WHERE THEY CAME FROM
The marketing field is infamous for volatility, egos, and cutthroat competition, and WPP’s C.E.O., Martin Sorrell, stands out from the spirited throng on all three counts. In fact, industry giant WPP can’t even be discussed without first mentioning Sir Martin. The firm was created more than 20 years ago, when Sorrell—knighted in 2000—was looking for a public entity, essentially a shell company, upon which to build an empire. In 1985 (a year before his rival Omnicom consolidated), he found it in Wire and Plastic Products, a British manufacturer of wire baskets. Thus began one of the most aggressive communications and marketing-services holding companies in existence.

WHAT THEY DO
WPP is the poster child of corporate A.D.D., with 98,000 employees in 2,000-plus offices in 106 countries. Its public face is its group of advertising agencies, among them JWT, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Grey Worldwide, and Young & Rubicam. But it also owns media-investment management firms; public relations shops (Burson-Marsteller and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide); branding companies (Landor and Enterprise IG); direct promotion and retail-marketing firms (Wunderman and OgilvyAction); information and consultancy businesses (with the Kantar Group as parent); health-care communications organizations (Sudler & Hennessey and Grey Healthcare Group); and other digital and specialist-communication companies.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
WPP sealed the biggest deal in agency history when it bought Y&R for $4.7 billion in 2000. The purchase was the high point in a shopping spree that started when Sorrell completed the first-ever hostile takeover in marketing-industry history by acquiring the much larger J. Walter Thompson Group for $566 million in 1987. He did it again in 1989, buying Ogilvy & Mather for $864 million. In 2005, the year WPP acquired Grey Global Group for $1.5 billion, it earned $10 billion in overall revenue from its properties.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve been influenced by WPP. Bought Pantene or Pringles lately? WPP’s marketing-communications network, Grey Global Group, might have used its ads to persuade you to do so. Sipped Dr Pepper? That could have been WPP’s Y&R influence. Thousands of television and radio commercials, print ads, billboards, and more come from advertising agencies owned by WPP.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
Sir Martin is known as the industry ogre (as well as other, unprintable epithets) for gobbling up other companies. But besides damaging his reputation, Sorrell’s shopping sprees have been expensive for his firm. Unfortunately for WPP, its big buys in the late ’80s were followed by an economic recession. The company’s market value dropped dramatically in the early 1990s, and the organization came close to collapsing. As Sorrell was forced to hunker down and pay off debt, WPP lost its standing as marketing’s largest player. By 2000, though, Sorrell was back in the game in a big way with the Y&R purchase, and he profited mightily from the dotcom boom. The ensuing bust delivered more hard times, with the company’s stock price dropping $70 a share between 2000 and 2003.

WHAT’S NEXT
Sorrell’s appetite may become increasingly exotic: WPP is looking to expand its interests in Asia, Africa, Russia, and Latin America over the next decade.—Willow Duttge