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Kevin Roberts

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Mr Roberts, who as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi heads a company with agencies in 90 countries and annual billings of $7 billion.

Roberts is the New York-based CEO Worldwide of Ideas Company Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s leading creative organizations with a team of 7000 people across 83 countries. Clients include some of the world's best-performing companies including Procter & Gamble, Toyota, General Mills, Visa International, Ameriprise, JC Penney and Novartis.

Roberts, who was born in...

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... Lancaster in the north of England, started his business career in the late 1960s with the influential London fashion house of Mary Quant. He then worked as a senior marketing executive for Gillette and Procter & Gamble in Europe and the Middle East. When he was 32, he became CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East; he later became Pepsi’s CEO in Canada.

In 1989, Roberts moved with his family to Auckland to become Chief Operating Officer with Lion Nathan, a position he held for seven years.

Roberts took up his position with Saatchi & Saatchi in 1997. Under his leadership, Saatchi & Saatchi has grown revenue year by year and achieved outstanding success at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. In 2003 Saatchi & Saatchi was named Best Global Network by both Ad Week and Ad Age publications. In 2006 at Cannes, the network achieved No.2 in the world and lead office New York was the most awarded agency in the USA.

Roberts is the inaugural CEO in Residence at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. He is also Professor of Sustainable Enterprise in the Waikato Management School at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

With colleagues at Waikato, Roberts wrote Peak Performance: Business Lessons from the World's Top Sporting Organizations, an inspiration-driven business theory and practice. In 2004 he released a new book Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, which shows how emotion can inspire businesses and brands to deliver sustainable value. His newest books are sisomo: the future on screen, a look at the central role of sight, sound and motion in accelerating emotional connections in the digital age, and The Lovemarks Effect: Winning in the Consumer Revolution, a collection of influential insights on the impact of Lovemarks in the market.

The Citizens for NYC awarded Roberts the 2004 New Yorker for New York Award. In November 2004 he was appointed ambassador for the New Zealand United States Council in the US, to complement government-to-government relationships. A former director of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, he is current Chairman of the USA Rugby Board of Directors.

Kevin is a trustee of the Turn Your Life Around Trust, an Auckland charity that mentors at-risk teenagers, and is a Sponsor Governor of Lancaster Royal Grammar School in the UK, his former school. He is married to Rowena Roberts, and has two daughters and two sons. A New Zealand citizen, he has offices and homes in Auckland and New York, and homes also in St Tropez and Grasmere in the English Lake District.