N.E. Ford Dealers Initiate Search

W.B. Doner Resigns Account; Hill, Holliday Likely to Pursue Again BOSTON--The New England Ford Dealers Association this week will begin looking for an ad agency to replace W. B. Doner & Co. on its estimated $25 million account, according to Ford dealer Paul Bertoli. Bertoli, who owns The Victory Group in Stoughton, Mass., is chairman of the association's 18-member board, which represents the more than 190 Ford dealers in New England. At a meeting scheduled for this Thursday, Bertoli will ask the board to approve the appointment of a five- or six-person dealer committee chaired by Bertoli to review agencies. Among the shops likely to be considered, Bertoli said, is J. Walter Thompson in Detroit, which handles the largest concentration of Ford dealer business in the country with estimated annual billings of $350 million. Having a New England office will be a requirement of any agency considered, Bertoli said. Doner's decision comes in the aftermath of winning Mazda North American Operations' $240 million account. "We have decided to resign all of the Ford dealer business," said Doner chief executive officer Alan Kalter. "In order to serve Mazda, we made a business decision that we're going to use the resources that got us to this point to work on Mazda, which we think is critically important. We couldn't go out and re-create those resources and serve both." Doner offices that serviced the Ford business will be maintained to provide Mazda with regional retail advertising, including the Boston outpost, which has 12 employees. Several staffers worked specifically on New England Ford business, but the majority of employees handled media buying for all Doner clients, Kalter said. Doner currently serves seven Ford dealership groups with estimated billings of $80-100 million. In addition to New England, those groups include Texas, Greater Michigan, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The agency was not pressured by officials at either Ford or Mazda--which Ford controls--to resign the business, Kalter said. Doner won the Ford account 11 years ago when it was resigned by Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos to pursue General Motors' Saturn division. While the Boston agency missed out on that opportunity, it won Nissan's Infiniti account soon after. While Hill, Holliday no longer works for a car manufacturer, it does handle Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based AutoNation, one of the country's fastest-growing used-car superstore chains. Agency sources said last week it was likely that Hill, Holliday will try to win the Ford business back. --with Scott Hume After talking with both automakers, the decision was made to resign the Ford business and dealer association chairmen were notified over that weekend. "Everybody understood why we were doing it and thought it made sense and understood why we want to commit 100 percent of our resources to Mazda and we went ahead from there," he said.

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N.E. Ford Dealers Initiate Search

Judy Warner

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