Fallon Gets Integrated Marketing Religion

MINNEAPOLIS – Pat Fallon, who for many years scoffed at other agencies’ integrated marketing divisions, has become a convert.
Fallon McElligott last week added its second president this year, naming former Earle Palmer Brown/Bethesda, Md. president Mark Goldstein to the new post of FM president/integrated marketing. Acknowledging a past skepticism about integrated marketing as practiced elsewhere, Fallon said one reason for his agency to organize such an operation was the frustration it has had relying on specialized agencies to implement its ideas in other marketing disciplines. FM now hopes to carry through its own ideas itself.
‘We’ve been discouraged when we’ve taken a single idea and subcontracted with other disciplines to execute,’ Fallon said. ‘The level of quality just wasn’t there.’
Although word of Goldstein’s move to FM leaked earlier this month (ADWEEK 9/20), the creation of a dual presidency, with Goldstein sharing the title with president/creative director Bill Westbrook was a surprise. It signals the agency’s plan to create a substantial, if non-traditional, integrated marketing division for the agency. Both Westbrook and Goldstein will report to Fallon.
FM will not set up separate divisions with competing profit centers, like many advertising agencies have done.
‘Agencies have constructed systems where there are financial disadvantages to working together,’ Goldstein said. ‘We are building company of ideas, not a company of companies.’
Goldstein, who assumes the post Oct. 4, plans to hire idea people with expertise in other disciplines, such as direct marketing, sales promotion or public relations.
‘(Fallon McElligott) so clearly stands for brilliance and creativity,’ Goldstein said. ‘Why can’t we bring the brilliance to other mediums?’
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)