace," is garnering record ratings throughout Asia, and Rain, a 23-year-old singer from Seoul, drew more than 40,000 fans to a sold-out concert at a sports stadium here in October.

But South Korea's "soft power" also extends to the material and spiritual spheres. Samsung's cellphones and televisions are symbols of a coveted consumerism for many Chinese. Christianity, in the evangelical form championed by Korean missionaries deployed throughout China, is finding Chinese converts despite Beijing's efforts to rein in the spread of the religion. South Korea acts as a filter for Western values, experts say, making them more palatable to Chinese and other Asians.

For a country that has been influenced by other cultures, especially China but also Japan and America, South Korea finds itself at a turning point in its new role as exporter.

The transformation began with South Korea's democratization in the late 1980's, which unleashed sweeping domestic changes. As its democracy and economy have matured, its influence on the rest of Asia, negligible until a decade ago, has grown accordingly. Its cultural exports have even caused complaints about cultural invasion in China and Vietnam.

Historically, Christianity made little headway in East Asia, except in South Korea, whose population is now about 30 percent Christian and whose overseas missionary movement is the world's second largest after the United States.

Today, in China, South Korean missionaries are bringing Christianity with an Asian face. South Korean movies and dramas about urban professionals in Seoul, though not overtly political, present images of modern lives centering on individual happiness and sophisticated consumerism.

They also show enduring Confucian-rooted values in their emphasis on family relations, offering to Chinese both a reminder of what was lost during the Cultural Revolution and an example of an Asian country that has modernized and retained its traditions.

"Three Guys and Three Girls" and "Three Friends" are South Korea's homegrown version of the American TV show "Friends." As for "Sex and the City," its South Korean twin, "The Marrying Type," a sitcom about three single professional women in their 30's looking for love in Seoul, was so popular in China that episodes were illegally downloaded or sold on pirated DVD's.
"We feel that we can see a modern lifestyle in those shows," said Qu Yuan, 23, a student at Tsinghua University here. "American dramas also show the same kind of lifestyle. We know that South Korea and America have similar political systems and economies. But it's easier to accept that lifestyle from South Koreans because they are culturally closer to us. We feel we can live like them in a few years."

"They seem to have similar lifestyles," Ms. Qu said. "They have friends and go to bars. They have good mobile phones and good cars and lead comfortable lives."

Her classmate, Huo Kan, 23, said, "American dramas are too modern."

Ms. Qu said, "They're postmodern."

Ms. Huo added, "Something like 'Sex and the City' is too alien to us."

Jin Yaxi, 25, a graduate student at Beijing University, said, "We like American culture, but we can't accept it directly."

"And there is no obstacle to our accepting South Korean culture, unlike Japanese culture," said Ms. Jin, who has studied both Korean and Japanese. "Because of the history between China and Japan, if a young person here likes Japanese culture, the parents will get angry."

Politics also seems to underlie the Chinese preference for South Korean-filtered American hip-hop culture. Messages about rebelliousness, teenage angst and freedom appear more palatable to Chinese in their Koreanized versions.

Kwon Ki Joon, 22, a South Korean who attends Beijing University and graduated from a Chinese high school here, said his male Chinese friends were fans of South Korea hip-hop bands, like H.O.T., and its song "We Are the Future." A sample of the song's lyrics translate roughly as: "We are still under the shadows of adults/Still not Free/To go through the day with all sorts of interferences is tiring."

To Mr. Kwon, there is no mystery about the band's appeal. "It's about wanting a more open world, about rebelliousness," he said. "Korean hip-hop is basically trying to adapt American hip-hop."

Like many South Koreans, Oh Dong Suk, 40, an investor in online games here, said he believed that South Korea's pop culture was a fruit of the country's democratization. "If you watch South Korean movies from the 1970's or 1980's, you could feel that it was a controlled society," Mr. Oh said.

Hwang In Choul, 35, a South Korean missionary here, also sees a direct link between South Korea's democratization and its influence in China. After restrictions on travel outside South Korea were lifted in the late 1980's, South Korea's missionary movement grew from several hundred to its current size of 14,000 missionaries.

