By 2002, Saatchi & Saatchi had become one of advertising’s Big Four—the linchpin of the French conglomerate Publicis’ advertising empire—as Roberts had intended. When Publicis purchased Saatchi in 2000, the employee-purchased stock was redeemable at five times its original value. The firm won the Ad Age agency-of-the-year honor in 2002. In addition to his $2 million salary, Publicis paid Roberts a reported $1.9 million as part of the takeover.

A good sign of the communication breakdown between Roberts and the General Mills team involves their interpretation of terms. Shortly after taking over Saatchi, Roberts created what he called the K-7 board, to oversee the company’s international operations. Made up in part of friends of Roberts’s, the K-7, Roberts says, was named after a New Zealand America’s Cup boat. Inside Saatchi, a different legend grew. “The board is called K-7 for Kevin-7,” says a former General Mills staffer. “Seven people in service of Kevin.”

Roberts’s Peak Performance seminars were another sore spot for his detractors. He began selling them to Saatchi clients (some say his daily consulting fee ran near $100,000 a day, a figure he denies). The seminars ran under the auspices of a company called Inspiros, but shareholders included Roberts and his K-7 buddies. Critics claimed Roberts was using his position at Saatchi for personal gain.

Then there was the 9/11 memo. Forty-eight hours after the attacks, Roberts sent a note that seemed to blur the line between the gravity of the day’s events and the importance of Saatchi’s business:

“I am writing this letter from the 16th floor of Saatchi & Saatchi . . . The sky is black with smoke, the streets are quiet except for rescue vehicles’ sirens, our building is cordoned off; the overwhelming feeling is one of emptiness . . . The only response from an Ideas Company is to help rebuild confidence through contributing and implementing ideas for our clients and our communities. Two of the key principles we believe in at Saatchi & Saatchi are entirely aligned with these values and qualities: Peak Performance and Lovemarks.

“Peak Performance. We need inspiration. It’s the time for inspirational players. It’s time also for America to remember its founding dream, a nation dedicated to freedom and opportunity and innovation. This will also be a time for inspirational stories of heroism and sacrifice: fire captains and police, co-workers and medics.

“Lovemarks. For many of us, this attack has been an attack on a Lovemark: New York . . . Lovemarks are a fitting message for uncertain times, an antidote to the nervousness and panic that will affect American business globally . . . Lovemarks are an expressive language for renewed feelings of national worth . . . ”

“It was so crass,” recalls a former Saatchi executive. “There was just stunned silence as we showed it to each other.”

Roberts grew increasingly frustrated with Burns’s reluctance to seek his input, and repeatedly urged him to work more in concert with him and other agency managers. Burns responded that he was running an account with 43 advertised brands and 100 commercials a year, airing in 73 countries—he didn’t have time to stroke Roberts. Burns and the General Mills crew felt it was their account’s steady profitability that funded the agency’s turnaround, but they weren’t sharing in the profits. “There were many years where the agency was in a chronic pattern of salary, wage, and hiring freezes,” says a former Saatchi staffer on General Mills. “If someone left General Mills, we couldn’t get them replaced. Then Kevin would come into a room and talk about the big bonuses he’s getting from [Publicis CEO] Maurice Levy. ‘Oh, man, I squoze [sic] his fuckin’ balls! He signed me up for three more years!’ But you’re sitting there like, ‘Shit, man. I can’t get raises for people, and you’re talking about big bonuses.’ It just didn’t make any sense.” (Roberts stands by his profit-margins denial.)

Using his K-7 management team as a model, Roberts installed an eight-person board of directors to run Saatchi’s New York office in 2000. The directors included Burns, the account executives of Saatchi’s other major clients, and various department heads. It quickly became unmanageable. “There’s a reason why communism failed,” quips one former member. “Everyone had their fiefdoms to protect and couldn’t see above that. And Kevin still had final say. If you wanted to paint a conference room, you were empowered. If there were people that needed to be laid off, you were empowered. Anything else, you had to wait for Kevin.” Not true, says Roberts: “I oversee 92 offices. I didn’t personally manage New York.”

In an echo of Roberts’s experience at Lion Nathan, there were twelve members of the New York Saatchi board in seven years. “It wasn’t just attrition,” says a former board member. “You left because Kevin voted you off the island.” By late 2003, the board had been reduced to two—Burns and Scott Gilbert, who had run Saatchi’s L.A. office. While Burns and Roberts often squabbled, Roberts thought enough of Burns to make him co-CEO. The arrangement didn’t last. “Kevin came in and said, ‘Okay, you two guys are going to be co-CEOs,’ ” recalls Burns with some bewilderment. “But he was going to oversee us. This was in December, but by late January he was like, ‘You know what? This doesn’t work.’ ”