Acquisition, the stock market, diversification and globalization: institutional developments in UK advertising

Abstract

Two rather different January events point us towards the important institutional changes that occurred within the UK advertising industry during the 1980s. In its first issue of the decade, on 4 January 1980, Campaign, the advertising trade journal, reported the replacement of J. Walter Thompson, the American owned multinational and so-called “University of Advertising”, at number one in the rankings of advertising agencies in the UK, by the ten year old British agency, Saatchi and Saatchi. Seven years later, on another January day, the advertising industry’s own share listing sector — the Financial Times Actuaries All-Share Index, Classification 75 — was established.