Getting More Contemporary
SFX bolsters field marketing with Heffernan buy.
SFX, Inc., New York City, added additional field execution capabilities to its massive stable of entertainment marketing services by acquiring Heffernan Associates, a two-year-old Atlanta agency founded by a pair of Coca-Cola marketing veterans.
The new business will merge with existing field marketing outfit Contemporary Marketing, Totowa, NJ, to form a new entity called CMI. New arrival Lee Heffernan will serve as president, with SFX’s Charlie Horsey and Heffernan’s Dan West acting as senior vice presidents. The acquisition caps off a restructuring of Contemporary last summer which resulted in the departure of several top executives.
“We were looking for agencies in top ADIs to better meet regional and local-market needs,” says Paula Balzer, president of SFX Marketing, who was general manager of Contemporary when the agency was acquired by SFX in 1998.
The new shop has 23 employees, including field experts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and New York City. Contemporary has roughly 60 employees.
Heffernan spent 15 years in various sales and marketing positions at Coke before leaving with West to form the agency. “I had a desire to do something on my own, and saw an opportunity in event marketing,” he says.
Contemporary’s business has slumped in the last two years after net revenues peaked at $11 million in 1997. The agency ranked 72nd on this year’s PROMO 100, falling from 19th in the previous year. Balzer blames the slide on growing pains associated with the shop’s merger into SFX, “and trying to find the right plane for [the agency] to work on.”
CMI will continue working with clients outside the SFX network in addition to executing campaigns for its parent’s marketing partners.
