Client Cutbacks Force 15 Layoffs at Foote, Cone

Advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding has laid off 15 people in its Santa Ana office, bringing employment there down to 200 from about 250 a year ago.

William Hagelstein, executive vice president and managing director of Foote, Cone’s Orange County operation, said the layoff eliminated some layers of middle management.

“We have an obligation to ourselves, as well as our clients, to be as efficient as possible in this day and age,” Hagelstein said.

Among the office’s clients is Mazda Motor of America, which has been making cutbacks. As a result, Foote, Cone of Santa Ana and Mazda’s public relations agency, Hill & Knowlton in Irvine, have been forced to lay people off.

Foote, Cone’s most recent cutbacks are “just an effort by them to streamline their staff to match ours,” Jay Amestoy, a Mazda spokesman, said Thursday.

For the past six months, he said, Mazda has been eliminating management layers and giving more autonomy to regional operations.

The car maker hit its first bump in December, when it canceled plans to start a luxury-car division called Amati. About 200 people were laid off as a result. Foote, Cone responded with a January layoff of 24 people. The office, which is a branch of a national agency based in Chicago, employed 150 people in 1988 and had grown to 250 by 1992.

At Hill & Knowlton, Ron Hartwig, general manager for the agency’s Southern California operation, said his firm does not anticipate any more layoffs in the Orange County office. There are 15 people there now, he said, six of whom work full time on the Mazda account.

Earlier this year, Hill & Knowlton laid off three people and eliminated two more positions through attrition, Hartwig said. Those cuts were related to the reductions at Mazda, he said.