Agency News

- NEW YORK CompuBank has tapped McCaffery Ratner Gottlieb & Lane to handle its advertising. The shop is formulating its strategy and establishing the budget for the remainder of this year; billings are expected to be in the $5-10 million range. MRG&L, New York, is the first advertising firm retained by CompuBank, which is an online bank that is located at www.compubank.com. The client provides a full range of depository products and value-added services without fees, such as checking, savings, domestic wire transfers and bill payment. Euro RSCG Worldwide in New York has recently acquired the Meridian Consulting Group, a leading strategic-marketing and sales-consulting company that is based in Westport, Conn. The group will be known as Meridian Consulting Euro RSCG. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Meridian was founded in 1992 by Jeffrey Hill and Michael Shinall, who will continue to run the company's operations as managing directors. With a total of 38 employees, Meridian saw its 1999 equivalent billings exceed $85 million. TSR Advertising in New York has been tapped by Simple Wishes to handle all consumer advertising for the Simple Wishes movie and music collections. The San Carlos, Calif.-based client has licensing deals with major film studios such as Fox, Sony and MGM for the rights to do collectible bears for various characters, including Rocky, Zorro and the Karate Kid. The exclusive collectible-dolls category will comprise classic-actors and rock-legend licenses. The advertising budget is expected to be in the $10-12 million range, and national print and broadcast advertising will be done. Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, and Glaxo Wellcome cleaned up recently at the Direct to Consumer Recognizing Excellence Awards show, held at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The Relenza team won the two top awards: Agency of the Year, for Saatchi & Saatchi, and Marketer of the Year, for Glaxo Wellcome. The team also won accolades in five other categories: first-place honors for Innovation in Consumer Advertising, Best New Product Introduction and Best Broadcast Campaign, and second-place honors for Best Print Campaign and Best Integrated Campaign. The awards event was sponsored by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine, CBS Television and Edgewood Consulting Group. CMG Communications, at the recent American Advertising Awards ceremony for District Two in New York, won two Addy awards and two citations of excellence. The New York shop won an Addy for its "Dressed in Black" campaign for the New York City Fire Museum, as well as an Addy for "Couple Kissing," the Virgin Atlantic Vacations campaign promoting travel to London. CMG won citations of excellence for "Five Times a Day" and "Only One Virgin," which were part of the shop's Virgin Atlantic Airways/Austin Powers effort last summer. Rabasca + Co. in Melville has been retained by Coldwell Banker Sammis, a residential real-estate firm, to enhance the Long Island company's corporate identity. The shop is creating a corporate-branding print campaign that will serve to recruit real-estate professionals for the client. The campaign takes a playful, purposeful look at some of Coldwell Banker Sammis' agents to show how the firm is differentiating itself with its agent programs and customer services; brochures and collateral materials are also being developed. Rabasca has also been chosen to handle advertising and promotion for Rx MaxWell, Huntington, an interactive, multimedia-healthcare company that is dedicated to disease prevention and promoting good health via education and patient self-intervention. The client has recently finished developing a new tobacco-prevention education program that uses interactive computer technology to help middle- and high-school students make informed, personal decisions not to smoke. The program is being targeted to school districts in Long Island and elsewhere in the U.S. Current and planned interactive computer-education modules also include tobacco cessation, asthma, pediatric asthma, hypertension, low back pain, heart disease, diabetes, nutrition and women's wellness. Initially, the programs--not including the tobacco-prevention modules, which will be set up in schools--will be available at Rx MaxWell Wellness Learning Centers on Long Island, as well as at affiliated sites such as hospitals. Lipman Richmond Greene in New York has created a new print ad campaign for Bacara Resort & Spa, which is scheduled to open in Santa Barbara, Calif., in September. The campaign, which showcases 11 different pieces of creative, was photographed in black and white and features supermodel Shalom Harlow; the effort was shot by fashion photographer Kelly Klein. The sensual imagery seeks to convey the experience of the resort; one execution shows Harlow reclining luxuriously to the copy, "Mystery. Seduction. Twenty-eight private cabanas." Ads are appearing in the May issues of publications such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Departures, W and Condƒ Nast Traveller. Christy MacDougall Mitchell has been selected by Fare 1.com as the company's advertising agency in North America. The New York shop was selected after a review of several ad agencies. The client is an Internet aggregator of all fares or rates from all five travel sectors, including airline, cruise, hotel, car rental and tour, and provides a one-stop, business-to-business interface between fare/rate providers and fare/rate resellers. Spontaneous Combustion has created a new "fader" for Aiwa America, Mahwah, N.J., in a 30-second spot that was developed through Gigante Vaz Partners Advertising, New York. The New York digital studio specializes in creating visual effects and design for the advertising, broadcast and film industries. In the spot, the fader appears on the otherwise bald head of a tanned, muscled, tattooed, gold chain-wearing man, and while his neck pulses to the rhythm of the music he is listening to, the lines of his "mane" adjust and fluctuate to the beat. The commercial closes with the Aiwa logo appearing, followed by the dealer tag, "Aiwa sound. You gotta hear this." To create the image, the hair was stuck on the back of the actor's head, after which it was ultimately composited and animated to move to the music. The spot will begin airing on cable late in 2000. Spontaneous Combustion has also posted a new look for Country Music Television, Nashville, Tenn. The look, developed and designed by Razorfish, New York, includes nine "passion" IDs, five "artist" IDs and a full navigational