Chris Ingram (born 9 June 1943) is a British businessman, entrepreneur and art collector with strong benevolent links to Woking.
Early life
Chris Ingram is one of four children and the only son born to Thomas and Gladys Ingram. His father was a Police Inspector in the Surrey Constabulary which, at that time, involved many relocations around West Surrey.
He attended Woking Grammar School; having obtained six O'Levels of mediocre grades, he left sixth form abruptly after only six months to become a messenger boy at a London advertising agency.
Advertising career
Ingram started his advertising career in 1960, aged 16 at Pictorial Publicity. Six months later, after the agency was taken over by John Pearce and Ronnie Dickenson, Collett Dickenson Pearce ("CPD") was formed. CPD rapidly became world-famous for its creative advertising. The media department in which Ingram then worked as a junior was a service department to the main creative agency.
Ingram then moved between several advertising agencies (including Greenlys where he met his wife, Janet).
In 1964 he joined KMP, one of the hot agencies of the 1960s. The freedom and encouragement of the principals resulted in his becoming a board director aged 26 years. KMP was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1969 and subsequently embarked on a hasty acquisition spree. At Ingram's prompting, the by-then group of ad agencies (KIMPHER) formed a stand-alone media company, 'The Media Department', in 1972, which was to be the forerunner of the modern media agency, splitting for the first time, the media and creative functions of the full-service advertising agency.
The KIMPHER Group was badly hit by the three-day week and Ingram left in 1976 to start Chris Ingram Associates (CIA). After a shaky start, when there was very limited demand for the concept of a specialist media agency, the company later gained traction and expanded rapidly through the 1980s. CIA floated on the Stock Exchange in 1989. A series of rapid acquisitions commenced in 1993 to create a European network of agencies reflecting the emerging 'Single Market'.
During this period the idea of a stand-alone media company became gradually accepted as the norm. The Financial Times((')) analysis in 2000 of the previous decade showed that CIA was the world's best performing advertising stock of the 1990s.
Ingram was judged 'London Entrepreneur of the Year' in 2000 in the Ernst & Young awards and later, Business Services UK Winner.
By now CIA (with a holding company, Tempus) was employing 2,600 people in 67 offices across 29 countries with a turnover of $3 billion. However, the company was not truly global and in 1998 all the major agencies had decided to join the trend of the separation of creative from media, resulting in the appearance of much larger competitors in the market.
Meantime, WPP was progressively increasing its stake in the publicly quoted Tempus, and by 2001 it was approaching 25%.
The board of Tempus took the covert decision to sell the company. After a period of courtship, Havas, which also had an incomplete global network, made a bid based on a multiple of 34 pre-tax profits. A battle ensued between WPP and Havas which ended abruptly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Havas withdrew immediately, leaving WPP's bid as the only one.
A series of historic appeals was made by WPP, who claimed a material adverse change (called 'a MAC Attack' in the Financial Times at that time). After two appeals to the Stock Exchange, WPP was forced to follow through with its bid, netting £432 million cash for Tempus shareholders on 6 November 2001.
Life after CIA
Ingram re-entered the advertising and marketing sector in 2003 with The Ingram Partnership, a strategic brand consultancy that was positioned to be "the McKinsey of Marketing" with a series of high-profile hirings. Despite achieving considerable publicity and client plaudits, the venture was not a success. Losses accumulated and Ingram closed the London office in 2007. He retained a 30% interest in the New York office and sold the Hong Kong office back to one of the founders.
In parallel with the launch of The Ingram Partnership, Ingram set up a very small investment fund, Genesis Investments, financed from the sale of CIA with his son Jonathan, to make eight to ten investments of approx £0.5m each in companies in the media sector.
The last investment was in Decision Technologies Limited (whose main brand is Consumer Choices), a price comparison site. At the same time Jonathan Ingram joined as COO. This company was judged to be No. 24 in the Sunday Times TechTrack100 of 2011.