San Diego Zoo Reviews Ad Campaign, Rattling Longtime Agency’s Cage

When the San Diego Zoo turned 70 a few years ago, its ad firm celebrated with a TV commercial that showed a bunch of monkeys gobbling down birthday cake.

Officials from the zoo, who are none too keen on ads that take animals out of their enclosures, went along with the idea. Indeed, the set was decorated just like any kid’s birthday party--including balloons and streamers. But when the ad agency, Phillips-Ramsey, wanted to place birthday hats atop the monkeys’ heads, zoo officials said no way. The ad was filmed--minus the hats.

Now, however, a far bigger issue than monkeys’ hats stands between San Diego’s most prestigious ad firm and its most famous tourist attraction. The San Diego Zoo, the client upon which Phillips-Ramsey has built its name, is rattling its cage with threats of hiring a new ad firm.

Suddenly, an ad firm that for years prided itself on being the biggest and brightest in the cozy San Diego ad market is facing some not-so-cozy, big-city problems. Not only is the zoo account under review, but it comes amid prolonged talks with a big New York agency that has offered to buy Phillips-Ramsey.

“It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle at that agency,” said Sheila Fox, president of a competing San Diego ad firm, Chapman/Warwick. “Everyone’s trying to put the pieces together, but nobody can.”

While not everyone is familiar with Phillips-Ramsey’s name, most people are very familiar with its advertising. For years, its unusual billboards have caught the eye of folks who drive the Southern California freeways. The billboards are often in groups of three. One series features a chorus line of elephants linked trunk to tail. The last elephant billboard shows a baby elephant desperately trying to catch up with the elephants on the other billboards.

Much like that lone elephant trying to hang onto its mother’s tail, Phillips-Ramsey is struggling to keep the zoo’s $4-million ad business in its grasp. Just as important as the income from the account is the exposure. The zoo’s advertising is so prominent that it constantly helps the firm get new business.

“It’s a client we’ve handled for 20 years and would like to handle for another 20,” said Richard Brooks, president and chief executive of the agency. “For us, talking about the zoo is like talking about our own kids. We’ve watched it grow.”

And perhaps helped it grow, too. The zoo posted record attendance of 3.8 million last year--bolstered in part by the exhibit of two giant pandas on loan from China. Of all of Southern California’s tourist attractions, only Disneyland sees more visitors annually. If Phillips-Ramsey loses the zoo’s advertising, “it would be such a blow to their prestige,” said one former senior executive, “that I don’t know how they’d recover.”

Zoo officials are saying little about the review. They only say that all vendors are being reviewed--from their accountants to the folks who supply hay for the elephants.

Brooks is optimistic about the outcome and even professes not to mind the review process. “I suppose the surprising thing is that they haven’t done it before.”

Some observers, however, still believe that--review or not--the zoo is not about to boot out an agency that has probably won more awards for its advertising than zoo officials could stuff into the Reptile House.

No doubt, hanging onto the zoo business is first in the minds of executives at the New York shop that is trying to buy Phillips-Ramsey. “Sure, it would be traumatic to lose that account,” said Robert James, chairman of the ad firm McCann-Erickson Worldwide. “But we’re not buying the agency for that business alone.”

James said the purchase would quickly allow his firm not only to expand into the San Diego market, but also into Phoenix, where Phillips-Ramsey has a branch office. With the purchase, of course, the Phillips-Ramsey name would disappear.

Although the deal was supposed to be completed nearly a month ago, officials now say it probably won’t be completed until May. “Not to worry,” said James, “it’s all over but the shouting.” He said that a complete audit of the firm--and a few minor legal hassles--have only temporarily delayed the purchase.

Why hitch up with a giant New York ad firm? “Call it the comfort factor,” Brooks said. That is, when the agency pitches for new business, it can lure clients by flaunting the fact that it is backed by a major Manhattan ad firm. “It’s frustrating,” said Robert J. Kwait, executive vice president and creative director at Phillips-Ramsey, “to have the best creative product but lose out in competition because you don’t have a big name.”

What the agency has had on its side, however, is top creative talent. “They’ve always been able to come up with good, strong concept,” said rival ad firm president Fox. “But they fine tune each ad to the point where they have one simple message that you can’t miss.”

Take the elephant billboards, for example. The man who designed those billboards said it all happened by accident. The ads were supposed to be three consecutive pages in a magazine. “We were looking at the proposed magazine layout one night and I thought, God, those would make good billboards,” Kwait said.

Kwait said he is used to things happening by accident in zoo advertising. Crews will spend many days just filming the animals at the zoo for a single, 30-second commercial, he said. Recently, he was out filming an ad for the zoo’s new $6-million Tiger River expansion, a three-acre rain forest exhibit that showcases plants and animals from Asian jungles. A tiger that his crew was filming was supposed to look and act ferocious but instead it walked right up the cameraman and started licking the camera lens.