Mr. Hwang, who since 2000 has trained 50 Chinese pastors to proselytize, is among the 1,500 South Korean missionaries evangelizing in China, usually secretly.

"Under military rule, it was simply not possible to come out of South Korea, and even our activities inside the country were monitored," Mr. Hwang said. "We had the potential to be missionaries out in the world, but we were constrained. We had the passion, but we couldn't express our passion."

Until South Korea and China, enemies during the Korean War, normalized relations in 1992, North Korea had a stronger presence here, with its embassy, restaurants and shops. Back then, South Korea remained unknown to most Chinese, or suffered from a poor image.

"If a Japanese television set stopped working, the Chinese would say something's wrong with the power lines," said Ohn Dae Sung, the manager of a Korean restaurant, Suboksung, who has been here since 1993. "If a South Korean television set stopped working, they'd say it was the fault of the set."

The Korean Wave has been gathering for some time, with its roots traceable to several developments, including the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The first civilian president was elected in 1992, ending nearly 32 years of military rule and ushering in tumultuous change.

A newly confident South Korea has pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy, often to Washington's displeasure, warming up to China and to North Korea. Social changes that took decades elsewhere were compressed into a few years, as new freedoms yielded a rich civil society, but also caused strains between generations and the sexes, leading to one of the world's highest divorce rates and lowest birth rates.

As South Korea quickly became the world's most wired nation, new online news sites challenged the conservative mainstream media's monopoly; press clubs, a Japanese colonial legacy that controlled the flow of news, were weakened or eliminated. Unlike other Asian nations, South Korea has tackled head-on taboo subjects in its society, including the legacy of military rule and collaboration during Japanese colonial rule.

Here, at a computer center on a recent evening, young Chinese could be seen playing South Korean online games. Cyworld, the largest online community service in South Korea, is announcing its arrival in China by plastering ads on city buses.

Thanks to the Korean Wave and South Korea's new image, being Korean helps business.
I'm sure there is a connection, though we don't have exact figures," Jim Sohn, the chief executive of LG Electronics China, said in an interview inside the company's brand new $400 million headquarters here.

Another company that has benefited from the Korean Wave's "positive effect" is Hyundai, said Um Kwang Heum, president of its Chinese division. Though a latecomer to China, Hyundai signed a joint venture agreement with Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings in 2002 and has already become No. 2 in sales among automakers in China.

Thanks to its local partner, Hyundai's cars have been chosen by the Beijing government to replace the city's aging taxis before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hyundai Elantras will make up most of the city's taxi fleet in time for the Olympics, which are expected to be a turning point for China, just as they signaled South Korea's entry onto the world stage in 1988 and postwar Japan's in 1964.

For all of South Korea's influence in China, though, few Chinese expect the Olympics and democratization to dovetail as they did in Seoul.

A local television production company, Beijing Modern English Film and TV Culture, proposed a Korean-language program for adults in 2004 but was rejected 10 times by the Chinese authorities for unexplained reasons. Eventually, it successfully pitched a cartoon, "Happy Imitation of Korean Sentences."

"As long as it was a kids' show, it was O.K.," said Sun Hogan, a producer at the company.
"The government," he added, "is definitely a little nervous about the popularity of the Korean Wave."

Sir Martin Sorrell: Full of Eastern Promise

Britain's most powerful adman earned a cool £52m last year - and believes the Beijing Olympics will bring him even more riches.

Sir Martin Sorrell is impatient for the Olympic Games in Beijing in the summer of 2008 to start. "I'm planning to go - if I'm invited," says the most powerful Briton in global advertising.

The chances are quite high that Sir Martin, the chief executive of WPP (the world's second-largest marketing services group) will be invited, even though he is more interested in cricket and skiing than athletics.

The Beijing Olympics are at the forefront of his thinking because they mark the coming together of two of his favourite media verities - the importance of the great quadrennial events (such as the Olympics and the World Cup) in driving marketing demand, and the towering growth of the Chinese economy.

