Burnett Starts Dividing Itself Into 7 Units

Leo Burnett is sticking to its plan of dividing the agency’s $2.5 billion office here into smaller, more responsive units with reduced bureaucracies and closer client contacts. It has partially abandoned, however, its plan to sculpt those “mini-agencies” along client business category lines.
“Originally, the pristine concept was to aggregate these mini-agencies by [business] type,” said Rick Fizdale, Burnett’s chairman and chief executive officer. “But as I emerged from my cocoon into the real world, it was clear that forcing that would disrupt client relationships.”
Burnett last week said the first three of seven agencies-within-the-agency will be operational at the beginning of 1998; the remaining four by next spring.
The units provisionally carry the names Agency A, Agency B and Agency C.