Most denizens of adland want to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue: the market is oversubscribed and only a few agencies make it in terms of being business household names: Saatchi & Saatchi way back (although it’s still around), J. Walter Thompson in the mists of time (alas no more.)
These days it’s ad holding companies that get the attention (dull though they often are) and WPP still tends to dominate proceedings even though it’s out-performed by Publicis and Omnicom. WPP is currently all over the place following some encouraging H1 results with what seems like a posse of American lawyers pursuing it through every jurisdiction they can find.
This follows a surprise profit warning in the last days of former CEO Mark Read and the current claim by former executive Richard Foster for $100m in compensation and damages over a number of claims he’s made involving WPP hanging on to discounts and incentives it shouldn’t. All entwined with dirty doings in China which led to some executives being jailed.
WPP’s lawyers are busily trying to have the case dismissed and it is a strange one: how could Foster be worth so much money; if WPP Media (then known as GroupM) was making so much money from so-called principal trading, how come WPP itself went through a period when profits and revenue tumbled, reducing its value from £17bn to £3bn?
There’s clearly more to come out here. But it’s not going to do WPP’s reputation, or indeed that of its peers, much good.