• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, October 28, 2015

Consummate ad man Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, is ready for his close-up. He’s just debuted in front of the camera in an ad for The Wall Street Journal. 

The ad is a pre-roll spot in the Journal’s latest iteration of its “Make Time” campaign from ad agency The&Partnership. 

Sorrell usually has a lot to say on any number of topics, but is mute in the pre-roll. Instead, he’s seen reading the Journal on a tablet while sitting on a couch in what looks to be his executive office. As the camera pans out, a voiceover intones, “This is time well spent. Obviously not by you but by Sir Martin Sorrell.” 

According to the agency the ad is intended to draw “a contrast between the viewers’ time (wasted watching pre-roll) and the ambitious reader pictured on the screen reading The Journal (time well spent).” 

The ad appears just weeks after the Harvard Business Review named Sorrell as the fifth-best CEO in the world based on its latest top-100 CEO ranking. No reports yet of a less-than-hilarious sitcom in development (here’s Donny!) loosely based on Sorrell’s life and career. 

The “Make Time” campaign also unveiled a separate ad featuring model/entrepreneur Karlie Kloss.