WPP Turns 25

We're delighted to be celebrating our 25th anniversary... and, by happy coincidence, the HuffPost's 5th anniversary. Ours is a silver anniversary, I guess, but it's difficult to digitize silver, certainly by voice, so we turned to somebody who has followed the company virtually since its inception, since it was a wire basket manufacturer 25 years ago, when we started out as two people in one room in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London.

We've asked Professor Joe Bower, professor at the Harvard Business School, who has been writing about WPP, using video digital case studies for 15 or so years. And Joe's done a little retrospective on the company, and we thought that the readers of the Huffington Post would be interested in reading his thoughts on WPP.

I think WPP's halfway there; our objective is to be the best marketing services company in the world, and by best we mean the natural choice of both clients and people; the natural choice of clients when they select an adviser or a partner in the area of advertising and marketing services and of people when they select brands or companies to go to build their careers in advertising and marketing services.

We think we're there in some parts of the world and in some functions, but we have a long way to go, and our strategic focus remains the new markets, the fast-growing markets of the world (the BRICs and Next-11), the new media, the new digital opportunities (in personal computers, the internet, mobile, video content, social networks) and last but not least, consumer insight. By consumer insight we mean understanding how consumers are changing their purchasing habits for products and services, how they're changing their media consumption habits and how we can apply that data through technology to improving the return on investment for our clients in their industries. So I hope you enjoy Joe's thoughts, and we're delighted to celebrate our anniversary on May 9, 2010.

And here's the video case study on WPP by Sonja Ellingson Hout:

 

Comments

[thebigbike]

09:39 PM on 05/07/2010

So, HP, what's the rack rate for this type ad? Would I get a break for a series? Would I have to put up with annoying "fact chckers" and truth in advertising crap? Could I I get design help as part of a ppackage so it doesn't lookk like it came out of our house?

[editorjuno]

12:51 PM on 05/07/2010

One would think a marketing communications giant like WPP would have a corporate website that's legible and attractive. One lives and learns, I suppose.....

[lastpost]

07:34 AM on 05/07/2010

A recent documentary showed customers salivating over a product, labelled in such a way as to imply it was home grown. Informed that the E.U. permitted this deception. Provided that although every ingredient was imported, the final preparation was performed in that country. Those same customers rejected the said product. I doubt if the taste before, differed in any respect to the taste after that revelation. Therefore, their response was governed entirely by a belief created by marketing. Warping Personal Perceptions? Welcome to reality.

[ClarcKing]

06:29 PM on 05/06/2010

I wonder what this poor fellow and his clients are going to do when he finds out that the whole world is under duress caused by the unrelenting, accelerating, collapsing operation of the international monetary financier debt based market system. Europe is on its' death bed; someone should inform.

[Mark Goulston, M.D.]

05:22 PM on 05/06/2010

Sir Martin, Congratulations on being such a shrewd businessman who has the good sense to pick the best creative people around and empower them to do their things. Enthusiasm like it's foul smelling opposite travel downhill and it's clear that your enthusiasm and dedication have infused your company so that they can be psychologically poised to best serve their clients. Cheers to you! Cheers to WPP.

[aNdYtm]

04:38 PM on 05/06/2010

Congrats Mr. Sorrell for so successfully building up the company! I joined Ogilvy & Mather, India while it was celebrating its 60th Anniversary. Hopefully on this 25th, anniversary, I'll find a job with one of your group companies in advertising! Can you help? :)

[joeblow]

02:12 PM on 05/06/2010

Did I miss something---I certainly could have. But no where did I see where anyone bothered to explain what WPP is. I had to look at the video to find out that it's a marketing firm. But I still don't know what WPP stands for.
Again, maybe it's me. But I just didn't see an identifying sentence for what the heck WPP is. Am I alone?

[PartyofLogic]

02:27 PM on 05/06/2010

they referred to themselves in the article as a "marketing services" agency...which is basically, an ad agency. Or rather, a conglomeration of ad agencies in the case of WPP.

[victornewman420]

02:34 PM on 05/06/2010

WPP = Wire + Plastic Products... Company initially made shopping carts, etc... Now it is a holding company for some of the world's biggest ad/pr agencies, market research firms -- including J Walter Thompson (JWT), Ogilvey & Mather, Penn Schoen & Berland, TNS, Young & Rubicam, etc...

[Nooneyouknow]

03:17 PM on 05/06/2010

Thanks for filling in what the HuffPo piece should have made clear in the first graf. Also, why is HuffPo running an advertisement for this company?

[tjdestry]

12:23 PM on 05/06/2010

How great to know that an ad agency has turned 25! And how you've grown since your subsidiary, Hill & Knowlton, worked with the Kuwaiti government to put a little girl on the stand in front of Congress to pretend that she was a volunteer at a hospital in that country and had seen Iraqi troops dumping premature babies out of their incubators. It was a great performance by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. Got us right into that first Gulf War and all that has followed!

Congratulations, good luck and here's to 25 more years of such success!

[Nooneyouknow]

03:19 PM on 05/06/2010

Thanks for pointing that out, but I imagine Sir Martin's company would never do anything unethical; advertising, marketing and PR companies never do... .