"The Olympic Games in Beijing is not just a sporting occasion; it's a political, social and economic occasion and will mark, in our view, the year the Chinese economy becomes the second-largest advertising market in the world," Sir Martin says. In fact, if you take into account the purchasing power of the Chinese people, the country probably already is the second-largest advertising market.

When you stir in not just the European football championships that year but also the US presidential elections, Sir Martin is betting on 2008 being a bumper year. "Mrs Clinton will run and there will probably be a lot of political spending. The president, even though he is not up for re-election, will still want the economy to be in good shape," he argues. He is noted for the breadth and the certainty of his forecasting, not to mention his Delphic utterances.

The WPP chief executive, who studied economics at Oxford, is convinced that economies, and therefore the marketing services and the media they help to fund, are dominated by the political cycle - with help from the major sporting events. But if 2008 is going to be a bumper year, what about the years in between - in particular, 2006? Do we have to endure another two fallow years to get a good year?

Sir Martin's crystal ball has the answer. Under his theory, last year should have been the weakest in the four-year cycle. In fact, overall, he believes that 2005 has been a very good year, although this will come as a bit of a surprise to a number of struggling newspaper executives in the UK.

This year should, however, be noticeably better than last, with little boosts coming from the Winter Olympics in Turin and the mid-term congressional elections in the US. "Then, 2007 should also be a good year because of the run-up to Beijing, and then we will start to see political spending picking up in the US in the latter part of the year," Sir Martin says.

"So, all in all, a pretty good environment," insists the WPP chief executive, who is better known for his
pessimism, or as he would have it, realism.

"It's not in my DNA to be too optimistic. It's a genetic defect," Sir Martin says, quickly adding that there is always the threat from terrorism and the danger of high oil prices. But he is still optimistic enough to drop all his talk of the past few years about advertising revenue falling down the side of steep-sided bathtubs.

Certainly it has been a good time for WPP, which brings together four major international advertising agencies, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey Global - and a pretty lucrative time for Sir Martin himself.

In October, WPP announced that revenues for the third quarter, including acquisitions, had risen by 24 per cent to £1.3bn, although the growth of 9.7 per cent in the UK was well below the WPP average. Despite the relative weakness in the UK, the company is still on track to meet its 14.8 per cent profit margin target for 2005 under UK rules.

No such small percentages apply to Sir Martin's personal remuneration. He generated the usual headlines when his record-breaking £52m payout for last year was revealed.

Sir Martin claims not to recognise the number, and insists that there must be an element of double counting involved. He is certainly not paid such sums as salary, but rolled-up incentive schemes linked to the performance of the company matured and could no longer be rolled over.

"I think there were two plans over a 10-year period, which I had rolled forward: my racing accumulator. I actually put my money where my mouth is. I couldn't take them any further, the rules didn't allow that," says Sir Martin, who founded WPP 20 years ago after being finance director at Saatchi & Saatchi.

He has always taken the advice of his father and invested in the company he knows best - the one he created. Not only have the incentive schemes rolled away, but Sir Martin also no longer has a long-term contract with WPP, and can be sacked by the WPP board at any time without compensation.

But what does a man do when forced by unfortunate rules to accept a jackpot that would put most national lotteries to shame? "Very little," is the disappointing but unsurprising answer.

"There is no yacht, no gold-plated Rolls-Royce. My interests are very focused on the business. I don't have a
massive wine collection or art collection. I have one or two nice houses or apartments, but that's it. Sorry to disappoint," he says.

Just before Christmas, his wealth did receive a significant dent when he had to sell WPP shares worth £12m to help fund a UK record £29m divorce settlement. One of the reasons cited by his wife Sandra for the breakdown of their 33-year marriage was Sir Martin's obsession with work. He is indeed totally focused on the business - some would say virtually wedded to it - and he likes nothing better than viewing the daily returns from his far-flung businesses around the world.

And there is certainly no sign of expensive art in the modest London headquarters of WPP, down a cobbled alley off Farm Street in Mayfair. There is plenty of decoration on the walls of the WPP boardroom, but it is of a very particular nature - blow-ups of the quirky illustrations from the prize-winning WPP annual report. The cover of last year's report features a hare leaping prodigiously high in the direction of a distant star. The image doesn't require a great deal of deconstruction. Another depicts the scale of WPP's never-ending spate of acquisitions, with an apple sliced open to show the names of WPP's many corporate manifestations - from advertising and marketing to public relations, design and market research.

