Maurice Levy Adores Fragmentation

Advertising Week, Day One: Interviewer Charlie Rose kept asking Publicis CEO Maurice Levy about the Internet and fragmentation. Snippets:

On the changes being wrought in agency culture:
“I think that when digitization and the Internet and cell phones become the core of what we are doing, it will change the lives of advertising agencies… The most exciting challenge is to reinvent ourselves, to reinvent the way we are working, to groom new talent, and to think differently. We are at a crossroads. We have a fantastic opportunity to learn something new.”

On mobility:
“We all believe that the biggest media in the world will be the cell phone, when it has the features and possibility for ads.”

On the role of the account manager going forward:
“We will have one single navigator coordinating the work of the media agency and the creative agency.”

On why ad-skipping is a good thing for good agencies:
“It is not a problem. It’s a big issue, but it is not a problem. The more there are issues of this kind the more the knowledge we have of the consumer is something that will help make our service indispensable to help advertisers get over to the consumer.”