16 THE NEW SHAPE OF THE WORLD Ogilvy on Advertising contained one chapter with a provocative title: “Is America still top nation?” Its influence is still huge, but “top nation” would be difficult to defend as a claim. The world is getting a different shape. In September 1995, I arrived in Hong Kong as the Regional Director for Asia. In 1991 Ogilvy & Mather had opened its first mainland office, in Shanghai. Doing business on the mainland required a joint-venture contract with a domestic company, so we signed with the Shanghai Advertising Group. We have always benefited from having a first-mover advantage. Our first (and continuing) Chairman there was TB Song, a kind of Chinese David Ogilvy, endlessly curious and very literary (he would, before Ogilvy became too big, buy a copy of every new book he liked for each of our staff). TB was someone who seemed to define “the Tao of advertising”, but nonetheless was a vigorously single-minded driver of growth. He had formed the first agency with foreign investors in Taiwan in 1985, later to become Ogilvy & Mather Taiwan. Over on the mainland, China still had only representative offices, which was the state of affairs until TB moved to Shanghai in 1991 to establish our new joint venture. So welcome was he in China that the Government gave him “grace and favour” lodging in the Summer Palace in our early days. As I arrived, TB had just had a request for the hire of a significant executive turned down. This man was not cheap, but was going to be the catalyst of our next stage of growth. The refusal came from on high – from Farm Street, from Mayfair, and from Martin Sorrell himself of WPP. “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away” is a very useful Chinese proverb if you are an expatriate manager, but I never found it worked particularly well with Martin. I argued the case; Martin refused. I argued again; he refused again. And again. Finally, there was the response: “China is a black hole. On your head be it.” Martin will (I hope!) forgive me for saying this, but at the time he felt much more comfortable in India than in China (well, they played and talked about cricket). That changed very quickly; and he has been the person who, more than anyone else, saw the potential of Chinese advertising, and then relentlessly drove WPP’s growth there.