Sir Martin is very proud of his annual report. The League of American Communications Professionals placed it ninth out of 1,435 annual reports, and gave it the Platinum Award for being the "most engaging".
Not all of Sir Martin's activities would have qualified for platinum awards last year. JWT, which famously won HSBC's global business account, did the same at the Korean electronics group Samsung - only to see it move to rivals Leo Burnett in less than a year. How could such an embarrassing thing have happened? "You'll have to ask Samsung. Obviously we are disappointed by what happened, but we haven't given up," Sir Martin says. "You never know what is going to happen in life. Unfortunately you lose business as well as win business."
There was, however, another significant loss during the year. The resignation of WPP's creative director, Neil French, was accepted after he apparently described women working in the advertising industry as "crap", and "wimps" who want, after a while, to go "and suckle something".

On the business front, Sir Martin insists that he is not giving up on his previously unsuccessful attempts to take over Aegis, the company that owns Carat, the international media planning and buying agency. He vehemently denies industry rumours that he was more interested in mischief than a deal after Aegis was put into play as the French corporate raider Vincent Bollore gradually amassed a 25 per cent stake. "We had a look-see, but some of the information we received was not credible," he says. WPP and the US private-equity house, Hellman and Friedman, did put forward two propositions for the future of Aegis, one of which included Bollore.

Sir Martin feels that the proposals were not taken sufficiently seriously. "The whole situation is causing them [Aegis], I know, a lot of internal concerns. You have got this 25 per cent parrot on your shoulder and it's very difficult for a business to function with that sort of situation," he says. Naturally, he is watching events carefully and regards the future of Aegis as "work in progress".

As he looks out from his privileged global perch at the state of the world communications business, Sir Martin emphasises a plethora of reasons beyond the political and sporting cycles why the advertising and marketing businesses will continue to do well in future.

The industry is being driven by the rise of Japanese, South Korean, Chinese and Indian multinational companies. "This is true globalisation. Before, you had Americanisation," says Sir Martin, who also points to over-capacity in most industries and to a shortage of human capital.

There are also the problems of getting staff in companies such as WPP, which have grown by acquisition, all pointing in the same direction. It all increases the pressure to advertise, and to communicate.
"You have to innovate and you have to differentiate," says Sir Martin. And that means that companies all round the world will have to continue to spend more rather than less on advertising, marketing and communications. "If you brand, you get a price premium. If you sell commodities on the basis of price, you get nothing," the WPP chief executive insists, citing heavy discounting in the American automobile industry.
For Sir Martin, one of the big issues is where you place your investments if you run a media company, or any other sort of company, currently based mainly in Europe. "You expand in Asia. You expand into Latin America and you expand into Eastern Europe. Is India better than China? It's irrelevant. They are both important," Sir Martin emphasises.

Is it really wise, he asks, to make your investments in Germany or France - or indeed the UK - when there are much higher growth rates not just in China or India, but also in the rapidly growing markets of Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan? If forced to sum up where the current growth is now, in two words, Sir Martin's words are "China and the internet".

For the media, investing in Asian countries such as China and India can, he believes, help to balance some of the loss of revenue that traditional Western media companies are suffering from the internet.

The issues faced in traditional media markets such as the UK are not issues in countries such as China. "China network television, CCTV, is going up by 20 to 30 per cent a year, and Indian newspapers are doing very well although it is becoming more competitive," says Sir Martin, who believes that we are now in a two-speed world.

Back in the old slow-speed and already-developed world, he is all too aware of how the internet and rapidly expanding institutions such as Google can destroy value in traditional media companies. He points to NetRatings, a company that measures the effectiveness of online ratings. Google has recently announced its plans to provide such analytical information for free - which is a considerable potential threat to NetRatings, he believes. "We had a piece [of NetRatings] many years ago, which we sold, thank God. That's a permanent shift in profitability," he says.

