To the Top at Last

Marion Harper's fierce ambition and celebrated metabolism have made him a living legend on Madison Avenue. He begins each day bent over a stationary bicycle in his $150,000 Westchester County home, pedaling up to four miles while he also races through a book propped on the handle bars. As chairman of Manhattan's Interpublic Inc., a corporate maze of advertising and related agencies, he has often worked 24 hours straight, taken a shower and a nap, then popped into a client meeting exuding a Florida glow; he has personally won such accounts as Buick, Coca-Cola, Swift, Westinghouse. Ever since, at 32, he became the chief of McCann-Erickson, the base on which he built Interpublic, he has driven to create the world's biggest advertising complex. Last week, at 47, he achieved his goal.

With a few pen strokes in his chastely modern board room, Harper acquired the $80 million in billings of Erwin Wasey, Ruthrauff & Ryan, itself a product of an earlier merger. The acquisition, Harper's fifth since 1961, lifts Inter-public's billings to just about $500 million, well ahead of venerable J. Walter Thompson (1962 billings: $420 million), up to now the world's biggest advertising company. Harper himself had sought out Erwin Wasey's owners, Howard D. Williams, 74, and his son,

David B. Williams, 44, and persuaded them to sell out for some $5,000,000 in what he calls "the largest agency deal ever made wholly for cash."

Comes the Revolution. Harper's rivals were at once skeptical, fearful and envious. Says the chairman of one top agency: "While I find Marion unattractively impersonal and ruthless, he does seem to be a marvelous organizer, and his mental capacity is immense." Most of all, skeptics and supporters wondered how Harper would cope with the problem of "client conflict." For the sake of secrecy, advertising agencies seldom represent two products that clash headon. But, among many other conflicts, Erwin Wasey has Tuborg beer, Old Forester bourbon, Rolls-Royce and Gulf Oil, while Interpublic has Genesee beer, Old Charter bourbon, Buick and Standard Oil (N.J.).

To critics, Harper persuasively argues that "you can't judge this by the old stereotypes. There is a revolution going on in advertising." He means that he is leading the revolution. In a frenetic drive for diversification under highly centralized management, Harper since 1961 has made Interpublic a management company presiding over a cluster of separate but equal subsidiaries that offer something for every client's desire. Under it are a big agency (McCann-Erickson), two cozily small agencies (McCann-Marschalk and Johnstone, Inc.), three foreign-based agencies in Britain, Switzerland and South Africa, and separate companies to stew over market research, sales promotion, public relations and far-out future planning. Erwin Wasey, says Harper, will keep its separateness and its secrets, will maintain the two Williamses at the helm. But it will give Interpublic new offices in five foreign countries and three U.S. cities. "What we have added," says Harper, "is volume in money, volume in people, volume in facilities."

Appetite for Politics. Next, Harper will probably sell a big bloc of Interpublic's shares to the public, making Interpublic what he hopes will be advertising's first blue chip. He also aims to boost his firm's billings to $1 billion. Boasting that "our foreign billings double every five years and our domestic billings double every eight years," he figures to hit the billion mark around 1971. By then, or perhaps even before, Harper hopes to leave advertising. He plans to teach or, more likely, to enter politics--the only field in which he has ever admitted to being a middleroader.

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