Former Grey CEO Ed Meyer dies at 96

Ed Meyer, who built Grey Advertising into one of the world’s biggest agencies, has died at age 96.

Meyer joined the agency in 1956 in Grey’s account services division. At the time, the agency had one office in New York that billed $30 million. When he sold the agency to WPP some 49 years later, Grey was a global behemoth with diversified businesses in direct, interactive, PR, media, sales promotion and more. Purchase price: $1.52 billion in cash and stock.

At the time of the sale in 2005, Grey was the only major independent agency among the Madison Avenue giants, and Meyer, who had been chairman-CEO since 1970, was estimated to have profited by nearly $500 million.

Meyer was one of the longest-standing CEOs in agency history. When he retired on the last day of 2006, he had logged 36 years leading the agency, then known as Grey Global. “A couple of years ago, I realized I was not immortal,” Meyer told the New York Times when he retired from the agency at 80 years old. “I realized I ought to preserve the business I developed and develop a second life.”

'New York-centric'

His tenure went back to working with Grey’s founders Larry Valenstein and Arthur Fatt. Valenstein opened the shop in 1917 and was joined four years later by Fatt. (The agency changed its name in its formative years to fit in with the white Protestant-dominated agency world at the time, choosing to rename it after the color of its studio walls.)

“For years, Grey was New York-centric. I convinced Arthur Fatt and Lawrence Valenstein, who were then in their 60s, to risk taking the agency international on their own dollar,” Meyer told Chief Executive magazine in 2000.

Meyer came up the account ranks at the agency—“I was born to live with clients, talk about their business, know their businesses as well or even better than they did,” said Meyer, according to a history of the agency provided by Grey. 

That sentiment was echoed by Jim Stengel, a former executive at Procter & Gamble, which signed with the agency in 1956 and remains a Grey client today. Meyer “bled P&G blue,” said Stengel, a former P&G global marketing officer and now independent consultant. “I remember as a young brand manager how he attended every annual budget meeting of every P&G brand Grey handled—and there were a lot.”

“Ed Meyer was a hugely important figure who not only transformed Grey into a global powerhouse but helped to shape the modern advertising industry as we know it. He built Grey from an advertising agency into a major international communications group with a strong and independent spirit,” said WPP CEO Mark Read. “Under his leadership, Grey created iconic campaigns for many of the world’s leading brands and of course the relationship with P&G—nurtured by Ed over decades—remains strong today. Grey was Ed’s lifetime work and we are proud to see his legacy continue to this day.”

Meyer’s history with P&G, in fact, predates Grey. Meyer began his career at the now-defunct Biow Agency working on the marketer’s Lava soap business. Meyer began his career with the idea of becoming a creative—from college until he was named Grey CEO, he penned one-act plays at night.

“I’ve got the first act of a dozen comedies sitting in my drawer,” Meyer said in the history of Grey provided to Ad Age. But he moved to the account side, Meyer told Chief Executive, because while working at Biow, “I hated the account guy for his verbal ignorance and that he earned more than I did.”

Once a creative

Born in Manhattan in 1927, Meyer was raised on the Upper West Side, directly across from Central Park, and attended Horace Mann, a prep school in the Bronx. He served in the US Coast Guard following graduation near the end of World War II and signed on as an economics major at Cornell. His first position was as an executive trainee at Bloomingdale's.

Beyond global expansion, perhaps one of his biggest achievements was diversifying the agency into multiple disciplines including health care, shopper marketing, PR and media with the formation of Mediacom. “He built very strong, account-driven, client relationships such as at P&G and at the same time an integrated approach covering media, direct, promotion, public relations, healthcare, as well as strategy and creative,” said Martin Sorrell, who was CEO of WPP when it acquired Grey and who is now founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital. 

“I built auxiliary services [at Grey] like direct marketing not because I’m a genius but because I got an early alert; I heard my clients talking about them,” Meyer told the New York Times in 2006. “If I waited for the guy or the gal running the account to get that information to me, it’d be a year later.”

Grey was also known for its creative under Meyer, with campaigns such as “Choosy mothers choose Jif,” Red Lobster’s “For the seafood lover in you,” and Mennen’s “For skin almost as soft as a baby’s behind.” Among the many clients on its roster were General Foods (later bought by Kraft), Dannon, Nokia, Novartis, Glaxo (then known as Glaxo Wellcome) and more.

Endless shrimp

The quintessential account man, Meyer actually unloaded shrimp crates off a truck and prepped the shrimp to better understand Red Lobster’s business. According to the Grey history, Meyer also waited tables at the chain and accidentally spilled coffee on a patron. “She told me no apology was necessary because it was nice to see someone of my age doing that job,” Meyer said in the history. 

This fealty to his clients was apparent even when Meyer initiated talks to sell the agency. “Ed called me one Saturday morning when I was shooting hoops with my son,” said Stengel. “He told me he would like to sell Grey to WPP, but only if P&G was 100% supportive. And he had the humility to say that he felt Grey would be stronger—and better for P&G—as a result.”

Meyer quoted Warren Buffett in his Chief Executive interview, saying he won’t retire “until five years after I die,” and he remained active after Grey as chairman of Ocean Road Advisors, which invests the funds of Meyer family entities. He was also on the board of overseers at Cornell Media College, where his $75 million donation funded the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, named after Meyer and his wife Sandy, who survives him.

A public memorial will be held at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on April 15. 
 

Meyer said at the time of his retirement he had every intention of staying current with the agency business. When asked in 2006 by the New York Times about his post-retirement plans, he said, “I’ll probably keep my subscription to Advertising Age.”