Sir Martin thinks that media organisations which give information away for free are close to insane "when you have a strong brand, and particularly when you have strong content".

He believes that Si Newhouse of Condé Nast is one of the cleverest publishers around, yet they don't charge for content. "I don't understand that. I think that consumers will be prepared to pay for content that they trust and content that they like," says the WPP chief executive.

Has Sir Martin any advice - apart from geographical diversification - for traditional media companies on how they can confront the threat of the internet? "I think what they are doing is probably the right thing, which is they are trying to embrace the new technology and trying to invest in the new technology as rapidly as they can," he says.

The WPP chief executive has, however, warned that traditional media companies were tending to panic and invest "willy nilly" in the internet. His remarks were interpreted as a shot at Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace, and at deals such as ITV's acquisition of the Friends Reunited website.

Sir Martin insists that he was talking about traditional-media-owners generally. He believes there is an argument for ITV buying Friends Reunited because of the importance of the internet in relation to local advertising and local communications. "But in all of these things, I haven't seen yet a traditional media owner who has put together a model, or bought a company, which has reproduced the revenue that they have lost," he notes.

He remains relatively optimistic about traditional media. Television, newspapers and magazines will not
disappear, although they will probably have to accept lower rates of growth in future. "It's not all gloom. Certain types of television - satellite, cable and pay-TV - will expand," he says. And, although both China and online advertising are growing rapidly, in advertising terms they are still relatively small, with each accounting for only four per cent of the global market.

He reaches yet again for the example of China to provide historical perspective. In the early decades of the 19th century, China shipped high-quality porcelain to the UK, Sir Martin says. Then the Chinese industry was killed off by lower-priced and equally high-quality porcelain from Wedgwood and Meissen. "All things are cyclical. There is nothing new, and we've all been here before," says Sir Martin, adding that, in 1825, India and China accounted for the same proportion of the world economy as they will do in 2025.
Sir Martin intends to continue at work, even though he said recently that the trouble with media companies was that they were all run by "50-to-60-year-old farts like me". Last year, he celebrated his 60th birthday - and is not happy about that. "It marks the beginning of the end, I think. Certainly not the end of the beginning," he suggests.

Despite his advancing years, Sir Martin plans to continue running WPP as long as his services are required - at least beyond the bumper year of 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. "I'm not the retiring type - in any sense of the term whatsoever," the WPP chief says.

Sir Martin Sorrell is impatient for the Olympic Games in Beijing in the summer of 2008 to start. "I'm planning to go - if I'm invited," says the most powerful Briton in global advertising.

The chances are quite high that Sir Martin, the chief executive of WPP (the world's second-largest marketing services group) will be invited, even though he is more interested in cricket and skiing than athletics.
The Beijing Olympics are at the forefront of his thinking because they mark the coming together of two of his favourite media verities - the importance of the great quadrennial events (such as the Olympics and the World Cup) in driving marketing demand, and the towering growth of the Chinese economy.

"The Olympic Games in Beijing is not just a sporting occasion; it's a political, social and economic occasion and will mark, in our view, the year the Chinese economy becomes the second-largest advertising market in the world," Sir Martin says. In fact, if you take into account the purchasing power of the Chinese people, the country probably already is the second-largest advertising market.

When you stir in not just the European football championships that year but also the US presidential elections, Sir Martin is betting on 2008 being a bumper year. "Mrs Clinton will run and there will probably be a lot of political spending. The president, even though he is not up for re-election, will still want the economy to be in good shape," he argues. He is noted for the breadth and the certainty of his forecasting, not to mention his Delphic utterances.

The WPP chief executive, who studied economics at Oxford, is convinced that economies, and therefore the marketing services and the media they help to fund, are dominated by the political cycle - with help from the major sporting events. But if 2008 is going to be a bumper year, what about the years in between - in particular, 2006? Do we have to endure another two fallow years to get a good year?

Sir Martin's crystal ball has the answer. Under his theory, last year should have been the weakest in the four-year cycle. In fact, overall, he believes that 2005 has been a very good year, although this will come as a bit of a surprise to a number of struggling newspaper executives in the UK.

