Small Ad Firm Takes Over Once-Dominant Jansen Associates

A small Laguna Hills advertising agency has taken over the clients and the remaining employees of Jansen Associates Inc. in Santa Ana, once one of the county’s largest independent ad agencies and until recently probably the most troubled.

Jansen’s few remaining clients now will be represented by Doyle & Partners Inc., a 7-year-old agency owned by Mark Doyle, former creative director at the big Los Angeles ad agency Chiat/Day.

Ray St. Onge, Jansen’s president, will continue working as the new president of Doyle & Associates. Doyle is chairman of the company. St. Onge could not be reached for comment.

But a number of former Jansen employees said that in the past two years executives fought over business strategy, employees worried about the agency being sold, the two biggest clients were lost and finally, in June, seven key executives walked out.

Billings Decline

Jansen claimed billings of $26 million and the rank of seventh-largest independent ad agency in the county with more than 80 employees last year but had shrunk to six employees and billings of about $6.5 million when it merged with Doyle & Partners.

Doyle said Thursday that the agency will use Jansen employees’ expertise in public relations to try to become a full-service public relations firm in addition to its advertising business.

Jansen was once Orange County’s premier high-technology advertising and public relations firm. The 26-year-old agency captured lucrative accounts from the booming computer companies that began sprouting in the county in the 1970s.

But by 1984 the computer industry was in a tailspin, and so was Jansen.

Rode Out Hard Times

The firm shrank to 20 employees but rode out the hard times and began to come back. Some employees argued at the time that since the company had put all its eggs in one basket, it should now diversify.

So the company began seeking clients in other industries and was beginning to overcome its image as strictly a high-tech agency when trouble hit again.

St. Onge was said to be anxious to sell the business and retire. In 1986, he discussed deals with Doyle Dane Bernbach and BBD&O;, two big New York ad agencies, but those deals fell through.

Apparently St. Onge got no cash for his company from Doyle & Partners. The deal wasn’t “a merger in the traditional sense of money changing hands,” said Doyle, who had talked with St. Onge for years about buying Jansen.

Jansen had only about four advertising clients and one public relations client at the end, Doyle said. The combined firms should bill about $13 million a year, he said.

Doyle’s biggest client is Alpha Microsystems in Santa Ana, a maker of business computers. The company also handles Thai Airways International and First American Title Insurance Co.