Maurice Saatchi turns on monster networks.(and admits that his vision has failed to materialize)

Maurice Saatchi, one of the earliest driving forces behind the globalisation of the advertising industry, has dropped a bombshell by admitting that his vision has failed to materialise.

He claimed the concept is being undermined by an 'unspoken conspiracy' among the communications supergroups to commoditise creativity in order to achieve cost efficiencies.

Speaking in Sydney, the M&C Saatchi founding partner stunned industry watchers with his warning that the agency network structure he pioneered in the early 80s had become a 'Frankenstein monster'.

The admission marks an about-face by Saatchi, who built his plans on transforming Saatchi & Saatchi into a network that could match the demands of multinational clients on the theories of Harvard Business School's Professor Ted Levitt.

It was Levitt's advocacy of companies learning to operate as if the world were a single market, ignoring superficial regional and national differences, that inspired the Saatchi brothers to build a network that would mirror the trend.

But, last week, Saatchi claimed that vested interests among the global agency groups had subverted his global dream. 'We took this up and became prominent exponents of this new business. But we are just beginning to feel maybe that the phase has run its course,' he said.

'The networks' thinking is that if they can eliminate creativity as a discriminator between agencies, ...