Free Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else) by Ken Auletta Page A

of local TV, radio, and out-of-home advertising like billboards or supermarket promotions. “He was the equivalent of what Irwin Gotlieb is today,” standing atop the most powerful media agency, Kassan says. “He was the largest independent media agency in the world.” Holt says he chose to ignore Kassan’s prior felony conviction. “I was the one who restored him,” Holt says. The business had outgrown Holt’s managerial style, which was to personally sign every check. “We had gotten so big and did so many different things that I wasn’t havingfun anymore,” Holt says. He was determined to hire Kassan. At Nate’n Al’s in Beverly Hills, Holt looked him in the eye and said, “I’m not offering you a job. I’m offering you a life.” He was offering a way to regain his self-confidence, his swagger. Kassan’s prime mission would be to sell Western. Within six months, Kassan succeeded, consummating a sale to the Interpublic Group, then the world’s largest advertising holding company.
    Kassan remained as president of the company for five years. By 1999, he was clashing with Holt, who had stayed on as chairman, as well as with senior executives at the parent company. Asked if Kassan did a good job, Holt did not answer for several seconds, then said “No,” adding, “he did a good job with the process of selling the company.” The clash with IPG became ugly. In August 1999, the firm locked Kassan out of his office and Kassan filed a $63.5 million lawsuit against them, alleging that IPG defamed him by claiming financial misconduct, and also breached his five-year employment contract. Days later the company announced that Kassan was “terminated.” IPG executives won’t discuss the matter. Kassan will only say, “What I am allowed to say is we amicably resolved our differences.” Dennis Holt, who remained with the company until 2000, says, “IPG wanted to fire him many times, but I defended him,” a claim that causes Ronnie Kassan to roll her eyes. IPG was offended by Kassan’s steep expenses, Holt says, including massages and charges on the New York City suite he maintained at the St. Regis hotel. Baloney, says Kassan’s friend Irwin Gotlieb, who first got to know him as a Western competitor. Because Michael was paid a handsome annual bonus from IPG as part of his five-year payout from the sale of Western, his jealous IPG boss “wasn’t the kind of guy who could watch someone else make a lot of money.”
    The lawsuit was settled out of court, with IPG stating that it had conducted an audit and was satisfied there were no irregularities. Butfor the second time in less than a decade, it wasn’t “ALL GOOD” for Michael Kassan. “He was depressed,” Ronnie Kassan remembers. “We have a very close friend”—now Cerberus Capital Management vice chair, Lenard B. Tessler—“who called Michael every day and said, ‘I’m calling you because I don’t want you to think no one calls you.’ Michael didn’t want to go back to law. He just didn’t know what he wanted to do.”
    Another close friend, prominent attorney Howard Weitzman, who is known in Los Angeles as an attorney for Hollywood celebrities, had participated in the launch of a software digital rights business, Massive Media, and in late 1999 Kassan was recruited. Kassan was enthused about the media and marketing business and intrigued because he saw Massive Media as a vehicle to broaden his expertise. “It gave me exposure to what was happening in the digital sphere,” Kassan says. His task, Weitzman says, was to boost sales and help shape business strategy.
    One of the other partners in the company, former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi, who had never met Kassan before, was impressed by him; Kassan struck him as “a huge personality.” Biondi was shaken when a lawyer friend phoned to say he was representing a potential investor that Kassan had approached, and when the lawyer did his due diligence he discovered that Kassan had been