Toronto-based The Wolf Group in April acquired The Grand Group, a Chicago-based promo agency with clients including Old Navy, Jim Beam Brands, Kraft Foods, Bank One, and Crayola. Terms were not disclosed.
Winner of a 1997 Gold Reggie award for its True Blue Heroes program for Crayola, the Grand Group ranks 72nd in the 1999 PROMO 100 with $2.3 million in net revenue. The agency posted 43-percent growth in two years.
“We were attracted to Grand because it had a good reputation and was a fast-growing, young company,” says Wolf spokesman Kelly Durcan.
Tom Stiefermann, who owned Grand along with Chris Hauri, worked with Wolf last year in its Rochester office on some joint presentations. The president of the office, Sharon Napier, had worked with Stiefermann years before on a Kodak account.
“She pulled us in for some specific expertise,” Stiefermann says. After meeting some of Wolf’s upper management, talks began last August, with Wolf saying that it wanted more than a strategic alliance with Stiefermann and Hauri. “They wanted us to become part of the network,” Stiefermann says.
Grand didn’t make a decision until March. “We’re a small company, about 45 employees, and we wanted to make sure that their network would complement our vision and where we were trying to go,” Stiefermann says.
Wolf has annual billings in excess of $400 million. The agency has offices in New York City, Buffalo and Rochester, NY, and Cleveland, and such clients as Spiegel Catalog, Scotts Co., Arrow Shirts, Fisher-Price, and Kodak. Last year, Wolf bought New York City ad agency Partners & Shevack.
“There is a lot of demand today for the fully integrated, full service agency, and we offer a lot of expertise,” Stiefermann says.
The Hertz Corp. signed a multi-million dollar agreement with Dulles, VA-based America Online to be a premier car rental sponsor on AOL’s Travel Channel. To launch its new venture, Park Ridge, NJ-based Hertz offered an exclusive one-car class upgrade for AOL members who use the AOL Travel Channel to book Hertz rentals.
STICK TO IT News America Marketing, New York City, added to its in-store offerings by acquiring Alpine Promotions, manufacturer of the AdStick checkout dividers that have been used as marketing tools by Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Gillette, and Nestle. AdStick will be added to News America’s SmartSource-branded products and services.
MORE IN STORE In Store Media Systems, Aurora, CO, maker of in-store electronic coupon and redemption systems, signed an agreement to acquire the assets of The Partnership for Shared Marketing, a privately held, New Jersey-based consumer data collection and processing company. The assets include 19 databases with specific information on over 73 million households.
SOME THING NEW Cyrk, Inc., Gloucester, MA, made a strategic investment in ThingWorld.com, Newton, MA, an Internet media company. The financial stake will strengthen Cyrk’s portfolio of brand-building tools and provide clients with the benefits of Things, ThingWorld.com’s proprietary technology. ThingWorld’s clients include leading media, entertainment, music, sports, and consumer brand companies looking to control and manage intellectual property. The ThingWorld.com Internet Media Network aggregates and syndicates content to the Web’s top portals including Lycos and Yahoo.
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