More East Coast Firms Are Looking West for Ads

Any time New York cosmetics giant Estee Lauder has wanted advertisements over the past 20 years, it has looked across town to the same sprawling Manhattan ad agency. Now, it is also looking across the country.

Several months ago, executives from the company’s Aramis division edged away from the New York ad firm AC&R.; Instead, the company is looking to the Los Angeles ad firm Keye/Donna/Pearlstein to create ads for New West, a line of men’s skin care products. The ad shop is in charge of creating an image for the recently introduced line, which ranges from shaving cream to after-shave lotion.

“We don’t feel advertising for a line of Western products can be done from New York City,” said Ira Howard Levy, senior vice president of corporate marketing for Estee Lauder. “I’m looking out my office window right now, and it’s cold and dark and raining,” he said in a telephone interview. “In California, people are probably out playing tennis right now. Even in advertising, you can’t really fake things like that.”

While it might sound peculiar for an East Coast company to look to the West Coast for its advertising, more and more are doing it. Sure, big ad agencies frequently have offices all over the country--if not the world--to service clients wherever they are.

For years, New York and Chicago were the advertising centers of the world. In other big cities, ad firms would basically serve locally based clients. But in the early 1980s, several ad agencies outside of the mainstream--Chiat/Day in Los Angeles, Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco and Fallon McElligott in Minneapolis--began to change all that when they started picking up national clients from thousands of miles away. Now, Los Angeles seems to be garnering a growing share of that national business.

Timex, for example, is headquartered in Connecticut, but about a year ago the Los Angeles office of Evans Communications began creating ads for one of its new watch lines. Post Cereal is made in New York, but for years advertisements for its Pebbles brand cereal have been made by the Los Angeles office of Ogilvy & Mather. While Sunny Delight Citrus Punch is bottled in Connecticut, its advertisements come from the Los Angeles ad firm Gumpertz/Bentley/Fried. And Coleco--the company that makes Cabbage Patch dolls--is in Connecticut, but the Los Angeles ad agency Scott Lancaster Mills Atha is creating commercials for the toy maker.

Some of these relationships have Los Angeles roots that eventually spread back East. But in several cases, executives say, advertisers are becoming less concerned with where their ad agencies are located and more concerned with the types of ads they produce.

“Good ideas don’t know what city they come from,” said Leonard Pearlstein, chief executive of Keye/Donna/Pearlstein. In fact, the offbeat print ad--and slogan--that his agency created for the New West fragrance seems to magnify that very point. “East is East,” the slogan says, “and West is something else entirely.”

Indeed, Timex clearly strays far from home for its ads. It goes to Fallon McElligott in Minneapolis for most of its ads. But a year ago, its picture watch division--which makes special watches that feature pictures of owners’ relatives, friends or pets--went to Evans Communications Los Angeles office for its ads.

“There’s something about the fresh ideas in California advertising that we like,” said Ron Sok , manager of advertising at Timex. “Things like distance and time differences aren’t really big barriers to us.”

Surely, however, they are at least small barriers. And several West Coast ad executives concede that while it may be prestigious to have a big East Coast client, it also can result in some big life style changes.

“Instead of reading the morning paper at 6 a.m., I’m now on the phone to New York,” said Pearlstein. What’s more, he added, “it’s a lot of airplane rides for everyone involved.”

Steve Scott, chairman of the ad agency Scott Lancaster Mills Atha, says he’s become one of the world’s experts on air travel since his firm began creating ads for Coleco about two years ago. It has since taken on a handful of other East Coast toy company clients. “Recently, a few of us sat down and tried to figure out how much time we spend on airplanes,” said Scott. “It made us ill, so we just stopped trying to figure it.”

For its part, however, Coleco says it didn’t hire Scott Lancaster because that agency is based in Los Angeles. It hired the firm because the agency was experienced at creating toy advertising. “We were in an emergency situation,” said Sy Gershberg, director of advertising at Coleco, which in July filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. “Our advertisements for a new line of Cabbage Patch dolls weren’t good, and we needed an ad agency that could help us immediately.”