package. The redesign debuted nationally on May 1. IDs include testimonials from people such as Cowboy Dan, who says of country music, "It's the music of the common people"; in other spots, country stars such as Mark Wills and John Michael Montgomery interact with the new CMT logo. The logo, which appears in all the IDs, comprises three bold boxes, each with a black letter--C, M or T--on its face, set against red, yellow and blue backgrounds, respectively. The navigational package includes a scrolling menu, credit squeezes, "coming-up" banners and lower thirds. Corinth Group Communications and SGNet Solutions, an interactive- and print-design company in New York, have been retained by the Massachusetts Medical Society to assist in the design and production of www.hippocrates.com, the Internet companion to Hippocrates, a primary-care journal from the MMS. In addition to the full content of the print edition, hippocrates.com contains interactive components for physicians. MMS, which publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, has also retained New York-based CGC to conduct public relations activities for Hippocrates and the journal's Web site. CGC has also been tapped by three new clients. The agency will provide communications strategy and support, as well as a redesign, for Medplanet.com, a business-to-business portal connecting buyers and sellers of medical and surgical equipment. School Technology Management, a developer of technologies that are geared to improve the efficiency of school administration, will receive interactive and communications strategy from CGC. The shop will also provide communications and strategy support for kRoad Ventures, a new venture-capital fund focusing on the infrastructure sector, which comprises energy, water, waste management and utilities; CGC also produced the client's Web site, www.kroadventures.com. - NEW JERSEY Gillespie, Lawrenceville, has recently won the following awards. The shop received the Best of Show award for an American Re multipage print campaign at the New Jersey Communications, Advertising and Marketing Association Astra Awards recently in Jamesburg. Gillespie also won golds for work for Transit Center, Keystone Financial, American Re, Munich-American Risk Partners, Engelhard, Port Authority PATH and Justballs.com, as well as silvers for YourHomeDirect.com and Conectiv. At the Philadelphia Art Directors Show last month in Philadelphia, Gillespie won a radio/national award for its Transit Center campaign, "Shopping Bags, Gum Wrappers, Buttons." And the agency won the gold for work for Partnership for - Drug-Free America at the recent Addy Awards held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. The event was sponsored by the Philadelphia Advertising Club. Morbelli, Russo & Partners has added three new clients to its agency roster. The Rahway Savings Institution, Rahway, has named the Morristown shop its agency of record; MR&P will create a new print campaign, direct-mail and collateral materials for the client, as well as handle all media placement. Can Do Fitness and Martial Arts Club, Wayne, has also tapped the agency; it will create a new positioning, advertising and promotional materials for the facility, which has expertise in health, fitness and martial arts. And MR&P has also been hired by Bollinger Insurance Co. to create a new look and positioning for the client's specialty products division; the agency will be designing and producing new ads, brochures, and trade-show materials. - CONNECTICUT National golf-course sponsorship network On-Site Golf and the Golf Range Association of America, the New Canaan-based trade association for owners, operators and developers of golf ranges and other facilities, have recently formed a joint marketing agreement. On-Site Golf will seek to develop various marketing, promotional and advertising programs in "stand-alone" golf-driving ranges in the U.S. The Westport company provides granite tee signs for course holes in exchange for the exclusive right to sell advertising and conduct event-marketing programs at each course. - PENNSYLVANIA Tierney & Partners has recently launched a new spot for Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages that uses actor and celebrity spokesman James Earl Jones. The commercial opens at a theater, whose marquee shows that Jones is starring in a production of William Shakespeare's play Othello, with quotes from rave reviews touting the production. Inside, the anticipation mounts as programs are distributed and the audience takes its seats, while a man in a cape stands with his back to viewers. Then, a voice announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the role of Othello will be played by J.J. Walker." The caped figure turns around to reveal that he is not Jones, but another actor, who smiles at the surprised audience. Jones appears and says, "Why settle for a stand-in? Nine out of 10 New Yorkers use the genuine Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages." At the end of the spot, the unknown actor is shown weeping hammily over the body of his puzzled co-star, who plays Desdemona. The tagline is: "Life. Listed alphabetically." The Philadelphia shop's spot broke last month and is running on network and cable TV in the New York market; a radio version of the same spot is running as well. Mitchell & Resnikoff has won a 2000 Philly Gold award in the category of B2B Publications, Fractional, Campaign, Three or Fewer Colors, for its ads for AmeriGas. The Elkins Park-based agency was also a Philly Gold finalist in the Newspaper Campaign category for a series of ads in the "Philadelphia Federation Allied Jewish Appeal 2000" campaign for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Devon Direct Euro RSCG, Berwyn, in partnership with Creamer Dickson Basford, was selected by International Design and Construction Online, operating as e-IDC.com, to handle global marketing for a vertical e-commerce portal that will provide various multidisciplined services to the construction and design industries. Devon Direct has been retained as the lead agency to handle online and offline integrated direct-marketing programs to launch the Annapolis, Md., client's portal; the shop's activities will include brand development, customer acquisition, online marketing and collateral. CDB, New York, will provide public relations support, and, in addition to executing all aspects of media relations, CDB will conduct qualitative and quantitative market research, special-events and trade-show support, and analyst outreach.

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