The Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies

His membership lasted three hours.

With an impatient Chiat sitting at one end of the conference room table, the group timidly identified a company whose TRS was in need of repair: Chiat/Day. The employees were worn out and the creative work had long ago become pedestrian. There was widespread lack of employee faith in a stock participation program which had tilted huge blocks of shares toward the agency's top management. Before presuming to articulate and fix a clients Total Role in Society, the group suggested, Chiat/Day needed to heal its own.

This was not a diagnosis Jay Chiat wanted to hear. As famous for his temper as for his vision, Chiat went ballistic, grabbing his coat and storming from the room. The Agency of the Future was history. As far as its life at Chiat/Day was concerned, Chrysalis would never get past the larval stage.

While the task force had been musing over the future, the agency's board of directors had been confronting the firm's past. Queasy with debt from a failed acquisition binge, Chiat/Day faced massive repayments. There was only one way for the board simultaneously to relieve the debt and realize the value of the stock they had all amassed. A show of hands sealed the agency's fate.

In January1995, Omnicom, the communications conglomerate, announced that it would buy Chiat/Day and merge the rebel with TBWA, a larger agency with a reputation for dependable, if somewhat stolid, work.

As for Chiat/Day, the pirates were exhausted. After a voyage of 25 years, it was time to join the navy.

News that they were to be merged with TBWA flared like a backdraft through the halls of the London office of Chiat/Day. To employees who had been indoctrinated in the belief that they were creatively superior, the thought of marriage with the stodgy TBWA was repellent. Called for a comment by "Campaign," the industry's weekly trade magazine, Andy Law publicly announced that he had no intention of being eaten by the omnivorous Omnicom.

A hasty peace conference was arranged with the owners-to-be, who were anxious for the acquisition to proceed without any public signs of discord.

Law was convinced that a merger with TBWA would effectively mean spiritual death for his employees. "I knew we'd all end up in the basement of TBWA," said Law. He returned from the meeting with Omnicom and drew a line across a small corner of the office.

"I'm leaving," he told the others in the London office. "I don't want to unduly influence you, so I'm going to work over here and you can decide what you want to do." After a stunned silence, first one, then another, and finally all the employees crossed the line to Laws side. It was a mutiny -- the pirates were still afloat.

Law made calls that night to all his clients. None particularly cared who owned the company, as long as the quality of the work didn't suffer. With the employees and clients behind him, Law called Omnicom and told them there would be no merger with TBWA as far as London was concerned. "You have nothing over here," Law told TBWA President Bill Tragos, "Nothing."

Tragos was furious. But Omnicom soon realized there was only one public position that would calm stockholders and the hungry trade press: the sale of the London office of Chiat/Day to Law and his associates. A deal was struck. A seven-year payback based on a percentage of profits -- plus one U.S. dollar.

Andy Law had bought himself an ad agency.

Within a matter of weeks, he gave it away.

Once the adrenaline from the mutiny had subsided, Law and Abraham realized they now had sole responsibility for the paychecks of their fellow employees. They were no longer the London office of a multinational mothership -- they were just one more tiny, independent ad agency in one of advertising's toughest towns.

Since all the employees had joined in the decision to jump ship, Law felt they should all have a voice in the design of the new vessel. They locked the doors of the agency, and the entire company sequestered itself for three days to invent their own future. Law sat back and listened as the group spoke of the corporation not as a disembodied third-person, but as a container for their own personal values. They wanted to go beyond the boosterism of the typical corporate mission statement with its call for "team structures" and "flat hierarchies." They wanted a concrete mechanism for universal commitment and contribution -- and they wanted it deeply and permanently imbedded into the structure of the company.

To Law and Abraham, the lament sounded familiar. It echoed the issues with which they had struggled on the Chrysalis committee -- and once again, it appeared as if Aristotle and his ethics might provide a solution.