Newspaper

Newspaper, TV Network, Web Tripper Sign With Miami Agency
ATLANTA–Drawing from the worlds of print, broadcast and the Internet, Tinsley Advertising has acquired three accounts that will produce more than $30 million in combined new billings.
Soon after announcing winning the advertising accounts of The Palm Beach Post and Barry Diller’s Los Angeles-based USA Broadcasting, Tinsley president Jim Flanagan confirmed that the Miami shop was also named creative agency for ByeByeNow.com, an online packager of vacations.
Flanagan said individual billings could not be disclosed, but cumulatively “will be over $30 million.”
A source familiar with Pompano Beach, Fla.-based ByeByeNow said billings were in the $20 million range and that at least two other Florida shops, Turkel Schwartz & Partners of Miami and Harris Drury Cohen of Fort Lauderdale, had pitched the client. Those agencies confirmed their participation.
Representatives of ByeByeNow.com, which recently acquired two travel agency chains to buttress its Internet service for what it
calls a “clicks-to-bricks strategy,” did not return calls by press time. In the Feb. 24 issue of Travel Weekly, company founder Thomas Conlan said the total marketing budget was $40 million.
Two years ago, Tinsley Advertising was named agency for USA Broadcasting’s first affiliate, WAMI, Channel 69, in Miami. That led to Tinsley being assigned the launch of USA Broadcasting’s WHOT in Atlanta and KSTR in Dallas. As those channels became established, USA Broadcasting has rewarded Tinsley with its entire network account. New channels are planned before year’s end in Boston, Los Angeles and New York.
“As a TV station, they didn’t want to do things like everybody else. As an agency, we don’t do things like anybody else,” said chief executive officer Sandy Tinsley. “So we decided to join forces and not do what everybody else does together.”
The Palm Beach Post retained Tinsley to launch a multimedia ad campaigned designed to keep the newspaper, which is owned by Cox Communications, on top in the increasingly competitive South Florida market.
Laura Deck Cunningham, marketing services director of the Post, said Tinsley emerged after an extended review that began with “about a dozen [South Florida] agencies” before being reduced to five that pitched the Post.
“So much for the gloom and doom of Y2K,” said Tinsley.