Somewhere in the DNA of WPP’s giant merged creative agency VML is there still a strain of J.Walter Thompson, one of its ingredients?
Kit Kat used to be a Rowntree’s brand (now it’s Nestle, among with much else) and this was JWT’s signature brand as it established itself in London. JWT bosses could be spotted at King’s Cross station entraining for Rowntree’s HQ in York (also handy if you went on a Friday for the grouse estate in Scotland, American-owned JWT had more than its fair share of toffs in those days.)
But the ads were popular crowd-pleasers with the touch of class that marked the agency’s best work. JWT was the biggest UK agency, in effect a mini-holding company with, among other things, its own data operation known, artfully, as the British Market Research Bureau.
There’ve been many changes since, of course. Martin Sorrell bought what was then a global operation quoted on Wall Street in 1987 as the key building block in the creation of WPP (he’d spotted that its assets were way undervalued, among other things.)
JWT has had hard times since and a management scandal in New York was effectively its suicide note and WPP merged it with direct marketing agency Wunderman. Then, under Mark Read, Wunderman Thompson was merged into Kansas City’s VML along with Y&R (which cost WPP $4.4bn in 2000 – WPP’s total market cap is currently $10bn.)
The point of the history lesson? There still seems a strain of the JWT of yore in this new global campaign for Kit Kat from VML.
Chris O’Donnell, global lead for KitKat at Nestlé, says: “KitKat has been the brand that owns breaks for over 80 years but we needed to find a way to resonate with the pressures on young people’s lives today. We want to not just champion the importance of taking breaks, but to help the world break better for years to come.”
Good that one client at least doesn’t think history is bunk.
MAA creative scale: 8.
