Upstart Agency Parks Luxury Account in Its Garage
The employees of Suissa Miller Advertising are known to skate along Santa Monica beach at lunchtime. Now they’ve got a new set of wheels: Acura.
The upstart agency, founded in 1985, on Monday grabbed the $100-million luxury car advertising account in a hotly contested race. Suissa Miller beat out three other better-known local agencies, including Rubin Postaer, which creates ads for Honda.
The business will double the size of Suissa Miller, which has billings of $120 million and 75 employees.
“We went after it,” said Chairman David Suissa in an interview Tuesday. “We were too stupid to know not to do it.”
In winning the Acura business, Suissa Miller joins an elite group of Los Angeles agencies that service the auto industry. With the American units of Japanese auto makers based in the Los Angeles region, the local advertising business is fueled by cars.
Until now, Suissa Miller had been viewed as a retail advertising specialist with a client roster that includes Jenny Craig Inc. and HomeBase. Auto advertising, particularly on TV, is more focused on image. The agency had been considered a longshot in the shootout for the Acura business.
Advertising executives had expected Rubin Postaer, Honda’s longtime agency, to win the account. They said that Honda’s executives were comfortable with the agency, and that Rubin Postaer had offered to create a separate division to handle Acura in order to avoid conflicts.
“The assumption was it was theirs to lose,” said one prominent advertising executive.
Eric Conn, American Honda’s senior advertising manager, said there were no favorites going into the advertising review.
Conn said that Suissa Miller was chosen after a series of selection committee meetings in which members used a rating system “to get a lot of the emotion out of the room and look at the cold, hard facts of advertising. . . . As we weighed a lot of factors, they emerged as the best choice.”
Conn declined to comment on the campaign proposed by Suissa Miller, which is being presented to Acura dealers this week at the Honda factory in Marysville, Ohio.
In a departure from the famed theatrics that often accompany advertising reviews, David Suissa and Bruce Miller made their pitch for Acura using only a flip chart.
Suissa, 40, and Miller, 44, got their start in advertising at Procter & Gamble, where Suissa handled marketing for Ivory soap and Miller worked on Crisco oil. The two made the transition to the agency business, and ended up at Doyle Dane Bernbach, now DDB/Needham, in Los Angeles, where they worked together on the Paul Masson account.
Suissa left the agency to open Suissa Advertising in 1985. The name was changed when Miller joined in 1991.
Clients said that the effusive Suissa and the reserved Miller complement each other. Suissa handles the creative chores, while Miller, as agency president, runs the business.
“They are like the ying and yang of advertising,” said Ira David Sternberg, a representative of the Tropicana Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, a former client.
They acquired the Acura account at a critical time for the luxury car line, which has revamped its models and, according to analysts, is witnessing some softness in sales. Acura sales are up 9% this year but were flat in September.
Meanwhile, the loss of the Acura business was expected to hurt its previous agency, Fathom Advertising of Los Angeles (formerly Ketchum Advertising). Fathom Vice President Larry Kopald said that 70% of the agency’s 150 employees worked on Acura to some extent.
“Obviously, it’s a big loss,” Kopald said. “We will be reviewing our staffing. It will mean changes.”
