Rockwell Hires Agency in L.A. to Handle Ads : $15-Million Account Follows Firm West

Just two months after moving its corporate headquarters from Pittsburgh to Southern California, the aerospace giant Rockwell International on Tuesday named a Los Angeles advertising agency to handle its $15-million advertising business.

Rockwell selected the Los Angeles office of the New York ad firm Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt, which will immediately begin creating ads. Rockwell has done virtually no corporate advertising for nearly eight months while it has been in agency limbo.

“It doesn’t make any sense just to run advertising for the sake of running advertising,” said Philip Jacques, director of advertising at Rockwell. But it “made sense” to hire a West Coast ad firm, he said, “because the rest of our operations have all moved here.”

Angered Environmentalists

Rockwell’s previous agency, Lintas: Campbell-Ewald, created most of Rockwell’s advertising out of its Warren, Mich., office, before resigning the business in a huff in May.

The ad firm created one ad campaign back in 1986 that raised the ire of environmentalists. The ads, which appeared in several defense industry publications, used Ansel Adams photographs to compare defense systems to natural resources. But executives at Rockwell say that provocative campaign played no part in their more recent decision to review ad agencies. Executives from the ad firm Campbell-Ewald declined comment on Tuesday.

But early Tuesday morning, at Rockwell’s new ad agency BKJ&E;, there was a champagne celebration. After all, some 30 Los Angeles area agencies originally made bids for the business. Eventually, it became a two shop shoot-out between BKJ&E; and the Los Angeles office of the ad agency BBDO Worldwide.

Some industry executives were surprised that BKJ&E; won, because the agency’s Los Angeles office has little experience in handling high-tech business. The office now creates advertising for Chrysler in California and national advertising for Chrysler’s imported Colt cars.

New Slogan

The agency says it plans big changes for Rockwell’s corporate advertising. For two decades in print advertisements that mostly appeared in business publications, Rockwell has used the now familiar ad slogan, “Where science gets down to business.” That slogan, however, will likely be killed, said Cy Schneider, chairman of the Pacific operations at BKJ&E.;

“The new ads will look at customer service,” said Schneider, who said he plans to hire about half a dozen new employees to help with the new account. “We want to get across the message that Rockwell doesn’t turn things out on a factory line. It makes them to customer specifications.”

What’s more, Rockwell will also concentrate more of its print and television advertising on commercial operations that are not defense-related, said Jacques, the director of advertising. This includes ads for a division that makes components for heavy-duty trucks, as well as ads for a division that makes cockpit equipment for commercial aircraft.

So what will Rockwell’s next ad slogan be? “We don’t know yet,” said Schneider, “but it will say something like, Rockwell does things right.”