Winters Is New Chairman, CEO at Evans/Los Angeles
Although Evans/Los Angeles is one of the oldest advertising agencies in Los Angeles--with roots going back to 1928--it is hardly a household name. And it continues struggling to compile a decent client rooster.
In a move to pick up new business and improve its creative product, the agency said, it has hired a new chief executive and chairman of its Los Angeles office: Jim Winters, 50, executive vice president and creative director of the San Diego firm Franklin & Associates.
The man who recruited him for the job, Tom Weinberg, 49, will remain president and chief operating officer of Evans/Los Angeles. Weinberg had been chief executive of the firm until he stepped down from that post six months ago.
“There’s a good nucleus at Evans,” Winters said, “but it has not been a very dynamic agency.” His job, he said, is to boost agency morale, improve the quality of its ads and attract new business to the Los Angeles office of Salt Lake City-based Evans Communications. “We can’t succeed in getting new business until we’re more successful with the clients we have,” Winters said.
A few weeks ago, the agency lost client Kwikset Corp., a maker of residential locks, and several months ago it resigned the Hamburger Hamlet account less than a year after winning it. At Franklin & Associates, Winters helped develop creative strategy for the current ad campaign for the San Diego Zoo. Among its most familiar print ads is one with pictures of the Zoo’s new Tiger River exhibit under the headline, “An amazing thing happens when you put animals in a natural setting. They act natural.”
Previously, Winters was president and chief executive of Winters Franceschi & Callahan, an agency he co-founded in Phoenix. The agency went out of business in 1987.
Meanwhile, Weinberg, who will now take on more administrative duties, insisted that he plans to remain at the agency. “I felt we needed to do something to drive the agency ahead,” he said. “We haven’t been winning as much business as we feel we should.”
