Hasta La Creative!

So it seems that you won’t have this guy’s face following you around for too much longer.

Last night MediaPost (!) reported on a Goldman Sachs media conference in New York at which Maurice Levy told attendees that he might name his successor as Publicis Groupe’s global chief as early as November even though he’s not supposed to retire until next May.

Who will it be? He’s not giving any hints. But he is making some jokes!

“Should I play a role or not? Probably yes. What kind of role? Maybe doorman. The uniform is beautiful and that is what people are probably expecting of me.”

LOL, okay. Regarding the person riding his coattails, he said, “We will have a good succession. We have great talent and I feel personally very comfortable.”

Addressing the holding company’s recent losses, especially on the media side, he admitted that Publicis has yet to make up for that missing revenue. As evidence of a comeback, he cited the HP Enterprise win we broke last month, but that client only spent $13.6 million in the first quarter of this year, so it’s not quite P&G.

Now who will replace him, again? Lots of people are saying Arthur Sadoun, though Campaign also floats Steve King of Publicis Media and Allan Herrick of Sapient.Nitro. (It’s going to be Sadoun. Calling it now, so put us down for $3.50.)

We also hear of some fairly big internal changes coming to the Publicis Communications organization … but something tells us you will be disappointed anyway.