This year should, however, be noticeably better than last, with little boosts coming from the Winter Olympics in Turin and the mid-term congressional elections in the US. "Then, 2007 should also be a good year because of the run-up to Beijing, and then we will start to see political spending picking up in the US in the latter part of the year," Sir Martin says.

"So, all in all, a pretty good environment," insists the WPP chief executive, who is better known for his pessimism, or as he would have it, realism.

"It's not in my DNA to be too optimistic. It's a genetic defect," Sir Martin says, quickly adding that there is always the threat from terrorism and the danger of high oil prices. But he is still optimistic enough to drop all his talk of the past few years about advertising revenue falling down the side of steep-sided bathtubs.
Certainly it has been a good time for WPP, which brings together four major international advertising agencies, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey Global - and a pretty lucrative time for Sir Martin himself.

In October, WPP announced that revenues for the third quarter, including acquisitions, had risen by 24 per cent to £1.3bn, although the growth of 9.7 per cent in the UK was well below the WPP average. Despite the relative weakness in the UK, the company is still on track to meet its 14.8 per cent profit margin target for 2005 under UK rules.

No such small percentages apply to Sir Martin's personal remuneration. He generated the usual headlines when his record-breaking £52m payout for last year was revealed.

Sir Martin claims not to recognise the number, and insists that there must be an element of double counting involved. He is certainly not paid such sums as salary, but rolled-up incentive schemes linked to the performance of the company matured and could no longer be rolled over.

"I think there were two plans over a 10-year period, which I had rolled forward: my racing accumulator. I actually put my money where my mouth is. I couldn't take them any further, the rules didn't allow that," says Sir Martin, who founded WPP 20 years ago after being finance director at Saatchi & Saatchi.

He has always taken the advice of his father and invested in the company he knows best - the one he created. Not only have the incentive schemes rolled away, but Sir Martin also no longer has a long-term contract with WPP, and can be sacked by the WPP board at any time without compensation.

But what does a man do when forced by unfortunate rules to accept a jackpot that would put most national lotteries to shame? "Very little," is the disappointing but unsurprising answer.

"There is no yacht, no gold-plated Rolls-Royce. My interests are very focused on the business. I don't have a massive wine collection or art collection. I have one or two nice houses or apartments, but that's it. Sorry to disappoint," he says.

Just before Christmas, his wealth did receive a significant dent when he had to sell WPP shares worth £12m to help fund a UK record £29m divorce settlement. One of the reasons cited by his wife Sandra for the breakdown of their 33-year marriage was Sir Martin's obsession with work. He is indeed totally focused on the business - some would say virtually wedded to it - and he likes nothing better than viewing the daily returns from his far-flung businesses around the world.

And there is certainly no sign of expensive art in the modest London headquarters of WPP, down a cobbled alley off Farm Street in Mayfair. There is plenty of decoration on the walls of the WPP boardroom, but it is of a very particular nature - blow-ups of the quirky illustrations from the prize-winning WPP annual report. The cover of last year's report features a hare leaping prodigiously high in the direction of a distant star. The image doesn't require a great deal of deconstruction. Another depicts the scale of WPP's never-ending spate of acquisitions, with an apple sliced open to show the names of WPP's many corporate manifestations - from advertising and marketing to public relations, design and market research.

Sir Martin is very proud of his annual report. The League of American Communications Professionals placed it ninth out of 1,435 annual reports, and gave it the Platinum Award for being the "most engaging".

Not all of Sir Martin's activities would have qualified for platinum awards last year. JWT, which famously won HSBC's global business account, did the same at the Korean electronics group Samsung - only to see it move to rivals Leo Burnett in less than a year. How could such an embarrassing thing have happened? "You'll have to ask Samsung. Obviously we are disappointed by what happened, but we haven't given up," Sir Martin says. "You never know what is going to happen in life. Unfortunately you lose business as well as win business."

There was, however, another significant loss during the year. The resignation of WPP's creative director, Neil French, was accepted after he apparently described women working in the advertising industry as "crap", and "wimps" who want, after a while, to go "and suckle something".