Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, hates the phrase “business model” and made it very clear at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany last week. He asked panelists at a video startups panel, rather pointedly (as recounted by Randall Rothenberg, CEO of IAB, on his blog): “If there’s a phrase I loathe, it’s ‘business model...In my company, we have 102,000 people working in 106 countries. Our world is made up of revenues, costs, profits, and cash flow. I’ve heard a lot from this panel on what will be. But we do an enormous amount of business, much of it growing, with broadcast and cable television networks around the world. Can each panelist precisely say what their revenues, profits, and cash flows are today, and what they will be in a few years? Please, be precise.” Unfortunately, almost no one was, write Rothenberg. The panelists, in case you’re curious, were Dina Kaplan, co-founder and COO of Blip.tv; Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of Blinkx; Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Joost; and Patrick Walker, head of content strategy and partnerships for YouTube in EMEA.

Sir Martin wrote about this incident on his Davos blog on Telegraph, where he said: “When asked what revenues, costs, profits and cash flow are, few respond coherently. The odds of success are still 1 in a 100, as General Doriot used to say. Sometimes it seems that its sardines for buying and selling, not for eating!”