Sir Martin Sorrell: 'Our Game Is Over'

There are few more global characters than Sir Martin Sorrell. The co-founder and CEO of WPP, the world's largest communications company, Sir Martin presides over a company that has 153,000 people working in 2,400 offices in 107 countries. So when Sir Martin says, of the West, that "our game is over" and the decline of the US and Europe is "inevitable" and "irreversible," we need to sit up and listen very carefully.

And that's exactly what Sir Martin told me when I interviewed him at WPP's annual Stream conference just outside Athens. Saying that the west is "focused on our navels," Sorrell argued that power in the world is shifting not only east, to China and India, but also south and south-east to Latin America and Africa. Indeed, Sir Martin would advise a young American or Western European to go and live in dynamic economies like Brazil, Vietnam or Indonesia in order to fully realize themselves in today's global economy.

So what's the solution to what Sorrell calls the "scary" economic crisis in the west? Sir Martin has three answers: leadership, leadership, leadership. "We have to have leadership," he insists, if we are to compete with the strong, well managed economies outside the US and Europe.

 

Comments

[zt54]

08:41 AM on 09/20/2011

Cannot have a leadership without a game plan.

The game plan is the Constitution! We have drifted away into an endless morass of failed ideas and leftist planning.

President Obama lacks of an internal compass that is based on the Constitution. Vote him out in 2012. Never, never vote in somebody with no leadership credentials again.

[Draekia]

02:10 AM on 09/21/2011

Huh? Okay, I'm sure you have someone else' opinion rattling around in there, but maybe you should start with saying something of substance?

[zt54]

02:38 PM on 09/21/2011

Try reading it again, Try reading it again, try reading it again.

[clearasmud]

07:01 AM on 09/20/2011

Automatiom, Robotics, Cheap Wages in other Countries, A Housing Market that will take 15 years to recover (25 million homes on market, and more coming), Wealth Inequality, Regressive Taxation, 16% Real Unemployment, Republicans.

These are our problems, and the reason why America still has a long way to fall. The only money left to put into the economy is held by the Wealthy and the Corporations. This money must flow back to the center, to government which can prioritize and redistribute in the form of job creation and for the basices of survival for those who need it.

America must become a Socialist Country, where the benefits of America flow to all; Or, the benefits can keep flowing to the top 2% and America will have people starving in the streets. There is simply not enough money for the Wealthy and Corporations to maintain their statues quo without millions of Americans suffering greatly.

The time is here that we can soon begin calculating the price of a yacht in American Lives.

[zt54]

08:30 AM on 09/20/2011

b s

[KPinSEA]

03:57 AM on 09/20/2011

By all means, let's try to take more examples from corrupt oligarchies where elites are having great success lining their pockets and oppressing most working people.

Inspiring.

[nixthetrix]

10:30 PM on 09/19/2011

Pessimism from the ubers ? Maybe your game is over but ours is just beginning . The pendulum swings both ways and cares not for the poeple involved . Bummer , dude .

[liltrix]

09:37 PM on 09/19/2011

Time for Americans to reinvent themselves again. While there are advancements in technology, we cannot rely on that alone to dig us out of the hole we've created for ourselves. Other countries are going to prosper because they are still on the capitalist and mechanistic model of economics and production. In other words, They have the natural resources and extremely cheap resources to exploit by the big corporations. Chasing Capitalism around the world isn't going to help us. Being creative and inventive in this country according to our needs will be. And we have a lot of needs to fulfill that have gone neglected for the last 30 years. Fear of being second best in the world is not going to help us. Being resourceful and investing in our own country will help us. Now if we could only get the self destructive and nihilistic conservatives on board to investing in our own country.

[TimeMaster]

07:22 PM on 09/19/2011

The West has had good leadership, it's just that they have been too short-sighted in recognizing the consequences of their actions in the long-term. Some were just plain ignorant or did not face reality. Take the case of the U.S. automobile industry and lack of vision in making changes that would benefit the industry and the consumer. They continued making large size of vehicles and shunned technology for creating a sustainable future. It's almost too late and other developing countries will take advantage of this lack of leadership that still exists today. Most consumer facing companies are just as bad with the fact that they only see profit growth through more expensive products in the developed countries. They don't understand the mutual effect that long-term unemployment created by all companies would place those in the developed region in the same boat as the developing regions in terms of price consciousness. Game over and done.

[rafey]

02:37 PM on 09/19/2011

Many of us have been saying likewise for the past 5 years but in fact, others have been more precient when American began to dis-invest in itself some 30 years ago and finally pushed all investiment outside the continent. The shift isnt a fact of nature but of the disinterest in comitting ourselves to reinvesting in remodeling our infrastructure and adapting to change via education, engineering, literacy and numeracy. This disinterest derived from the encouragement great profiits made available through the greedy establishment of the 1980s and unleashedin a gigantic manner through the deregulation of the past decade. No. Sorrell is correct. It is too late to go back. We are finished as a nation, it is true and our current policies being implimented from the far right (a continuation of our past mistakes) will turn us into the next Greece, rather soon I should think.

[E V]

04:36 PM on 09/19/2011

A huge part of the problem in my opinion is that the generation that is in charge is largely unwilling to embrace the technology and how it is changing everything. I had a conversation with my father regarding jobs recently and he refused to beleive that technology was eliminating low wage jobs - at all. I offered examples of the post office, movie rental stores, Borders, and even ATMs and self check out at groceries. He refused to believe it and even dimissed the idea that math and science should be pushed in schools. I hear this from a lot of people his age.

They seem to regard the idea that technology will play an increasingly huge role in our futures as the result of watching too many movies or reading too many sci-fi books.

Unfortunately, the further we lag behind other countries - the more unlikely it is that we will ever catch up as technology advances exponentially.

[clearasmud]

08:02 AM on 09/20/2011

I don't find your experience with your father as the norm. Being an older Boomer, and with friends of the same age, it is quite apparent to us that technology has created an America that will require less and less workers. Automation, Robots, Communication, have replaced jobs, and will replace an even higher % of jobs in the future. America has two choices. Continue with the Kleptocracy of the Right. Or convert to an America where the People own the Resources and the Technology, and not the top 400 Families.

If nothing changes the Wealthy will continue to amass more money as the technology is in their hands. The People will continue to decline, because of the Wealth Transfer and continuing loss of jobs to Technology. Their are several Sci Fi movies out there that show the type of country we are headed to if nothing changes.