Frenemies Page 33

  With agencies being squeezed by clients and competitors, Ascential eased their financial burden by announcing major changes for the 2018 Cannes festival. Instead of eight days, the festival would conclude after five; the number of rewards and thus submission costs would be reduced; delegate passes, which had cost more than 4,000 euros, would be slashed to 900 euros; working with the city of Cannes, hotel prices would be frozen and more than fifty restaurants would offer delegates less expensive fixed-price menus. A smiling Arthur Sadoun said Publicis would be happy to return in 2019. And Martin Sorrell said he was pleased Ascential had agreed to reduce some of what he considered bloated costs, but wanted to see additional changes he chose not to specify.

  And what about Michael Kassan’s future?

  His attitude toward retirement was similar to Martin Sorrell’s. “It will never happen,” says his wife, Ronnie. “He can’t sit home. He needs to be doing something.”

  In truth, Kassan was even more ebullient than normal; the sale of MediaLink lifted a giant burden from his shoulders. I caught a glimpse of that burden the first time I tried to quiz Kassan about his legal travails in California. He insisted he did not want me to record or take notes at this session. It was late in the fall of 2016, months before the 2017 sale of MediaLink. We were in his glassed office with the doors closed and no staff present. He asked that there be no phone call interruptions. Salads waited on the small round table in his office, but he did not eat. As he started recounting the events of three decades ago, he started to sob. He was speechless. With the ALL GOOD sign above his head, he confessed to being terribly self-conscious, not certain if people knew of his past and fearful that they did. Not having spoken of this in many years, this buoyant man found it hard to open up. We agreed to confront the subject on the record at a later date. If I wanted to raise it in an e-mail, he asked that I send any communication on the matter to his personal Gmail so it would be private.

  In the course of interviews over the next few months, he relived what happened to him in California and its courts, his conviction for embezzlement, his suspension from the practice of law, and the California State Supreme Court’s acknowledgment that he made a mistake but did not take money from investors to enrich himself, and his vindication in his battle with the State Bar of California. But always he wondered: Did people know? Did they think he had been an embezzler? Did they whisper about his past?

  Some did. “Michael Kassan embodies the contradictions of advertising,” one senior marketing executive who knows him well confides after being promised anonymity. “Those in the business have no definable expertise. We’re an insecure profession. Unlike lawyers or those in finance or journalism, we don’t have advertising degrees. You make commercials and you’re a star. Here we are in the middle of a kickback controversy, with complaints about a lack of transparency, with the ANA hiring a detective agency to investigate, yet the industry is advised by a man who was once drummed out of business, disbarred, for similar crimes.” This executive did not know the specifics of Kassan’s past, and much of what he thought he knew was dead wrong, but the whispers were exactly what aroused Michael Kassan’s paranoia.

  Weeks after the February sale of MediaLink, Kassan sat at a corner table at Scalinatella and opened up about why he now felt relief: “Two weeks ago I skied down the mountain in Deer Valley and it’s the first time I didn’t have a rearview mirror in a long time. Ascential looked at the record and said, ‘OK.’”

  Kassan felt comfortable. He believed that Ascential did their due diligence and concluded that MediaLink was not a one-man operation, that he had built a sturdy company. Humbly he said, “It’s easier to have this conversation today because of the sale. I needed the validation. It’s emotional. OK, take a breath.”

  He took a sip from his dry martini and said he was fortified by the four thousand supportive e-mails he received after the sale announcement. Before, whenever he thought of writing a book the title he had in mind was “Confessions of a Jewish Prince. Now it’s No Rearview Mirror.” He smiled broadly.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Given that I’ve written about the media and communications for The New Yorker since 1992 and before that as an author, some friends wondered why I was drawn to write a book about advertising and marketing. The idea, pace Watergate, was to “follow the money.” Without ad dollars, most old or new media would starve.

  When I began reporting the book in the late spring of 2015, I had no fixed ideas or sweeping conclusions. And three years later, while I offer no sweeping bromides I do offer a picture of an industry convulsed by profound change. The reporting encompassed approximately 450 interviews, all recorded. These interviews are woven throughout this book, though readers will find few Trumpian personal pronouns, à la Reacting to my brilliant question, he/she said . . .

