WPP buys JWT; FDA approves DTC; MTV Puts the Video in Music; Agencies Unbundle Media; Bob Jacoby Gets Paid in Full--It's Ad Age's 75 Biggest Events of the last 75 Years

Advertising Age is celebrating its first 75 years of service to the ad industry. Next week is the Ad Age's 75th anniversary issue , which in addition to the package of material looking back and ahead, will include the 15 biggest moments in advertising in the last 75 years. 20 WPP buys J. Walter Thompson Martin Sorrell shocks and forever changes the ad industry when embattled, 123-year-old J. Walter Thompson Co. accepts his $566 million bid on June 26, 1987, ending the conventional wisdom that hostile takeovers don't work in the ad business. Mr. Sorrell proposes the deal June 10 and the next day begins a hostile tender offer initially worth $460 million, sending JWT on a fruitless search for a white knight. Working through the tiny publicly quoted WPP Group company he bought in 1985 while still Saatchi & Saatchi's group finance director, Mr. Sorrell was pursuing a relatively modest plan to build a marketing services group by buying small below-the-line companies. But when he spots an opportunity to wring bigger profits from badly managed JWT, Mr. Sorrell, then 42, changes strategy. With the JWT deal, he embarks on his destiny as a serial acquirer, buying, in often less-than-friendly deals, other venerable agency brands Ogilvy & Mather (1989), Young & Rubicam (2000) and Grey Global Group (2005), becoming Sir Martin along the way when Queen Elizabeth II knights him in '99. 19 FDA approves DTC drug advertising In 1997, the Food & Drug Administration writes the pharmaceutical industry and its agencies a powerful prescription for profits when it brushes aside much of the regulatory congestion that traditionally restricted drug advertising to over-the-counter pain relievers and antacids of the "plop plop fizz fizz" variety. By loosening the constraints on advertising prescription drugs, the government will help spawn a $3 billion-plus ad category, an engine for growth when other categories are sputtering. Drug companies for years had been free to market prescription drugs to doctors but not directly to consumers. By loosening the rules, the FDA unleashes a revolution. Within two years, annual direct-to-consumer prescription spending surges from $309 million to $1.1 billion. Schering-Plough Corp. at one point is supporting Claritin alone with $300 million in media annually. Pfizer makes erectile disfunction, or E.D., a part of the vernacular in ads for Viagra. 18 MTV turns music into eye candy Both the cable industry and the music business enter a new era when MTV: Music Television launches at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 1, 1981. The first hour features videos by the Buggles, famous for the record "Video Killed the Radio Star"; Pat Benatar; Rod Stewart; and the Who. MTV, named Fortune's product of the year in its first year of operation, expands its programming well beyond music videos, including the groundbreaking reality series "The Real World." Over the next 20 years, MTV gradually increases its presence to 80 million homes in the U.S. alone. Outside the U.S., MTV rolls out to 164 countries from China to Africa and all points beyond. MTV is telecast in 18 languages, and it says eight out of 10 MTV viewers are now outside the U.S. The cable channel is today owned by Viacom. 17 Agencies unbundle media departments Penthouse begins publication, Sesame Street airs for the first time, the Jets win the Super Bowl, the Mets the World Series and Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. It's hardly surprising that the summer of '69 is not usually remembered for the creation of a small, forgettably titled French company that traded radio airtime. But the formation of SGGMD-later to become Centrale d'Achat Radio Affichage et Television, or Carat-was a giant step for media and marketing kind. Francois and Gilbert Gross (photo above), the brothers behind that small French company, were not necessarily the first to separate media buying from the business of advertising creation and account management. In the U.S. they were beaten to the idea by Dick Gershon, who sets up Independent Media Services in 1966 to handle the buying work