A few weeks ago, on a warm Sunday afternoon, Kwait visited the zoo with his wife. They were observing a gorilla that Kwait had photographed for a very popular zoo poster. “We were having a stare-off,” Kwait said. “I kept thinking, ‘Hey, I made you famous, gorilla.’ ”

The contest ended when Kwait looked away from the gorilla. When he did, the creative director’s wife noticed that the gorilla suddenly turned its back to Kwait. Executives at Phillips-Ramsey hope that those who hold the keys to the zoo won’t do the same.

Toyota Gears Up to Tap Latino Market

For nearly 30 years, Toyota has created very little advertising aimed at Latinos. That’s because Toyota Motor Sales USA was so busy selling cars that its marketing department mostly dubbed a few of Toyota’s regular ads in Spanish.

Now, however, the Japanese auto maker’s sales are not booming as they once were. So, Toyota’s U.S. ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi DFS, said Monday that it has hired a specialty New York ad firm to help it create ads aimed at the fast-growing Latino market.

That firm, Conill Advertising Inc., creates Latino ads for clients such as McDonald’s, Miles Laboratories and Procter & Gamble. Conill ranks as one of the largest Latino ad firms in the United States and is also owned by the British advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi.

“Four years ago, we never had more than a three-day supply of cars on hand. There was really no reason to even consider anything but mainstream advertising,” said George Borst, corporate advertising manager for the auto maker with its U.S. headquarters in Torrance. “As you know, the market conditions have changed.”

The new ads will probably air in October, when Toyota begins introducing its 1989 car line, Borst said. And the new Latino ads will focus more on the importance of the car to the family, he said. The car maker’s current slogan--”Who can ask for anything more?”--will probably still be used in the Spanish-language advertising, Borst said, “unless something better comes along.”

Clio Awards Drawing Few Latino Entries

The most coveted prize in the advertising business is a Clio award. While officials who oversee the New York competition have added several new categories for Latino ads this year, few Latino firms seemed to care.

Last year, for the first time, the Clio Awards created categories for individual Latino television, radio and print ads. But combined entries for those categories totaled only about 50. Typically, most categories receive hundreds of entries.

This year, the contest has added another category for complete Latino ad campaigns (two ads or more for the same product). But only eight entries in the television category were received, said Nancy Ross, vice president of the New York-based Clio Awards. “Maybe a lot of the Hispanic agencies just figured it would be too hard to win that category,” she said.

But Eduardo Bermudez, chairman of the Los Angeles Latino ad firm Bermudez Associates, says that’s not the problem. Some Latino agencies may not be so prize-oriented, said Bermudez, whose firm last year won a Clio for a Latino radio ad for Mountain Bell. And Bermudez hopes to walk away with another Clio in June. “But it’s not because we’re so good. We’ll probably win because no one else enters.”

Competition Growing in Sports Marketing

Not too long ago, sports marketing mostly meant that some advertiser paid a few bucks to hang a banner at some stock car race. But the business has grown increasingly complex. And last year, U.S. advertisers spent a record $6.2 billion on everything from sporting event sponsorships to licensing agreements with groups such as Major League Baseball and the Olympics, reports the trade publication Sports Marketing News.

Philip Morris Cos. was the leader, spending $351 million on sports marketing in 1987. The company depends heavily on sponsoring sporting events, perhaps partly because its cigarette ads are banned from television. And Chrysler Corp., which spent $115 million last year, is fast becoming the leader in so-called events marketing, said Philip Maher, editor of the Westport, Conn.-based publication. “The promotion side is rising much faster than network advertising,” he said.

Oddly, the U.S. Armed Forces--the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines--which also spent $115 million to advertise on televised sporting events last year, didn’t spend a nickel to sponsor any sporting events. Not even the Army vs. Navy football game.

Collector Captures Ad Slogans in Directory

It all started when James D. Grinnell drove by an automobile brake repair shop in Cambridge, Mass. This slogan hung high above the shop: “We fix it so it brakes.”

That got Grinnell--a one-time product marketing manager with Gillette Co.--thinking a lot about advertising slogans. So much, in fact, that Grinnell, 43, started collecting advertising slogans with plans to start a single directory.

The outcome: National Register of Advertising Headlines & Slogans. The 355-page directory--published by Lucas Publications of Norwood, Mass.--contains more than 2,500 advertising slogans. And Grinnell says his second volume, due out in August, will have twice that many.

“Any ad slogan that I see--or that is sent to me--I’ll put in the book,” Grinnell said. There are hundreds of familiar slogans like the American Express expression, “Don’t leave home without it.” And of course, there’s the Morton Salt one-liner, “When it rains, it pours.”

But the $69.95 book, which Grinnell says is a handy reference tool for people in the ad business, also has some slogans that don’t get much national notice. Grinnell’s personal favorite? While vacationing recently in Oregon, he observed this slogan for the Oregon Turf Growers Assn., “We’re easy to get a lawn with.”