WPP

WPP lives on buying, building, and selling attention for other brands, and by our assessment that gives it real reach without making it simple. It is a global advertising and communications holding company, so the work around it includes media buying, creative agencies, PR, and digital marketing services rather than one single product. The strength is scale: big clients can get a wide set of services under one roof. The weakness is also scale, because a company this sprawling can feel hard to read from the outside and often depends on the health of the advertising market. In practice it is less a flashy agency than a network of agencies, with the usual mixture of strategy decks, client accounts, and campaigns. Against smaller shops, WPP sits in the heavyweight class of the industry. WPP is for large advertisers that want reach and structure, not for someone looking for a neat consumer brand.