PETER SCOTT OF ENGINE DISCUSSES HIS LOVE OF ART
7th June 2010By Olenka
Cork Street in London’s Mayfair, a stone’s throw from Savile Row and the Royal Academy, is world famous for its art galleries, selling everything from Rodin sculptures to Egyptian artifacts — and standing among a selection of vibrant paintings by Sally Gabori, an 83-year-old indigenous Australian, Peter Scott is not even trying to hide his enthusiasm.
“It was a pig carved out of wood and sliced so you could move the head and the whole body,” the 63-year-old said of his latest purchase. “The pig had four bright red shoes on — dancing shoes, high-heeled shoes — and it was like, wow, I’ve got to have it.”
Art can do that to someone, it can capture the imagination, it’s why billionaires battle in auction rooms — albeit by phone or proxy — for a Matisse or a Henry Moore. And it is why busy, modern businessmen can be found scouring galleries when they are not securing deals.
Like Mr Scott. Art, he says, cheers him up. He buys it as “an expression” rather than a way of “putting a bank statement on the wall” (often a criticism of those said to splash out on works as a financial rather than an emotional investment). An abstract painting of the Pyrenees given to him in 1980 began his obsession. Now he snaps up pieces costing from £1,500 (and rather more), so long as they “appeal to your heart”.
Perhaps it is not such a surprise to find an advertising man revealing a love of art. Charles Saatchi comes to mind immediately, co-founder of Saatchi & Saatchi, owner of the Saatchi Gallery. Mr Scott is the industry grandee at the head of Engine Group, a five-year-old advertising and media mini-conglomerate.
He is best-known, perhaps, as a co-founder of Wight Collins Rutherford Scott in 1979, one of the great names of Soho advertising and creator of the “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label” line. And Engine is an heir to that era. Created in 2005 after Mr Scott bought WCRS back from Havas, it has 14 partner companies including WCRS. Each has a speciality, ranging from advertising, design, PR, media planning and sponsorship. There are also digital and social-media start-ups.
Located under one roof, Engine caters for clients who want to sell products using a range of media companies. It is a far cry from the Mad Men-style industry in which Mr Scott grew up, where ad men turned their noses up at “non-creative” sectors such as media planning.
“In the 1990s, you had big holding companies with dozens of competing brands,” Mr Scott said. “That was fine when you had a dominant mass media, but clients now want a much more flexible approach.” The model appears to be working, with 60 per cent of clients using two or more Engine companies. Revenue at the group, which is 78 per cent employee-owned, rose by 53 per cent in 2008, the latest accounting year. Mr Scott predicts it will increase to £100 million in 2012.
Set against that is a pre-tax loss of £1 million for 2008. Mr Scott attributed that to writing off the cost of a lease. Earnings before interest, taxes or other exceptional items were about £12 million in 2008 and 2009, he says.
This time last year, you suspect, Mr Scott’s love of art, its ability to cheer him up, was particularly important. His “darkest days” came in the first few months of 2009: “On a daily basis you didn’t know if your clients were going to be there. You couldn’t see your normal six months ahead, you couldn’t see until the end of the week until it was Friday. I thought we might lose 40 per cent of our business. But we were flat last year.”
As one of Britain’s largest independent communications companies, Mr Scott wants to expand Engine globally. He is opening an American operation in the second half of this year and talks enthusiastically about “micro-networks” in China, Brazil, India, Germany, France and Spain. “If we’re going to pursue this, we have to believe we can build revenue of £325 million a year. It’ll take some years to put into place. As a private company we don’t have unlimited access to funds.”
Last year Mr Scott’s attempts to raise £50 million from private equity groups stalled amid tightened credit markets. An initial public offering for this year has been pushed back to 2012 at the earliest. “There’s no doubt we need access to capital if we’re going to fulfil our vision, but there’s still some way to go before you begin to see ratings that attract us. There’s no point taking expensive money.” So until the financial system loosens up, Engine is focusing on developing its own business. In the first three months of 2010, it added £6.5 million of new business to existing clients including BMW and Weetabix. A WCRS client for 30 years, BMW is one of the few constants in a fast-changing world.
Of course, change is as good as a rest, so ten years after overseeing WCRS’s flotation and then repositioning it as Europe’s largest media buying group Aegis, Mr Scott packed his suitcase and headed for Hampshire.
“I went to the country. I farmed 25,000 acres, ran a partridge shoot, did a lot of charity work. I thought it was great fun. I loved getting mud on my boots.” He puts this down to his paternal grandmother, of a Lincolnshire farming family. “She ran off with the only unsuccessful bookmaker in North London and was disinherited.”
And there have been other adventures. Five years after he left Aegis, Mr Scott helped to set up Descent International, an upmarket ski chalet company. With lodges in Klosters to rent for £60,000 over the new year, it fell victim to the credit crunch and went into liquidation last year.
But Engine is still running smoothly, the bumps of the credit crunch now smoothing out. And on a sunny day in Central London, amid the tourists and investors strolling through the capital’s artistic heart, there is time to wonder about adding to a treasured collection. As Mr Saatchi once said: “If you don’t enjoy making your own decisions, you’re never going to be much of a collector, anyway.”
Back in the good old days
Was advertising really ever the boozy haze of good suits and neat whisky portrayed in the hit TV show Mad Men?
If so, “I probably missed that by about ten years,” Peter Scott says. “It wasn’t that good but it was a lot more fun than it is now.”
Back in the Seventies advertisers were paid 15 per cent commission on ads every year that they ran. “The same ads could run for year after year and you still got paid. We didn’t realise how good it was.”
Mr Scott is conscious that some old-school antics — if repeated today — could, in his words, see him “taken to Brussels and shot”.
On one occasion, he played a practical joke on Robin Wight, WCRS President, by hiring a Japanese actor to play an important client. “We briefed the guy that the only thing he can ever say [during a two-hour presentation] is ‘insults Japanese people’ or ‘insults Japanese nation’.
“So Robin shows him a commercial for the Evening Standard and says: ‘What do you think?’ He goes: ‘Insults Japanese nation.’ This goes on for two hours and we can’t contain ourselves. The more we go into laughter, the more Robin goes into crisis management, thinking we’re all completely off the wall.”
The joke culminated with assistants bringing in lunch. “We had a dead cod, raw, about two weeks old, with chopsticks. It stank to high heaven, it’s placed formally in front of him, with a little note on it saying: ‘Got ya.’ ”
