Agency News

NEW YORK BBDO, New York, broke two spots recently for client M&M/Mars. A 15-second Snickers spot features basketball player Gheorghe Muresan of the Washington Wizards, who stars opposite Billy Crystal in the film My Giant. In the spot, Muresan is the focus of a commercial, and must recite a line and throw a basketball backwards through a hoop behind him. Muresan continually misses the shot or flubs the line, and a cameraman unwraps a Snickers bar. The ad continues the "Not going anywhere for a while?" tagline. Mars is supporting M&M Minis with a 30-second spot featuring its two ongoing M&M characters. The pair, armed with vacuum cleaners, trash an apartment trying to catch runaway Minis and put them in their containers. Mars spent more than $113 million supporting its M&Ms and Snickers brands in 1997, according to Competitive Media Reporting. Kang & Lee Advertising, New York, earlier this month was the first-place winner in the Native American and Asian American multicultural advertising category during the American Association of Advertising Agencies' first annual O'Toole Awards Multicultural Advertising competition. Kang & Lee's entries included work for clients AT&T and Seagram Americas/Crown Royal. McCann-Erickson took home 14 awards in the 1998 Effies, seven of which were won by the shop's New York office. Other New York offices that won awards were: DDB Needham, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, BBDO New York, Young & Rubicam, Saatchi & Saatchi, Jordan McGrath Case & Partners, Grey Advertising, D'Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles, Foote, Cone & Belding, TBWA Chiat/Day and Weiss, Whitten, Stagliano. Roughly 125 marketing and market research professionals judged entries last month based on creativity and bottom-line results. The Halo Group, a Hauppauge, N.Y.-based advertising and marketing communications, strategic planning and public relations group, has been nominated for 31 Best On Long Island Awards by the Long Island Advertising Club. Market Facts, an Arlington Heights, Ill.-based international research and market information company, has acquired Tandem Research Associates, a provider of custom and multi-client research products and services with offices in Suffern and Mahwah, N.J. Offline Media, New York, will expand its Webmark co-op mail program to include Web sites specifically aimed at college students. The Arts & Entertainment Network, New York, has appointed New York-based DoubleClick as exclusive advertising representative for its Web sites: AandE.com, Biography.com and HistoryChannel.com. Public relations firm Dan Klores Associates, New York, has been retained by Somerset, N.J.-based Ferrero U.S.A. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Ferrero produces candy products such as Tic Tac breath mints and Rocher European chocolate pralines. Ferrero's advertising is handled by McCann-Erickson, New York. The Financial Communications Society has named 52 finalists in its fourth annual FCS Portfolio Awards competition for excellence in financial advertising. The awards will be presented at a dinner on May 5 at the Grand Hyatt, New York. A.G. Krakow & Associates/AgitProp, New York, has added Aroma Vƒra, Multimedia Convergence Corp. and Homedelivery.com to its client roster. The Media Partnership, a European media buying consortium consisting of BBDO, DDB Needham, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather and several other major agencies, has formed a partnership with Next Century Media to conduct a series of marketing tests in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and several other countries. Japan's largest provider of media and marketing-related data and services, Video Research, will launch its New York-based U.S. affiliate, Video Research USA, this month. Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, New York, has announced the merger of its Argentina affiliate, O&M Argentina, with Oscar Marcovecchio Publicidad Agency. The merged company will be called Ogilvy Group. R.C. Auletta & Co., New York, has added six new public relations clients: The American Friends of Hebrew University, shoe designer Steve Madden, Glaser Murphy Retina Treatment Center and Total Fulfillment Services. The Financial Communications Society has named 52 finalists in its fourth annual FCS Portfolio Awards for excellence in financial advertising. The awards will be presented on May 5 at the Grand Hyatt, New York. Black Enterprise Magazine will reveal its picks for the top 20 African American-owned advertising agencies in June. The list will be announced during the third annual Black Enterprise/NationsBank Entrepreneur Conference, held from May 6-10 at Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort, Lake Buena Vista, Fla. NEW JERSEY Fusion Advertising & Communications, Cranbury, was tapped to create a Web site for the Princeton MarketFair shopping mall, West Windsor. The site will be launched early this summer. Boehringer Ingelheim has named Ribotsky Worldwide, Somerset, as its agency of record for Catapres-TTS, the only once-weekly transdermal patch for blood pressure control. A new campaign will launch in the second quarter of 1998. Dugan Farley had been the agency of record. Sawtooth Public Relations, Woodbridge, has added real estate firm Coldwell Banker to its client roster. PENNSYLVANIA The Tierney Group, a public relations firm in Philadelphia, has been acquired by True North Communications, Chicago. Terms were not disclosed. Management and the name of the firm will not change. Tierney Group has billings of nearly $6 million and a client roster that includes IBM, Dun & Bradstreet and Bell Atlantic. Goldstein Meiers & Partners, Bala Cynwyd, has won the advertising business of Community Federal and Rubicon Realty. Elisco Advertising, Pittsburgh, has won two national awards for its health care advertising. The firm received Rx Awards for Excellence for two spots for Pittsburgh-based client Respirotics: "Van Gogh's Nose," a full-color ad for a sinusitis treatment product featuring a likeness of 19th-century painter Vincent Van Gogh wearing a bandage to cover his "missing nose" and "The Art of Innovation," a series of three direct-mail pieces featuring "Van Gogh's Nose" and a variation of Edvard Munch's 19th century painting "The Scream." AND1, a basketball footwear and apparel brand, has severed its relationship with The Brownstein Group, Philadelphia. Brownstein was AND1's agency of record for the past two and one-half years. In a statement, officials at both companies said the split was amicable.

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