Adair-Greene in Hometown Win

Adair-Greene has won the advertising account of Georgia-Pacific’s Building Products Group.

The Atlanta agency beat crosstown rival BaylessCronin in the finals of a review to win the estimated $3 million business.

“We’ve got a multi-product,multi-market business,” said Bob Ramont, marketing director for the Atlanta-based client. “So we developed an array of important criteria and characteristics. Adair-Greene came out, one after another, as the agency best equipped to do the job.”

Incumbent Fitzgerald + Co., which held the account for more than a decade, did not participate in the two-month competition.

“By and large, we have the most building-supply experience in the Southeast,” said agency chief executive officer Rich Levy. “Twenty-five years working with brands like Boral Bricks, Anderson Windows, Peachtree Doors.”

Levy and general manager Chris Steele leveraged that experience by hiring Scott Coleman, a Fitzgerald account executive on the Georgia-Pacific business. “I was brought here 22 months ago to make this meeting happen,” Coleman told Ramont early in the pitch.

That connection, plus a series of successfully executed project assignments, put Adair-Greene over the top against BaylessCronin, a latecomer to the review.

The agency’s upcoming print campaign will target building-supply manufacturers and dealers, contractors and remodelers.

“We need ongoing campaigns to multiple segments,” said Ramont. “Over a rolling two-year period, the campaigns will refresh.”

The high-profile review (Georgia-Pacific’s sales hit nearly $8 billion in 2000) attracted a strong field of local shops to the early rounds. Contenders included, sources said, Ames Scullin O’Haire, T.G. Mad-ison, WestWayne and Adair-Greene’s IPG sister agency, Austin Kelley Advertising.

“The client thought our creative was outstanding and our level of service impeccable,” said Levy. “We put senior people on even the smallest projects and service the hell out of them.”

Levy and Steele, who oversees the agency’s consumer division, also orchestrated an intensive self-marketing effort with Georgia-Pacific’s decision makers.

“We wanted this business for two years,” said Levy. “We went in there energized.”