GLOBAL MOUSETRAP Alcone Marketing Group (No. 23) refocused to target large clients that want both strategic planning and the Irvine CA-based agency’s execution talents.
“Our business model is to have the best mousetrap for large, global, multi-national clients,” says chairman and ceo Matt Alcone.
The Omnicom Group-owned Alcone gained business at existing accounts and from big wins in ’98. United Distillers and Vintners laid additional work on the 23-year-old agency, and Sega tapped it to launch its Dreamcast video game system. After a stiff review, Nabisco named Alcone as one of its five agencies.
Alcone’s revenues slipped from $130.7 million in 1997 to $123.3 million in 1998 as it dropped business and geared up for new clients. The agency broke new ground recently by unveiling PromoCity.com, a Web site designed to make it more efficient for clients to buy and distribute merchandise.
VITAMINS & PERIPHERALS “Promotion marketing,” says B-12 (No. 37) ceo Scott Ballin “is not buying $100,000 worth of T-shirts and sweating for 15 percent anymore.” Today it involves improving accountability to clients, and sometimes developing proprietary software in the process.
B-12 has developed an Account Profile Index that incorporates databases, graphics, and digital pictures into account-specific surveys, and Instant Market Access Point (IMAP) software that allows clients to review results from events – complete with photos – via the Web the morning after they’re staged.
Technology wasn’t the only source of change in 1998. B-12 switched its name from MSA Promotions, eliminating the last vestiges of its affiliation with Milton Samuels Advertising. It then acquired New York City-based Sukon Marketing Communications, a deal that contributed heavily to an 86-percent jump in net revenue, and settled into new digs in the SoHo section of Manhattan.
B-12’s bread-and-butter since forming in 1991 has been event marketing for liquor brands like Yukon Jack, Bailey’s, Goldschlager, and William Grant. But technology is “opening a lot of doors,” Ballin says.
TECHNOCRATS Boise, ID-based Creative Source International (No. 11) had a problem: how to take a high-tech maker of removable computer hard drives – Iomega of Roy, UT – and create a promo that would click with college students.
They’re not called Creative Source for nothing. More than 30,000 entries – two-thirds via the Internet – poured in for the Iomega Go Auto-Thentic, Baby contest, which featured a grand prize of a Volkswagen Beetle. The winner was a senior from Hillsboro Community College in Tampa, FL.
Founded in 1982 by Ruth and Bob Blaha (she an ex-Frankel art director, he a former Wrigley promotions manager), Creative Source worked in packaged goods until 10 years ago, when Jay Longwell, now evp-sales and management, began pushing the agency towards computer products. The Blahas agonized, then resigned a million-dollar account with Boise-based spud king J.R. Simplot to concentrate on high-tech accounts, signing their first big contract with Micron in 1989. The client list today includes big names like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, as well as up-and-comers such as Okidata.
AH, THE SYNERGIES! Jim Petzing and Rob Colangelo had teamed up before their two companies merged last November to create an agency with $7.8 million in billings. The former employees of Sims Freeman O’Brien worked on campaigns like Pepperidge Farm’s current tie-in with The Cartoon Channel for its Flavor Blasted Goldfish.
Petzing’s The Synergy Group in Chicago had skills in pulling off promotions to complement Norwalk, CT-based Colangelo Marketing Group’s design flair. Voila, Colangelo Synergy Marketing (No. 36) is born. Colangelo became ceo and president, Petzing chief operating officer.
The new firm soon earned the Kraft Plus work, building on Colangelo’s work for Kraft beverages and desserts. CSM then gained work from Spaulding, says Petzing. Other clients include Lea & Perrins, Unilever Personal Care, and Clorox. CSM is creating a talent search event for the Game Show Network’s Extreme Gong Show; Synergy spent the last two years helping the Sony Pictures Entertainment channel build an audience and cable-operator support through The Coast to Coast Search for a Host.
Sounds like they’re on the same wavelength.
MAKE THAT DVE-C Dugan Valva Contess (No. 29) has as broad a line of marketing services as you will find on the PROMO 100 list. Yet by next year, some 30 percent of its revenues will be derived from DVCI Technologies, the agency’s e-commerce unit, says principal and senior managing partner Neil Contess.
