PEOPLE : Ex-Commerce Official Will Head N. W. Ayer

The agency that formerly created ads for Burger King has undergone one whopper of a shake-up at its troubled Los Angeles office.

The 47-year-old Western Division of New York ad giant N. W. Ayer Inc. named a new head whose claim to fame isn’t advertising but overseeing the $4-billion budget for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Donna F. Tuttle, U.S. deputy secretary of commerce during the Reagan Administration, was named chairman and chief executive of the ad agency. The California native replaces John Littlewood, who will stay on as chief creative officer.

So eager was the agency to land Tuttle that, in a highly unusual move, it agreed to rename its Los Angeles office Ayer Tuttle. Rarely do major agencies add the names of executives on the doors of their branch offices.

Although Tuttle, 43, has never worked for an agency, five years ago she oversaw the federal government’s initial ad campaign--created by Ayer--to lure foreign visitors to America. The ad slogan that was developed at the time: “America, catch the spirit.”

Now Tuttle hopes that she can spread some of that spirit throughout Ayer’s sleepy Los Angeles office, which has one of the smallest client lists of any major agency in Los Angeles. “I think we haven’t been visible enough in Los Angeles,” she said. “We’ve got to go out there and be more aggressive.”

How to do that?

For one, Tuttle plans to make the best use of the clout she developed not only at the Department of Commerce but also as under secretary of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration. The Los Angeles office will seek out travel and tourism clients in the Pacific Rim--and beyond.

For several years, Tuttle has run a West Los Angeles-based management consulting and public relations firm. One of her major clients there is the American Society of Travel Agents, which she hopes to now lure to Ayer.

But she has plenty of work ahead. The Los Angeles office has seen its annual billings shrink over the past two years to about $26 million from nearly $70 million. Besides losing the $30-million piece of Burger King business it previously handled, it recently lost the Santa Monica Bank account, and even its largest client, Toshiba, has recently begun to hand some pieces of its business to other agencies.

“Lots of national agencies have had a hard time making it in Los Angeles, and Ayer is no different,” said Peter Stranger, president of the Los Angeles office of the agency Della Femina, McNamee WCRS, which recently won the estimated $10-million Toshiba copier business away from Ayer.

“Ayer has had a hard time getting any critical mass in the market,” said James K. Agnew, general manager of the Los Angeles office of J. Walter Thompson. “It’s a national agency. But it’s had a hard time putting on a face in Los Angeles.”