• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 31, 2007

Wikipedia has become the go-to source for a huge range of factoids and the digital equivalent of Who’s Who for the 21st century. Anybody who’s anybody has their own entry, right? With that in mind, we checked which luminaries in advertising and marketing show up as bold-faced names in the Web encyclopedia. The results were an eye opener. Of top executives at the 10 biggest holding companies, only Sir Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy made the cut, while among the top 10 digital agency heads, only J. Stuart Moore of Sapient earned a listing. None of the top media agency chiefs — people like Carat’s David Verklin or Omnicom Media Group’s Daryl Simm — turn up in Wikipedia. 

Consider these tidbits from the Wikipedia write-ups of other industry VIPs: The listing for Republican pollster and communications guru Frank Luntz includes a reference to a “Daily Show” segment stating, “Luntz has made a brilliant career spraying perfume on dog turds.” And in the page dedicated to adman turned cable TV host Donny Deutsch we learn, “Pictures of Deutsch sporting a Speedo and a mullet are genuine. Deutsch gained industry notoriety after dismissing the employee who took the image in 2006.” On a less scandalous note, marketing expert Seth Godin’s entry tells us, “He calls a remarkable product or service a ‘purple cow.’ ” That would make Wikipedia a purple cow.