for famed adman George Lois. And Gilbert, now 73 and still working for Carat's holding company, Aegis Group, admits he got the idea from another Frenchman when he was working on a creative account for Perrier and discovered that the client had awarded the media portion of the business to another agency. "He was buying pages in this newspaper for Perrier as if he was in a souk in Marrakech," remembers Mr. Gross. But it's the success of Carat that drives most of the largest ad agencies to separate creative and media services. By the late 1990s, almost all European media is planned and bought by media agencies. The same is now true in the U.S., where media is bought by a handful of massive shops, such as Omnicom Group's OMD, WPP Group's MindShare, Interpublic Group of Cos.' Universal McCann and Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest. Extrapolation of Recma data reveals that the top five media agencies in America today will buy more than $50 billion of media in 2005. The unbundled media agency has, in quick time, imposed itself on the U.S. marketing landscape and changed the ad business forever. 16 Bob Jacoby's big pay day Saatchi & Saatchi pays a record $507 million for Ted Bates Worldwide in 1986. Bates Chairman Bob Jacoby takes home $110 million-and pays the price. Mr. Jacoby, a short man with a big mouth, is vilified in the industry for commanding such loot. There's no doubt that after the sale of the fabled ad agency, a cozier world of agency/client relationships and 15% commissions disappears. The question is whether Mr. Jacoby's actions bring on change (critics' view) or whether he takes the money and runs because he presciently sees a world about to change (his view). In either case, his payday shocks the system. The agency world begins a period of remarkable consolidation in '86; eight of the 10 largest U.S. agency groups in business that year have since been acquired. Wall Street relationships have become as important as client relationships. Mr. Jacoby, now 76 and retired in Florida, accepts that many cast him as a "pariah" when he was first to grab the prize. "I don't resent it," he told Advertising Age in 2002. "It's funny as hell. It turned out OK." Contributing: James B. Arndorfer, Claire Atkinson, Jonah Bloom, Bradley Johnson, John McDonough MILESTONES TO DATE 75 Advertising Age launches 74 Birth of reality TV 73 Gannett launches USA Today 72 Food marketers consolidate 71 Motivational research emerges 70 RJR retires Old Joe 69 Action for Children's Television founded 68 Food, Drug & Cosmetics Act passed 67 Absolut vodka is launched 66 Townsend Brothers/copy testing 65 Edsel introduced 64 "A diamond is forever" 63 MCI competes with AT&T 62 Fox network debuts 61 Tampax starts educating women 60 LBOs shake up marketing world 59 Birth of Univision and Hispanic TV 58 Advertising Council formed 57 Reese's Pieces soar via "E.T." 56 Emergence of "positioning" 55 Compensation consultant at IBM 54 Mary Wells' WRG raises the bar 53 Census 2000: a wake-up call 52 Nike signs Michael Jordan 51 Marlboro Man saddles up 50 Buick ads back used cars 49 Beginnings of syndicated TV 48 Breaking ad talent race barrier 47 Universal Product Code unveiled 46 Bank of America charges ahead 45 J&J's Tylenol tampering case 44 Bubble bursts as dot-coms crash 43 "Star Wars" saga begins 42 Avis declares that it's No. 2 41 Gallup applies research skills 40 Cigs "hazardous to your health" 39 Ike's "Man from Abilene" 38 "Pepsi Generation," the cola wars 37 Nielsen tracks share of market 36 Beverages go "light"-ly 35 Apple Computer's "1984" spot 34 Photo-driven Life on newsstands 33 Reeves' "Unique Selling Proposition" 32 Start of cable, satellite-delivered TV 31 "Bug bomb," aerosol can technology 30 Quiz show scandals change TV buying 29 Birth of the daytime soap opera 28 HotWired runs first Internet ad 27 Remote control device arrives 26 Packard's "Hidden Persuaders" 25 Y&R's Whole Egg theory 24 Levittown opens, suburbs mushroom 23 Communications Act of 1934 22 African-Americans enter ad industry 21 Nader and era of consumer advocacy

WPP buys JWT; FDA approves DTC; MTV Puts the Video in Music; Agencies Unbundle Media; Bob Jacoby Gets Paid in Full--It's Ad Age's 75 Biggest Events of the last 75 Years

Featured Stories