Sir Martin Sorrell: “Coronavirus Will Accelerate The Digital Revolution”
Industry sage and former WPP supremo, Sir Martin Sorrell believes the coronavirus will “accelerate the digital revolution” as it will highlight businesses’ and consumers’ dependence on technology.
Speaking to UK’s Sky News over the weekend, the 74-year-old said COVID-19 would be a wake-up call for digital laggards.
“Businesses that were probably hesitant to move forward on digital because things were going reasonably well and they didn’t really want to disrupt things, that’s now out of the window,” he said.
Sorrell’s advice to business languishing in the digital space was to “write off” historic costs and to “get it out of the way now and accelerate your digital transformation”.
That said, Sorrell doubted that working from home or working remotely would become the new norm post coronavirus.
As for the virus’ impact on his new venture, S4, Sorrell said it was probably still too early to say.
He added: “I would expect the ripple effects – or the tsunami effects – of the virus spreading into western Europe and the US will probably affect our clients, and therefore us, as we move into the second and third quarters.”
Despite the global shutdown, Sorrell said the S4 was “firing on all cylinders” and was on track to double revenue and profit by 2022.
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