It's not about being big, but the best: John Wren

By: Anuradha SenGupta/ Forbes India

The President and CEO of Omnicom, was in India in November to acquire the controlling stake in Anil Ambani's Mudra Group. He has been working overtime to make up for a slow start in India and emerging markets around the world

John Wren
Age: 59
Education: B.A. and M.S. from Adelphi University, New York
Career: Entered advertising in 1984 as EVP, Needham Harper Worldwide. Part of the team that founded Omnicom in 1986. Appointed CEO of Omnicom's Diversified Agency Services in 1990. Appointed President of Omnicom in 1996, CEO in 1997.
Interests: Golf, reading, spending time with family


What does the majority stake in Mudra signify? Will it unlock Omnicom's growth here in India?
It's a very important step for Omnicom. We owned a very small stake in the company and for 15 of those 20 years we have always wanted to do more and the stars and the moon weren't properly aligned. They are now and we had the opportunity. There was no special event or trigger which caused it to happen, just a natural evolution of things that were able to reach an arrangement and to move to majority. For us, that is very important because in India where, I would have to admit, I have competitors that are larger than I am right now. That's not my life-long ambition, I would change that in short order!

I would have to say that out of 100 important brands that constitute Omnicom, I probably only have eight of them successfully deployed in India today. It's my ambition to bring as many of those brands as quickly as I can to the marketplace. In order to do that in a service company, even if you have great relationships with other companies around the world, you don't want to offer them a service unless it's of an equal strength and quality as they would find in other markets.

What Mudra represents is a great company, and Madhukar and his leadership team have done a great job of hiring, developing [and] educating a number of people and they have a very good reputation. I think from a creative product point of view, it's very consistent with the culture of my companies in other parts of the world. It sends a message that we are here, we are going to be here a lot, we are going to bring as many important brands as we can to service our clients and it's just terribly important.

Anil Ambani has been offered a position on Omnicom's International Advisory Council. There are reports that he was offered a board position on Omnicom, during the course of taking majority control. I think it's unlikely, but would you clarify that?
It didn't come up in this transaction, at this point. I believe in the past, and it was casual in the years past, I have suggested that if he was at all interested, I needed as much advice in Asia and markets as possible. I don't know where that came from, but that was not part of this. You will have to speak to him. I don't think we brought it up because I don't think he would want it. He is still my partner [and] having his counsel and advice is great. So, I am very happy in the way this all came about.

You say that there is no trigger, but it's a long patient vigil that Omnicom has kept, isn't it? Hasn't it taken the past two years to get to this point of majority control?
Yes, but it has all been subtle. I have reflected on it a lot and said, 'hmm! what happened here?' and I can't point to one thing. I think over the last five years, there has been an increase in activity and other subsidiaries. It's probably the changing landscape.

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