HomeRuns Mulls 5

A half-dozen agencies last week emerged as semifinalists in the review for the $10 million advertising account of Home-Runs.com, but one withdrew from the competition.
Vying for the assignment are Deutsch Boston, which is pitching in tandem with the agency’s home office in New York; Campbell-Ewald, Warren, Mich.; McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C.; Gotham and Grey Advertising, both in New York, according to Skip Pile, chairman of Pile and Co., the Boston consulting firm that is overseeing the search. Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis also was named a semifinalist but withdrew citing a heavy workload.
A cut to three or four finalists will be made before the end of the month, and a winner will be named in July. Both creative development and media chores are up for grabs.
The client, in Somerville, Mass., is a grocery home delivery service and had worked with Boston creative boutique Connelly & Partners and PGR Media, a buying service in Providence, R.I. Recent ad efforts have consisted of regional radio, print and collateral executions. Neither Connelly nor PGR was invited to pitch.
Holland Mark Ed-mund Ingalls, the Boston agency that crafted well-received, humorous campaigns for the client in the late 1990s, likewise was not asked to participate.
The client is looking for an agency with broad branding experience as it prepares for large-scale expansion. Earlier this year, HomeRuns announced a push into several new markets, driven by a
$100 million investment from Cypress Group, a private equity firm in New York.
HomeRuns has mainly serviced communities in greater Boston. K