  The introduction to this book is, however, written in the first person. I blame my editor, Scott Moyers, for this. Scott said it was important for me to draw a link between my subject and the larger context, offering a sense of the reporting I have pursued for the past three decades. Scott is special. One hears constant complaints about editors at publishing houses who don’t do more than a cursory edit, overwhelmed as they often are by a steady rush of new titles. I don’t know where Scott finds the time to so fully engage, but he does. I signed on with him when my longtime editor at Random House, Jason Epstein, retired. And I left with Scott and Ann Godoff when they departed for Penguin. I am happy to say we are all back together after Penguin merged with Random House.

  While I’m at it, I’d also like to thank, in addition to conductor Ann Godoff, the other members of her orchestra who helped harmonize this effort, including Ann’s immediate boss, Madeline McIntosh, president of Penguin Publishing Group; fastidious copy editor Jane Cavolina and her supervisor, Victoria Klose. In the preproduction phase, Christopher Richards and Beena Kamlani, assisted by Mia Council, are the capable editors who were entrusted to help make the publication trains run on time. Their allies in the marketing department were Matt Boyd and Caitlin O’Shaughnessy. As we neared the June 2018 publication date, publicity director Sarah Hutson sprang into action. I had worked with Sarah starting several books ago when she joined Penguin. Her rise to the top of her department is no surprise. She is ably fortified by Colleen Boyle.

  My agent and friend, Sloan Harris of ICM, weighed in with invaluable editorial advice. A salute to my friend Terry McDonell, a member of the American Magazine Hall of Fame, who volunteered his deft editing eye to an early draft of this book. All the people who had a hand in making this book better, I thank. Any mistakes are, of course, mine.

  A word about the people in the industry: I would have written a very different book without the array of individuals who generously made themselves available for multiple interviews and allowed me to view some of their sausage making. A special hat tip to Michael Kassan, who dared open his life and also kept me both informed and laughing. His team at MediaLink, especially Wenda Millard, were always helpful, including Martin Rothman and Vilna Joven. I am grateful for the time and brainpower offered by four of the smartest people in the advertising/marketing business: Martin Sorrell and Irwin Gotlieb at WPP, Rishad Tobaccowala at Publicis, and Randall Rothenberg of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Carolyn Everson and members of her Facebook team like Adam Isserlis defied the emerging, and often accurate, Facebook stereotype: they were not opaque. Les Moonves was generous with his time, as were his colleagues at CBS. So, too, were Beth Comstock and Linda Boff and their GE colleagues, and Anne Finucane and her compatriots at Bank of America. Ditto Bob Greenberg of R/GA, Keith Weed of Univision, and Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerMedia, among others whose many names would swell this brief acknowledgment into a tome. The stream of news from a couple of dozen daily posts from MediaPost and its indefatigable editor in chief, Joe Mandese, and from industry bibles such as the online Ad Age and its print parent, Advertising Age, offered valuable daily updates on the industry
they cover.

  Several reader alerts: Although this book most often uses the shorthand “advertising” rather than joining together advertising and marketing, I do so because advertising is a more familiar term and uttering both terms together is a mouthful. Advertising and marketing, in fact, are two sides of the same coin. They take different forms—an IM alert or a supermarket product coupon versus a TV ad—but each vies to sell something to the consumer.

  Unless a publication, study, or book is cited in the text and footnoted, the quotes were given to the author. Thus, I saw no need to include page-by-page author’s notes, since it would have repetitiously reported, This was told to the author on such and such a date. And with Google search at our fingertips, if a report or news story is not footnoted I saw no need to add thick pages of notes when the study or news source is cited in the text.

  A reader might also ask: Why does this book spend so much more time on digital giant Facebook rather than that even larger giant, Google? Blame me. Because I extensively reported on Google for a 2009 book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It. I wanted to mix it up.

  Unless otherwise explained, the ages of those described in these pages match the year when they first appear in this book.

  Finally, the idea for this book was sparked by my wife, Amanda “Binky” Urban. If she needed another career after literary agent, she would be a brilliant editor.

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