Kevin Roberts exits with swipe at ‘cold and timid souls’ who attacked him for sexist stance
Controversial Saatchi & Saatchi boss Kevin Roberts has left his role with what appears to be a final swipe at the “cold and timid souls” who attacked him.
Photographer Juan Carrera | Source: saatchikevin.com
Roberts – global chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi and chief coach of holding company Publicis Groupe – was forced to bring forward his retirement to September 1 after his claims in an interview that “the fucking debate is all over” and women in adland are happier in non-executive roles drew widespread criticism and led to his suspension.
Among the targets of his attack was this year’s Mumbrella360 keynote speaker and diversity campaigner Cindy Gallop, who he claimed was “making a lot of stuff up to create a profile”.
Gallop has been a longtime critic of the shortage of women in the senior ranks of the advertising industry globally.
Since announcing his exit, Roberts – whose career included a seven year stint running Lion Nathan in Australia and New Zealand – spent the last month staying silent on his usual social media channels.
But he has now returned to blogging with two posts, including one sharing a quotation on why critics don’t count.
In the first – headed “time to say goodbye” and marking his last day with the network – he wrote:
Last year I announced that May 1 2017 would be the day I would retire from the Groupe (20 years in this industry as a Network CEO is somewhat unusual) – and Saatchi & Saatchi was now in Robert Senior’s capable hands.
This plan was jolted by a controversial piece of communication by me a few weeks ago and I decided to bring my retirement forward by eight months, to today.
I leave proud of the progress Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis Groupe made over this period and grateful for the many friends I’ve made along the way, colleagues, partners and clients.
Roberts then followed up by posting a quotation from former US president Theodore Roosevelt which appeared to be aimed at those who had attacked him, seeming to suggest that he preferred to have failed while “daring greatly” rather than being one of “those cold and timid souls” who neither knew victory nor defeat”.
A friend, Nick Miaritis reminded me of Theodore Roosevelt’s wise words.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
On his blog, Roberts said that he intended to focus on his Red Rose Consulting venture and “provide advice and counsel on marketing, creative thinking and Leadership”.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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In my experience the more a person uses ‘I’ when writing, or speaking, the more of a wanker they are. I’m told the key for the letter I on Kevin’s PC has the letter worn off. One of his staff when told ‘there’s no I in team replied ” no, but there is a ‘u’ in cunt.” He went on to do worthwhile things. Kevin on the other hand just went on.
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What a walker. He won’t be missed, nor remembered for anything great. Goodbye!
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While reading Kev’s farewell my eyeroll was so intense that the retinas detached.
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Also Eddie everywhere’s favourite quote. A good if overly hackneyed one…
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Everything that is despised in advertising is in that picture. As an industry, we are better off without him.
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Imagine deciding to be photographed over a fuse ball table – one of the boys?
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Well everyone has put the boots in and Kevin has gone. Although there are male and female supporters and champions of gender diversity, there is still a strong undercurrent that sees behavior like Kevin’s to be perfectly acceptable.
It’s not a new issue. It keeps raring its ugly head every few months. The perpetrators are often named and shamed, there’s a whole lot of talk and sprays of abuse then the whole thing goes away again. The same applies to the issues of ageism and cultural discrimination.
Nothing much changes as there is a total lack of willingness to change. In an industry preoccupied with creating ‘vanilla’ stereotypes of consumers, it seems doubly dedicated to maintaining a ‘vanilla’ stereotype of itself.
Most agency photographs clearly show a large number of woman of a certain age. Men and women over the age of 40 are becoming rare as hens teeth, as solid experience has a use-by date. Cultural diversity is also rare. The agency diversity mix is far from being a reflection of the diversity of consumers. Is it any wonder that so many campaigns end up being more cringe worthy representations of the agencies themselves?
To maintain the ‘vanilla’ stereotype, agencies appear to be endorsing a program of regular cleansing. Solving the issues that cause such great contention appears to be totally beyond the ability of most agencies as leaving it the way it is, helps maintain the stereotype and it suits agency business models.
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Fuck him for having an actual opinion.
We must only listen to the mainstream and not deviate.
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I am yet to meet a truly great person who talked about how truly great they were…
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The truly inspirational person has the character to reflect and admit that they were wrong, and that they are going to change. That’s getting up and going on after a set back, not saying everyone around you is wrong and banging on about how marvellous you are.
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As a woman I’m really just happy to simply speak for myself instead of letting someone I don’t know speak on my behalf.
I enjoy taking an active executive role and making a positive difference to the business of my clients and that of my own team. I know that others like me are only more determined by the commentary to show that we are capable of making our own mark, in whatever form and shape that takes.
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Really, he should have gone years ago for reasons of incompetence – the network was a mess and he was off with the clouds pushing ridiculous passion pieces instead of driving client and agency business.
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Trolls 1, Honesty 0. A hollow victory for a tranche of “vanilla” minds.
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Sadly two things don’t mean the same thing… Kevin may well have done some great work and it would be a shame for anyone not to be acknowledged for good where it is due. I don’t know the contribution he made, nor the legacy left behind but surely he would not be in the position he was without genuine merit and results. Some mistakes don’t define the whole of us.
We can easily get caught up in the emotion of this and comments like @AdiousIdiot and @Really …..too far, people. That’s abusive stuff.
That quote is beautiful and seems out of place here, but like all of us Kevin Roberts probably did his best, with what he was capable. Misguided, and a legacy to an old world where this kind of thinking was OK, probably.
Kevin’s biggest mistake is not in what he said, but the fact that there is a genuine undercurrent of belief that fuelled gender bias and his company’s statistics around gender diversity reflect this. Kudos to the parent company for making a stance.
Sadly, Kevin, the thing you messed up is not owning it and learning from it. There are no stats to support your position, no reality, and when caught out there was nothing but the comment that you ‘Failed fast’ – that’s not the same as a genuine apology and to make good in the industry.
We all might make mistakes at times and say things that are not quite as we mean them, but at the end of the day the kind of people we are and the history of our behaviour is what really matters. Nothing indicated that Kevin was anything more than a reflection of the words he said and has not learned anything from this. Let’s trust that the company really can use this to make change and to step up their support of gender equality. Good things come from these kinds of problems.
Let’s not shoot the man, but the behaviour though… please. Anyone who gets heated about such issues in our industry could take this on board.
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Oh boo hoo! It’s all everyone else’s fault…
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