Sir Frank's greatest strength is also hisweakness

By the end of that year, Sir Frank's coterie appeared to turn against
him and he was unceremoniously ousted from the agency that still proudly
bore his name. With his departure, the Lowe network lost the
paterfamilias that had given it a semblance of culture; it may be the
benefit of hindsight, but things haven't been going too well for the
network since then.

In the intervening couple of years, Sir Frank has never been far from
adland's thoughts. We've had stories that Sir Frank would return
triumphant to buy back his old company from its ailing IPG parent. Then,
the agency was supposedly begging him to come back as the figurehead for
a network that seemed to have lost its lifeblood after his departure.
Most recently, there was speculation that he would use his IPG
shareholding to wreak revenge on the holding company that he felt had
treated him badly and squandered the inheritance he had handed it.

I imagine all these options have been seized upon and waved vigorously
in the ether by Sir Frank over the past year or two - the Machiavellian
plot being something of a Lowe forte. But despite all the speculation,
there is something absolutely delicious about the news of his start-up;
stories like this one come along only rarely and the implications are
dazzling.

It's still early days, so the rumour mill is still in full swing (who
else will join? Will any big name backers emerge? What about other
accounts in the bag?). But really the focus is on the man himself.

Without a doubt, Sir Frank is the best thing going about this
start-up.

He is obviously the catalyst and without him it's almost impossible to
imagine Paul Weinberger (who, after all, has reputedly resigned from
Lowe several times before to no avail) or Tesco (an account subject to
the most concerted efforts of adland's new-business machines over the
past year or two) quitting the Lowe agency. It took Sir Frank to do
it.

And there's no doubt that Sir Frank's name will open new-business doors
and raise the profile of the new agency as very few other advertising
names could. What's more, regardless of the future fortunes of the new
outfit, it will always be entertaining to watch as long as Sir Frank is
involved: he is one of the last remaining legends of British
advertising's golden age.

But, but. Sir Frank might be the best thing about the new venture, but I
suspect he's also the worst. Critics will dismiss him as a throwback,
and he is - though of course that's where that invaluable legendary
status comes from. If Sir Frank can accept that his new team might know
more about modern advertising than he does, then the fact that his
values come from a different era might not matter too much.

What will matter is whether Sir Frank can allow his team actually to run
the agency without his (overly emotional) interference; he might be a
standard-bearer for advertising excellence, but as an operator Sir Frank
also has the ability to be poisonous and destructive. In the old,
parochial, personality-driven advertising order, these were probably
useful business tools. But the world has moved on to become much more
accountable, more professional, and, yes, more bland; the maverick will
find it harder to fit in.

What Sir Frank stands for is the real jewel in the new set-up, but what
he might actually do could be the real barrier to lasting success.