Saatchi & Saatchi
Definition:
This 20-year old British ADVERTISING AGENCY became the first such company to be a household name in the UK as a result of being appointed by the Conservative Party to run the campaign which ultimately resulted in Mrs Thatcher entering Number 10 Downing Street in 1979. Founded in 1970 by Charles Saatchi, a 27-year-old COPYWRITER and his brother Maurice, a 25-year-old management trainee, it took over the top ranking among British agencies from J. Walter THOMPSON in 1979. The agency built on its domestic success by entering the United States with the acquisition of Compton Communications Inc., which had previously held a 20 per cent stake in Saatchi's subsidiary. Saatchi & Saatchi Garland Compton Worldwide thus became the first British-owned advertising agency to make any significant impact on Madison Avenue, after 90 years of largely benevolent and non-interfering Americanization of British advertising. Within four years, it had bought three more significant American agencies and could lay claim to being the largest advertising group in the world, the ambition that fuelled Charles and Maurice Saatchi's expansion strategies since their earliest days in business. Multinational advertising was no longer the exclusive preserve of the Americans. The architect of this dramatic growth was the chief financial officer, Martin SORRELL, who was subsequently to repeat the performance in even less time on his own account. In 1988, the Saatchi & Saatchi Group in Britain comprised seven advertising agencies, a centralized media buying company, Zenith and various consultancies. The eponymous agency was ranked number one, with BILLINGS of £324.0 million and 832 employees. Its wholly-owned subsidiary, BSB Dorland, was in third place at £261.5 million and 535 staff. The group as a whole had billings of over £1 billion and employed more than two thousand people. Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi and its subsidiaries recorded billings of $13.5 billion and a total staff of over 14,000, figures which finally confirmed its first-place world ranking and status as a big business by any standard.
Cross-References:
[billing]
[Sorrell, Martin]
[Thompson, J Walter]
[copywriter]
[advertising agency]
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© Westburn Publishers Ltd 2002, The Westburn Dictionary of Marketing edited by Michael J Baker, ISBN 978-0-946433-01-8. www.themarketingdictionary.com. Entry: [Keith Crosier], [1998].