John Wren
Who
John Wren is the hulking, straight-talking CEO of Omnicom, the world's largest advertising holding company. Omnicom controls agencies like BBDO, DDB, and TBWA.
Backstory
Brooklyn native Wren grew up the eldest of six kids in an Irish-Catholic family. Initially a philosophy major at Adelphi, he soon switched to business and earned bachelor's and master's degrees before joining the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. He remained there for six years, then switched over to advertising, taking a job at Needham Harper in 1984. Two years later, Needham was absorbed by Omnicom, and Wren moved over to the advertising giant's diversified agency services group. By 1990, he was president of the division. Seven years later, he took the reigns as CEO. He's since built Omnicom into the ad industry's largest holding company and garnered a reputation as a canny investor.
Of note
The largest of the six major ad holding companies, Omnicom controls a slew of agencies: In addition to major names like BBDO, DDB, and TBWA, Omnicom owns Goodby, Silverstein, Martin/Williams, PHD, Peter Arnell's Arnell Group, OMD, and a handful of PR agencies like Ketchum and Fleishman-Hillard. Omnicom agencies employ more than 63,000 people and service clients like Pepsi, Motorola, Bank of America, Dell, DaimlerChrysler and Nissan. (The longtime agency of record for Apple, most recently Omnicom's TBWA handled the company's massive iPhone campaign, which dominated the airwaves in 2007.) Known for his hands-off approach—he rarely meddles with the creative process—Wren has managed to pull off the difficult feat of pleasing both Wall Street and awards show juries, although a good deal of the credit goes to the team he's managed to assemble, which includes BBDO chief creative David Lubars, BBDO Worldwide CEO Andrew Robertson, and DDB chairman Bob Scarpelli.
Keeping score
In 2001, Wren was the second highest-paid CEO in New York, second only to Citigroup's Sandy Weill. Rumors of an accounting scandal crumpled the stock—and Wren's options—in 2002, although he remains extremely well-compensated. He earned $13.2 million in 2006 (up from $5.5 million in 2005), almost double what John Dooner, the then-CEO of Interpublic, made.
Personal
In a rare public appearance in 2006, Wren mocked the stiff old days of the industry when there were only three TV networks and all the ad execs commuted from Connecticut. Unfortunately, that's where Wren himself commutes from these days. He and his wife Diane live in Greenwich with their two children.