The British Admen Are Coming!

By Stephen Koepp

In this era of the entrepreneur, nearly everyone and his brother are thinking big. But Charles and Maurice Saatchi, London's most successful admen, are thinking gargantuan. These brothers always have. Maurice, 41, once likened his ambition to a giant iron flywheel that almost no one could stop. For his part, Charles, 42, has "an insatiable desire to own and dominate everything," according to a former colleague. Their attitude gets results. The advertising agency that the brothers started in 1970 has mushroomed into the largest in Europe.

Their appetite unspoiled, the brothers now want Saatchi & Saatchi (1985 billings: $3 billion) to become the largest ad agency in the world. Last week the company agreed to pay an estimated $100 million to acquire New York City's Backer & Spielvogel (billings: $400 million), a fast-growing agency best known for its Miller Lite ads. The acquisition will make Saatchi & Saatchi the world's third ranking ad agency, behind Tokyo's Dentsu ($3.62 billion) and New York City-based Young & Rubicam ($3.57 billion), according to Advertising Age, a trade journal.

The Saatchis have their eyes on Washington as well as Madison Avenue. They are negotiating a deal to buy the lobbying firm that former White House Staffer Michael Deaver started only eleven months ago. Deaver, who has set his price at $18 million, would continue to run the firm. That may give the Saatchis, who are already public relations advisers to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a solid link to the Reagan Administration.

The sons of an Iraqi Jew who arrived in Britain during World War II and started a successful textile business, the Saatchis opened their own shop while both were still in their 20s. The two ad brats created a sensation during their first year in business with a widely reprinted ad for Britain's Family Planning Association that pictured a young man with a bulging abdomen and asked, "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?" The Saatchis aroused London's sleepy advertising industry with ads that ran the gamut from funny to blunt to dazzling. Their celebrated 90-sec. TV spot for British Airways seemed to show the entire island of Manhattan coming in for a landing at London's Heathrow Airport, a metaphor for the millions of passengers that the airline carries across the Atlantic.

Though their company is highly visible, the Saatchi brothers seldom speak to journalists and almost never pose for photographs. The reclusive Charles drives to his office each day accompanied only by his pet Schnauzer and often spends his lunch break playing chess. "Clients never meet him, and most employees wouldn't recognize him," says one former colleague. He and his wife Doris spend much of their spare time amassing a noted collection of modern art.

The more outgoing Maurice has excelled at courting outside financing for the company's rapid growth. Until the Saatchis came along, London's stuffy financial community shunned advertising agencies as unreliable investments. The brothers changed all that by posting an unbroken pattern of 50% annual growth after they went public in 1975. Last week the company announced a $600 million stock sale, the third largest in British history. With all that spending money, the snowballing Saatchi & Saatchi will undoubtedly be growing even faster.

With reporting by Mary Cronin/London