Local Ad Firm Competes for National Awards

Ventura County advertising firms want the big agencies in Los Angeles and other major metropolitan areas to know that they exist. And Barbara Brown Marketing & Design, a small, home-based operation in Ventura, has gone a long way to doing just that.

The Ventura company competed in the recent American Advertising Federation’s 1996 national awards competition. Though the firm did not win any of the awards, announced earlier this month, its presence was a huge public relations boost for local ad firms, said Dan Rosing, president of the Ventura County Ad Club.

Barbara Brown Marketing won Ventura and Santa Barbara counties’ ADDY awards for creativity earlier this year for promotional material created for its client, Ventura Printing.

By winning the local competitions, the ad agency advanced to the regional level. The firm won the regional creativity award, defeating agencies from throughout Southern California and Las Vegas, to advance to the national level.

“People might think that because we’re not Los Angeles or San Diego or Las Vegas that Ventura County doesn’t have the firepower to go and compete with the big guns in the big cities,” said Rosing, a freelance writer.

“It’s not about the size of the agency or the size of the budget. It’s creative advertising work, and this proves we can compete with the best of them.”

Barbara Brown Marketing was honored for a brochure it created to promote Ventura Printing’s waterless printing methods.

“Our award was strictly for creativity,” said Barbara Brown, president of the marketing and design company. “How creative was the piece? How strongly did we get the message across and how unique was the way in which we got it across?”

Brown was formerly a partner with the Murphy Organization, Ventura County’s largest advertising and public relations firm until it shut down in 1994. She opened her own agency four years ago and does work for local, national and international businesses including Advantage Cellular of Ventura, Bugle Boy Industries factory stores and Saturn cars, a division of General Motors Corp.

“Constant innovation is important,” Brown said. “I think pushing the envelope is important, really trying to make our work completely different than anything else on the market, yet not so shocking that it’s shocking.

“We want people to look at our material, pick it up and say, ‘This is really beautiful,’ and then want to find out what it says inside.”