Sir Martin Sorrell, the world’s most influential adman, yesterday offered a new expression to describe prospects for the world’s economy as he predicted a “LUV”-shaped recovery.

Sir Martin, who famously used the expression bath-shaped to predict a previous economic downturn, said that the world could expect a three-speed recovery in 2010.

He said the recovery would be L-shaped for Western Europe, U-shaped for North America and V-shaped for Brazil, Russia, India and China and the so-called Next 11 nations, which include Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam.

He cheerfully admitted the LUV acronym — “the most acute description in the alphabet soup debate on the shape of the current economic cycle” — was not his own invention but had been coined recently by Stella Dawson, who blogs on economic matters for Thomson Reuters, the financial data and news provider.

Sir Martin, the founder and chief executive of WPP, the world’s biggest advertising and marketing group, told The Times: “There is a fair degree of confidence among chief executives and chief marketing officers — but, unfortunately, that hasn’t yet translated into spending.

“Whilst their hearts are stronger and their minds clearer, increased confidence is still not transferring to their cheque-writing hands.”

He was speaking as WPP reported revenues of £2.01 billion from July to September. This was up 6.7 per cent on the same months last year and reflected last year’s acquisition of Taylor Nelson Sofres, the market research firm, as well as the recent strength of the dollar and the euro against sterling. Like-for-like sales, which strip out the impact of currency movements and acquisitions and which are regarded as a more meaningful measure, were down 8.7 per cent, although this was a marked improvement on the 10.5 per cent fall suffered during the April to June quarter.

Like-for-like gross margins, which Sir Martin said was a better measure of competitive performance, were also better than the previous three months.

Sir Martin said that things were “less worse” from July to September than from April to June, adding: “You would expect that to be the case, given the massive fiscal and monetary stimuli pumped into the world’s economy. If that hadn’t worked, we would be in real trouble.”

Sir Martin cautioned against suggestions that major economies were now set fair for unblemished growth in 2010. “The big test is what happens when governments start to withdraw their stimulus packages. The ship is turning but I won’t declare victory until we see like-for-like growth.”

WPP won new business totalling £730 million during the quarter, including contracts in the United States with Microsoft — to promote Bing, its new search engine — and Mattel, the toymaker. Sir Martin said he had drawn some comfort from the fact that WPP’s US operation, where revenues were down 6.1 per cent, had enjoyed its best quarterly performance this year.

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