IRWIN GOTLIEB: Lunch at Michael's with Media's Most Powerful Person

On Tuesday October 21st media industry legend and allaround good guy Irwin Gotlieb will be honored by the IRTS at the Hall of Mentorship dinner along with BET ChairmanCEO Debra L Lee I first met Irwin when he was at Benton ampamp Bowles in the early 1980s and I39m proud to have him as a friend In 2005 Irwin and I met for Lunch at Michael39s My commentary is below Tomorrow we39ll republish Irwin39s futurelooking business observations from 2005 For details on attending the IRTS Hall of Mentorship which I highly recommend contact Joyce Tudryn at joycetudrynirtsorg or httpirtsfoundationorghallofmentorshiphtml Many many years ago Grey Advertising executive Dr Larry Dekkinger was reminded of a riddle quotThere are twelve balls Eleven have the exact same weight and one is a different weight How do you identify that one ball in only three movesquot Dekkinger unable to recall the solution called his agency colleague at SSCampampB Advertising Hal Miller who turned to his young associate Irwin Gotlieb and instructed him to solve it It took nearly a full day but Irwin finally came back with a solution to the nearimpossible riddle The story tells a lot about Irwin but it39s even more telling that he still carries the solution in his wallet just in case someone poses the riddle again That39s classic Irwin Gotlieb who controls 54 billion in global advertising budgets for WPP39s GroupM and is arguably the most powerful man in television and advertisingRemember the television series The Naked City Each episode ended with the statement quotThere are eight million stories in The Naked City This has been one of themquot Irwin Gotlieb has at least eight million stories that could easily be compiled into a history of the ad business This is just a few of themIrwin is a graduate of the most distinguished training ground in the ad business the old Benton ampamp Bowles ad agency media department whose alumni represent a who39s who of legendary industry characters Irwin tells the story of the late Peter Hyman who had a reputation as an uncanny analyst of network TV ratings Hyman Irwin explains was in a secret relationship with the secretary of thenNBC programming chief Fred Silverman Every day at 6 AM Silverman39s secretary through a source at Nielsen established by Silverman would receive early Nielsen ratings from the previous day and then call Silverman with the information She would also tell Hyman who would lay bets on the previous days with network salespeople gaining his reputation as a ratings guruMeyer Berlow another B ampamp B media executive went on to gain fame as head of the America Online sales team that generated billions in revenues during the gogo years Internet boom His noholdsbarred style was evident Irwin recalls one late cold and snowy winter night in the 1970s when he and Berlow left the office with Marc Goldstein and the more junior Steve Farella There were no taxis available and Berlow suggested a simple strategy throw Farella in front of a taxi forcing it to stop and then takingover the taxi to deliver Farella to a hospital and the others to their homesIn the 1970s Irwin was working at SSCampampB which desperately needed a computer system to compete in the network TV media planning and buying business Irwin spent two days discussing the requirements with the company39s computer consultants who proposed a four phase delivery process taking three or more years for completion at an quotobscenequot cost Frustrated Irwin found the Fortran manual and began working on the system at noon on Friday By noon Monday phase one had been completed and two weeks later the full system was built When he decided to reimplement the system in a newer easier to maintain programming language the process took seven months but Irwin laughs quotI also had a day jobquotIrwin misses the ability to quotstart a project work on it and see it through to completion It39s a tradeoffquot he says quotIf you want a scalable business you need to be able to delegate and rely on peoplequot Ironically expanding to a global 54 billion empire with 12000 employees was never Irwin39s goal In 1985 when Benton ampamp Bowles merged with D39Arcy MacManus ampamp Masius Agency combined TV billings were less than 250 million and there were 30 people in his national broadcast department Even today though Irwin tries to enthuse his staff with the same attitude with which he attacked the challenge of building a computer system from scratch quotI operate on the premise our administrative jobs are done on down time During business hours our job is figuring out how to innovate and position ourselves and our clients for the next five yearsquotIt39s not just the deep intelligence the Zenlike cunning from his Japanese upbringing the technological wizardry that would make him the perfect Harry Potter character but it39s his selfdeprecating humor blended with appropriate hubris that make Irwin such a compelling industry characterIt wasn39t easy convincing Irwin to lunch at Michael39s because he quotlikes to go where others don39tquot and because he39s an admitted sushi addict who requires the raw fish quotoften enough so I don39t get the shakesquot After lunches at Kuruma Zushi on West 47th Street and Milos Restaurant we finally made it recently to Michael39s but be warned Irwin rarely smiles for photos quotI need to look demonicquot he points outIrwin39s favorite anecdotes are about the people he has grown up with in the ad business and at the top of the list is his mentor Werner Michel the longtime SSCampampB and Bozell Advertising executive who admits to being 95 years old but has most likely crossed the century mark Michel is a doctor of musicology who conducted a Vienna orchestra is an Austrian Jewish national who became head of the Voice of America worked for Dumont CBS and ABC networks launched The Edge of Night and worked closely with William F Paley Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite39s and remains one of Cronkite39s best friends Irwin and his wife Liz recently had dinner with Werner and Rosemary Michel but Irwin asked if they could make it an early evening since the Gotliebs were jet lagged after two weeks traveling in the Orient Rosemary agreed to accommodate the quotyoung folksquot pointing out she and Werner were feeling fine after two weeks exploring the Balkans quotHe could always oneup mequot Irwin says offering one of his rare smilesTo contact Irwin Gotlieb send an email to jmjackmyerscom and it will be forwardedCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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IRWIN GOTLIEB: Lunch at Michael's with Media's Most Powerful Person

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