In the beginning, I said let Sir Martin Sorrell be Sir Martin. After all, the colorful WPP chief was merely attempting to make a high-profile statement about the careless use of anonymous, junkyard blogs.
But that was before the libel trial he instigated ended in what was at best a pyrrhic victory, about as satisfying as kissing your sister (a southern expression generally used long ago when American football games ended in a frustrating tie).
Sir Martin won the court case, sort of. He agreed to the same amount of money he would have received had the trial had not gone on for two weeks: about $238,000, for a lawsuit that cost him and WPP about $4 million. Not a good business trade-off.
Still, Sorrell declared victory. The defendants, two Italian former employees, accused Sir Martin of abandoning the battlefield before they had a chance to present their case. The defendants never admitted guilt.
Everyone in the ad and PR world probably knows the story by now: Sir Martin took the former employees to court for allegedly libeling him on an anonymous blog, saying he was a Mafioso and a money launderer, and calling him a "mad dwarf".
As blogs go, and in a world of rather silly literary meanderings, this one was apparently more juvenile than most: Sir Martin is certainly no gangster, and being vertically challenged is no big deal. A lot of us are.
Sorrell, however, felt the blog somehow hurt his reputation and that of WPP. There was also a woman involved, but that, while titillating and appealing to prurient interests, really isn't relevant to the point of this column.
A court of law is rarely the place - it should be a last resort - to seek redress when one feels a reputation has been damaged.
Obviously, Sorrell felt the offense was major, and suited up for battle. He said he could not "think of a more comprehensive attack" on his character. The blog entries, including an embarrassing image, were sent to executives of rival ad companies.
It is doubtful, however, that the offending blogs were more than white noise filtering through the backwaters of our communications industry, not something that would cause a quiver, much less a seismic reaction, in the WPP empire. The stock continued to march upward.
Sorrell's legal action, though, revved the sounds of silence of this relatively minor happening into a story heard far and wide, as if blasted through the speakers at a Rolling Stones' concert. In fact, the phrase "mad dwarf +Martin" generates more than half a million Google references - half a million more than had the case been kept in Sir Martin's pocket.
There are strange ironies here: There is no corporation on earth that has more public relations talent in its stable than does WPP, which includes, among others, the PR giants Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller, a firm founded by the still-active Harold Burson.
Why didn't he turn to them?
Virtually any senior public relations counselor would have suggested to Sir Martin that the blogs were 1) not mainstream press; 2) that they appeared the work of infantile, grudge-driven people; and (most importantly), 3) that the most reputation-damaging verbiage was not credible in the least.
In other words, the affront - regardless of intent - would not have materially impacted WPP's balance sheet or, in the final analysis, Martin Sorrell's reputation. It was a merely a snapshot moment of trash talk.
Having decided to go to trial, however, one assumed Sir Martin had a higher calling - a substantive point to make about the individual needing some protection in the whacky blogosphere, where anything goes.
He didn't. The hurricane that was Sir Martin's outrage and wrath came ashore, nary turning a leaf much less taking roofs off houses.
The next time Sir Martin decides to spend millions on a lawsuit, he might pause and reflect, and then reach for Harold Burson's telephone number.
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