Saatchi's 'In' Site

Uptown splendor... downtown ad venture

Arbitrageurs pop up doing their stuff far from Wall Street; fancy French restaurants dish out the quenelles in Alphabet City. But could one wean the admen from Madison Avenue? It would surely be like talking a man out of his gray flannel suit, and would require a mighty force. Well, a mighty force has done it—Saatchi & Saatchi, the four-hundred-pound gorilla of the advertising world.

Saatchi & Saatchi is the Londonbased conglomerate, the brainchild of brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi, and (at time of writing) the biggest agency in the world. Ted Bates, Backer& Spielvogel, and Dancer Fitzgerald Sample are just three of its recent U.S. acquisitions. The whole company is now moving to Manhattan's SoHo —an appropriate choice, given Charles Saatchi's heft in the world of contemporary art, which whirs thereabouts. Saatchi & Saatchi will be occupying some 530,000 square feet of an eighteen-story building on Hudson Street that looks like a Mayan ziggurat, had the Mayans employed a fellow solidly grounded in Art Deco. A couple of Frank Stella pieces will grace the lobby, and a cafe has been planned by Brian McNally of Indochine and Odeon. You can't get more au courant than that.

But the rest of the ad world won't be shifted. Right? Wrong. Ephron Raboy & Tsao and Della Femina will be found at 345 and 350 Hudson, respectively, and from here on in, who knows? One safe bet, though: remakes of those witty movies about copywriters—they starred Rock Hudson, Doris Day, whomever—will now have to be shot in Desperately Seeking Susan country.

HARRY HOMBURG