Change Agent - John Dooner

John Dooner insists that he never feared for his or his company's future. But over several months in 1992, Dooner, then president and chief operating officer of McCann-Erickson Advertising Worldwide, watched as the Coca-Cola Co. handed over more and more of its business to Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the Hollywood talent factory that had plans to extend its reach to Madison Avenue. By the end of the year, McCann found itself left with only media buying and a few creative scraps from what had, since the 1950s, been its most important client.

Instead of running for cover, Dooner, who had staked his career on the Coke business, vowed that he would win back the account -- no matter how much or how long it would take. He also vowed that he would reclaim the account from a position of strength, not of weakness. "Fear is a strategy for the number-two or number-three player," Dooner says. "You only get to be the best if you're the one with the clearest vision."

And here's what Dooner saw: The way to persuade a customer, a client, or a partner to give you another look is to take a hard look at yourself. Instead of just pounding on Coke's door and asking to be let back in, Dooner set out to change everything about his agency. He tore apart and then rebuilt McCann-Erickson into a broad-based shop with blue-chip credentials and a solid creative reputation. He bought 114 agencies that could offer everything from database research to the most cutting-edge video. He even rebuilt himself -- losing 60 pounds through a rigorous running program.

The payoff finally came last year. In November 2000, Coca-Cola announced that it was coming home to McCann. But Coke didn't just hand McCann the plum assignment of creating Coca-Cola Classic ads for its biggest market, North America. Instead, the company announced a groundbreaking "marketing partner" agreement with the Interpublic Group of Cos. (McCann's parent) estimated to be worth some $2 billion. And who is the man now running Interpublic? Why, that would be John Dooner, who became chairman and CEO of the holding company on January 1, 2001.

It's hard to overestimate the gravity of the turnaround. Coca-Cola "wasn't just an account; it was part of him," says Nina DiSesa, creative director for McCann's flagship New York agency, when asked about Dooner's stake in the Coke business. "When Coke walked away, they walked away from John. But it's also John they gave the account back to."

Dooner admits to being humbled by the experience. But he adds that humility can be a force for positive change: "In a humble state, you learn better. I can't find anything else very exciting about humility, but at least there's that."

These are brutal times for the advertising business, times that put a premium on the sort of resilience that Dooner has demonstrated over the past eight years. Despite its huge win with Coke, the world's largest ad agency has experienced major layoffs and disappointing financial results of late. Dooner's Coke victory may offer some lessons for dealing with the rapid deterioration of the advertising economy. It is certainly a case study of leadership in a difficult situation -- a demonstration of how tenacity, planning, and clearheaded thinking can triumph over even the most difficult strategic challenges.

"John knows how to bide his time," says DiSesa. "He knew that we had to make McCann a strong agency before we could tackle Coke again. He wanted to know that he had a good shot at getting the account back."

Dooner is indeed methodical when it comes to the business of crafting strategy. He uses a five-step philosophy that he's been perfecting over his 30-year career. "I start out by asking what the dream is. What do I want, or what would my clients want?" Dooner explains from his corner office near the top of the Time-Life Building in midtown Manhattan. "Then I talk about it. Then I write it down -- that's a big part of the process. Then I imagine that the strategy or the situation has already happened. Then I put the strategy into action with the belief that I will never be denied that dream."

Dooner saves almost everything he scribbles down. He is known for keeping pads filled with his chicken-scratch handwriting tucked away in his desk drawers so he can pull them out whenever he needs to jog his memory about a strategy, a thought, or a feeling. Dooner's challenge was to reinvent McCann as the agency that Coke would want to work with in the future. Although big and global (it got that way by following Coke around the world after World War II), McCann's creative reputation had been faltering for several years before CAA arrived. If Dooner had followed Madison Avenue's traditional approach to wooing back a client, he would have hired a few young hotshots to think up some new tag lines or create big-splash storyboards.