5 Clients Leaving Ayer, Giving Ad Business to an Agency Formed by Its Executives
One month after N W Ayer announced that it will shut down most Orange County operations, five clients of the New York-based advertising firm said they will move their accounts to an agency to be started by four current and former Ayer executives.
Jim deYong and Dan Ginsberg, former executives of the Ayer Pacific division, Michael Weisman, general manager of Ayer-Irvine operations, and Cheryl Bailey, a member of the Irvine creative staff, plan to open an agency in Tustin on Jan. 18, according to the clients and ad industry sources.
Ginsberg, the only member of the group available for comment Thursday, declined to confirm the plans and called the reports “premature.” Ginsberg, who said he was fired as Ayer Pacific president after disagreeing with the decision to shut down creative operations in Irvine, said he would not discuss his plans until issues of severance pay are settled with Ayer-Irvine employees.
Ayer announced last month that it planned to reduce its Irvine branch to a service office Jan. 15, leaving in doubt the future of 50 employees and about $25 million in annual billings. The closing comes only nine months after Ayer entered Orange County with the purchase of the Reiser Williams deYong agency, which deYong headed.
Coopervision Surgical, Orange County Transit District, Wyle Laboratories, Systech and a division of Yamaha Music Corp. USA said Thursday that they have quit Ayer or plan to leave and sign with the new agency, which they said is to be called deYong Ginsberg Weisman Bailey.
Switch for Convenience
The clients said the convenience of working with an Orange County firm and satisfaction with their creative team were main reasons for making the switch. All of the clients are located in Orange County, except San Diego-based Systech.
John Littlewood, chief executive officer of Ayer Pacific, the agency’s western division, announced in December that creative operations of the Irvine office would be transferred to regional headquarters in Los Angeles. He said at the time the Irvine office was “underutilized.”
Littlewood was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon.
“It’s the logistics,” said Medelice Tuttle, marketing services manager of Coopervision Surgical in Irvine. “We had to have an agency in Orange County. We discussed the situation with Mr. Littlewood, and he agreed to let us out of our contract.”
Joanne Curran, a spokeswoman for the OCTD said: “We became a client last July, and we liked our creative team. We didn’t really like the idea of having a new team out of Los Angeles.”
The advertising manager for Yamaha Music’s professional audio division, said he was persuaded to move the account to the new firm because of deYong’s presence.
Client Impressed
“Mr. Littlewood introduced me to Mr. deYong last spring,” said Yamaha’s Bob Davis. “He impresses me an awful lot. It’s a shame. It’s sad that we had to leave. But we really preferred the group we had here.”
Because the principals in the new agency have a “proven record,” several of the clients said they did not require the new agency to make a formal presentation to win the account. Tuttle said she was impressed that the new agency is “a little group that doesn’t want to be big. The clients will be the players.”
Advertising executives agreed that geographic convenience is a major incentive for local firms to sign up Orange County agencies.
“If you’re a service organization, it’s important to have a presence near your clients,” said Lynn Livingston, president of Cochrane Chase, a Newport Beach-based agency that also has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.
There was no rush by Orange County ad agencies to lure Ayer’s clients away after the closing, according to several advertising executives.
“Jim and Dan are good people. We’re friends. And most people were waiting to see what they were going to do,” said Scott Montgomery, an executive vice president of Salvati Montgomery Sakoda, a Santa Ana-based agency.
