Young & Rubicam Picked to Manage Disney Ad Account

Walt Disney Productions, which spent $90 million last year on advertising, announced Monday that all of its major divisions will now use a single agency, New York-based Young & Rubicam Inc.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, president of Disney’s motion picture and television unit, said the selection represents “completely and totally” a vote of confidence in two executives who joined Young & Rubicam last year after they were asked to resign from Paramount Pictures Corp. for what that company called “unethical practices with respect to suppliers.” The nature of the alleged unethical practices was never disclosed.

Gordon Weaver and Steve Rose served Paramount as president and senior vice president, respectively, of marketing for the motion picture division until the studio requested their resignations on June 4, 1984. The two men, who now head a new entertainment unit for Young & Rubicam, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Both Katzenberg and Michael D. Eisner, Disney’s chairman and chief executive, are former Paramount executives who worked with Weaver and Rose for almost a decade. Katzenberg, when asked if he disagreed with the Weaver and Rose dismissals last June, said Monday: “I was never briefed or consulted on the problems that arose there so I can’t address them.”

In a prepared statement, Disney said that a special committee of its board of directors and outside lawyers “carefully reviewed that it would be proper to have Mr. Weaver and Mr. Rose working on our account.”

Disney noted that “The agency itself investigated those allegations thoroughly and stated publicly that they were without merit.”

The Disney account could generate at least $40 million to $50 million in billings in the United States, according to one advertising industry source, who noted that an agency typically receives 15% of total billings as its payment.