But when Sundor Brands brought its Sunny Delight citrus punch to the Los Angeles market in the late 1970s, the company didn’t even plan on advertising. After all, the product sold just fine back East with very few ads. But sales in Los Angeles were much slower than expected, so the company hired a Los Angeles agency. And that agency, Gumpertz/Bentley/Fried, is now creating ads in virtually all of the Sundor’s markets.

Then, there’s Pebbles. That’s the Post cereal named after the Flintstones’ baby daughter. While ads for most Post cereal brands are handled out of the New York office of the ad firm Ogilvy & Mather, ads for several of the children’s cereals--such as Pebbles--have long-been created in Los Angeles.

Why? In a word: Mattel. For decades, the Los Angeles office has handled advertising for the giant toy company. That, of course, means the agency knows how to get the attention of kids. “As a result, we’ve also done ads for Alpha Bits and Smurf Berry Crunch,” said Gerald McGee, general manager. “Of course, that’s hard to say without smiling.”

Sav-On Osco to Launch War for Market Share

As if the Southern California grocery store wars aren’t enough to keep several Los Angeles ad agencies busy, there may soon be a local drugstore war to boot.

Late last week, the agency Admarketing picked up the estimated $3-million Southern California advertising business of Sav-on Osco, the drugstore division of giant American Stores. The regional account will eventually include ads for the chain’s stores in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson. The rest of Sav-on’s advertising will continue to be handled by the Chicago office of Grey Advertising.

Although Sav-on has fewer stores in Southern California than its rival, Thrifty, it plans to soon mount a huge advertising effort to increase its market share, said Jack Roth, president of Admarketing. But Roth knows his agency has plenty of work ahead. “We’ve never handled a drugstore chain,” said Roth, whose agency specializes in retail accounts. “But we’ve been close--we’ve handled a lot of products that are sold in drugstores.”

Ad Age to Hold Expo for Agencies, Clients

There are trade shows for computers, clothing and even toys. But what about a trade show that sells the services of advertising agencies?

Well, the trade magazine Advertising Age has scheduled the U.S. Ad Show for May 10-12 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. At the show, advertising agencies will be trying to woo potential clients from all over Southern California.

Last month, the West Coast agency that created the “Mac Tonight” ad campaign for McDonalds--Davis, Johnson, Mogul & Colombatto--became the first major Los Angeles agency to commit to the show. “People go to expos to purchase a variety of things,” said Brad Ball, president of the ad firm. “So why not advertising?”

Perhaps, however, Advertising Age could learn something from past attempts of rival Adweek to put on several similar gigs in the Los Angeles market. “It’s very difficult to involve the Los Angeles ad agency community in a trade show,” said Michael Carpenter, publisher of the West Coast edition of Adweek. In New England, however, Adweek does continue to sponsor a successful annual trade show, Adspo, each year. “It’s a very insecure business here. People in L.A. don’t shop for advertising the way they shop for vegetables in a supermarket.”

Bald Effort to Attract a Cleaner Clientele

Mr. Clean is getting a free ride on Alaska Airlines.

The familiar bald-headed Mr. Clean, who has appeared for years in commercials and on bottles of Mr. Clean household cleaner, is featured in a new magazine advertisement for--of all things--Alaska Airlines. The headline to the ad--which features a huge illustration of Mr. Clean--reads, “He’d feel at home on our planes.”

The ad, which is scheduled to run this month in issues of Newsweek, Time, and a number of other magazines, was created by the Seattle ad agency Livingston & Co. The agency created the campaign after researchers at the firm spoke with a number of executives who told them that are very concerned about cleanliness on airplanes. “From all the research we’ve done,” said Roger Livingston, president of the ad firm, “Mr. Clean is what people think of when they think of something really clean.”

As for Procter & Gamble--well, executives there were so tickled about Mr. Clean getting all the free publicity, that they didn’t even charge the ad agency the traditional royalty fee. “I guess the ad agency sees it as a sort of celebrity endorsement,” said Scott Stewart, a spokesperson for Procter & Gamble.