Burnett Acquires TFA

Local Outpost to Continue Under Winsper BOSTON--Consolidation in the local agency market continued last week as TFA Communications, which is headquartered in Chicago but maintains a 25-person office here, was purchased by Leo Burnett of Chicago. Terms of the deal between the two privately held companies were not disclosed. Linda Wolf, president of Leo Burnett North America, said Burnett bought "a controlling interest" in TFA. The high-tech specialty shop, with nationwide billings of $68 million, will be renamed TFA/Leo Burnett Technology Group. The Boston outpost, established three years ago and run by president Jeffrey Winsper, will be called TFA/Leo Burnett Boston. Winsper will continue to oversee the local office, which works for clients such as Avid Technology, Open Market and Information Management Resources. TFA's Boston billings rose 44 percent in the past year to $14.5 million. Sean Bisceglia, who founded TFA in Chicago seven years ago, remains chief executive of the overall agency, which will be run as a separate business unit within Leo Burnett. Bisceglia also becomes an executive vice president of the parent company. There are no client conflicts and none of TFA's 83 employees will lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition, Bisceglia said. Staffers in TFA's Chicago headquarters will move into Burnett's offices in Chicago in the near future, he added. TFA, which maintains an office in Dallas, plans to open a San Francisco outpost later this year. TFA and Burnett are familiar with each other due to their mutual presence in Chicago and through a shared client, Wolf said. Burnett handles the Motorola's semiconductor business, and TFA works with the company's personal computer group. "With the exception of Motorola, [Burnett's] technology credentials have been relatively underdeveloped," a situation the agency is looking to remedy through the TFA deal, Wolf said. Establishing Burnett's first Boston presence in the high-tech niche makes sense because the region is well known for its entrepreneurial software and hardware companies, said Wolf, who referred to technology marketing as "a high growth area." TFA gains access to the resources of Burnett's $6 billion global network and attains a higher profile, which senior management believes will help spur growth. "We lack major branding [abilities] and a strong media arm," Bisceglia said. Linking with Burnett addresses those weakness and hopefully will give TFA clout with consumer technology clients, he said. The deal should allow TFA's Boston office to compete for larger clients. With Burnett's resources behind it, the local outpost should be able to contend for more lucrative assignments than it could hope to win as an independent entity, Winsper said. Buying TFA is the latest in a series of moves designed to broaden the scope of Burnett's services. Burnett recently purchased 49 percent of London-based creative shop Bartle Bogle Hegarty and established Vigilante, a New York-based agency specializing in urban marketing. In addition, Burnett launched as separate divisions Starcom Media Services and Starcom Field Marketing, which handles Miller Brewing Co.'s regional marketing needs across the country. McDougall Associates in Peabody, Mass., is also in the final stages of being bought out by Bozell Worldwide. McDougall is expected to become a branch office of Bozell Kamstra, a primarily business-to-business entity headquartered in Minneapolis. McDougall is expected to take on the Bozell Kamstra name. Other recent acquisitions of note include the sale of Arnold Communications in Boston to Snyder Communications in Bethesda, Md., and the sale of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos in Boston to New York-based Interpublic Group of Cos.

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Burnett Acquires TFA

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