WPP CEO Martin Sorrell let it be known this week that he would soon announce another acquisition in the Internet ad space. He has been looking for other companies that would be a good fit with WPP since they acquired 24/7 Real Media earlier in 2007.
Rumors almost immediately started swirling about who the new acquisition would be, with Spot Runner, which WPP already owns a 3 percent stake in, as the top contender.
Spot Runner focuses on offering inexpensive TV advertising for small businesses. It does it through a library of template-like ads that can then be tweaked for the individual company, making them much less expensive to create.
Another category thought to be in the running is a company that can offer quality online advertising tracking.
The one thing I wanted to mention from a marketing perspective, is the way Sorrell made this announcement. It was a great marketing ploy.
What he did was basically announce that he was going to make an announcement. It got everybody's curiosity up and people covering the industry trying to guess which company or sector they were going to buy in. The announcement itself was marketing, that's what is important in it.
Now there will be continuous buzz and speculation concerning WPP until the announcement is named. That's going to end up with a lot of free publicity and fodder for people to write about. And as I am writing about it, as well as others, it shows it's a great marketing strategy.
It takes advantage of the natural curiosity and wanting to figure out a puzzle that resides in most people. Something to think about in your marketing efforts.
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