German shops offer campaigns by mail -- White Lion Advertising on Prowl For Clients With Novel Approach By Rosemarie Totzaue

FRANKFURT-Clients here can now order an ad campaign by catalogue. For a mere $58,100 a c

The mail order ad agency is White Lion Advertising here in Frankfurt, but don’t try and set up a meeting. Orders for specific advertising material or full communication packages are done by phone or fax. Though just over two months old, White Lion already has worked for one client, Union Investment Bank, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Genossenschaftsbank.
Managing director Thomas Huber said that when the agency was started, it sent out glossy catalogues detailing services and prices to 50,000 big and mid-sized companies. ‘We receive more than 20 inquiries daily,” Huber said. In addition to its headquarters here, White Lion has offices in Dusseldorf and Vienna and is planning a franchise shop in the town of Wuppertal in NorthrhineWestfalia. It aims to be among Germany’s top 10 agencies in five years and plans offices throughout Europe. It also may plan a venture in the U.S. with White Lion Advertising, the agency whose name it has license to use in Europe.
To minimize overhead, White Lion, which tells clients it won’t be restricted by conflicts, works with with external service shops and uses professional freelancers gleaned from a databank of 32,000 addresses of communication experts. Huber has contracts with 400 of them.
However, Huber, the former boss of telemarketing agency DTM and a newcomer to the campaigns-by-catalogue business, has yet to prove the quality of White Lion’s creative to advertisers, who are intrigued but need to be convinced.
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)