Last week, I attended the reunion for an advertising agency I worked for 28 years ago. Remarkably the business, BMP, still exists and occupies the same building in Paddington it did then.
The occasion was a reminder of how unusual such corporate longevity is in the business world, especially in a field as transient as marketing services. Most companies do not last – even successful ones rarely survive for long after their founders depart. Their assets are scattered, their staff move on, their products are supplanted by new competitors.
I keep a poster in my study of the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It shows graphically the rise and fall of companies and industries. Almost nothing endures – they either go bankrupt or merge. From Wright Aeronautical, Studebaker and Remington Typewriter to Eastman Kodak and Woolworth, the list of old component stocks attests to the restless nature of capitalism. Such benchmarks demonstrate how technology, economics, laws and tastes shift over the decades.