Plunging headlong into online, the 1996 Agency of the Year bought Muffin Head, a Web designer, and Visient Corp., skilled in systems solutions. DVCI doesn’t just build Web sites, it builds the back-end computer structures required for e-commerce, then splices in behavioral marketing programs.
Four businesses converge at Morristown, NJ-based DVC: marketing consultant, Web agency, traditional promo agency, and technology support service, says Contess.
Net revenues grew modestly to $27.4 million in 1998, from $26.3 million the year before. Contess claims this year’s revenues are on pace to advance by 40 percent thanks to new accounts including the National Basketball Association and CBS.
WHAT WERE ONCE VICES Diamond Group (No. 48) made its bones running promos for liquor brands. A steadily diversifying client list (it has handled American Express’s sweepstakes for nine years) got even more eclectic recently with the additions of Schering-Plough, Courtyard By Marriott, and JBL Consumer Electronics.
Lowe & Partners has been a minority owner of the New York City shop since February 1997, which has kept competitors from “being pushed in front of us because of their parent company,” and provided resources that don’t pinch the bottom line, says ceo Douglas Diamond. “Promotion” was dropped from the agency’s name in early ’98 “because we do whatever it takes to build the brand,” he says.
Diamond hasn’t shaken all its vices: Sauza Tequila and Beefeater Gin are major clients. And its 1998 Gold Reggie came for Punch Night with Champions, a three-market event for Punch Cigars that boosted sales of a $250 commemorative product and sparked heavy media coverage thanks to the presence of several boxing legends.
STARS IN THEIR EYES Wunderman Cato Johnson (No. 16), Chicago, walks the walk on integration. It collaborated with sister Young & Rubicam agencies in ’98 to win at least three new accounts: Sears (with Y&R), Xerox’s Olympic marketing (with p.r. shop Cohn & Wolfe), and Andersen Consulting (via Landor Design Group). In all, billings rose 10 percent to just over $1 billion; net revenue jumped 12 percent to $140 million.
WCJ showed solid creative work for Taco Bell’s spring ’98 Godzilla tie-in, Avon’s sponsorship of the Celine Dion concert tour, and Lincoln Mercury’s Rugrats movie tie-in and U.S. Cycling Team sponsorship. Its big challenge for ’99: Execute a massive sweeps for Tricon’s Star Wars: Episode I blowout. WCJ developed the game and fulfills for Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC.
Second biggest challenge: Fill the shoes of departing ceo Allan Winneker, who managed Cato Johnson’s turnaround before Y&R merged it in ’92 with Wunderman Direct. Exec vp-managing director Steve Zammarchi oversees day-to-day work.
HEED THAT CALL Robinson & Maites (No. 14) returns to the PROMO 100 after a two-year hiatus, during which president Alan Maites bought out founder Bill Robinson. The shop won a big chunk of GTE’s business in December ’97, and now focuses on telecoms and financial services.
R&M blends promotion with direct marketing in a “customer management” strategy that follows the stages of a consumer’s relationship with a brand. “We need to let target audiences tell us how they want to interact with a brand,” Maites says. Billings rose 50 percent to $9.9 million in ’98; net revenues jumped 56 percent to $4.9 million.
One GTE highlight: A giveaway of basketball-leather NCAA Final Four phonecards brought 265,000 leads for bundled telecom services and twice the revenue projected.
Staffers take field trips for training. A two-week exchange program with staffers from U.K. shop Cramm Francis Woolf is a coveted perk.
SPECIAL DELIVERY When Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank wanted to open a network of branches in supermarkets and airports, its marketers knew they were walking into a thicket of consumer prejudices: Banking was impersonal and tellers talked down to customers – how could a branch in the produce department help that? PNC turned to The PremiereGroup (No. 34), Redondo Beach, CA, whose 51 staffers felt that banking in-store could be as simple as buying a quart of milk.
The campaign that followed used monthly in-store product campaigns and weekly promotions with emphasis on relationship banking and special offers.
The result? Account sign-ups weighed in at 32 percent over goal.
“What’s important,” says ceo Greg Klein, “is that you push added creativity and focus on deliverables.”
With a 36-percent jump in net revenue last year, plus a growing, diversified client list that includes Fox Networks, Bank of America, and Denny’s Restaurants, PremiereGroup has proved that it can deliver just about anything.
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