Purolator Selects Buntin Group

Marketing Mission: Jump-Start the Brand
ATLANTA–Purolator has named The Buntin Group agency of record for its $3 million account.
“We have a competitor [Framm] who outspends us, and we need something very strong to get noticed,” said Marlen Silverii, senior vice
president of sales and marketing for Arvin Replacement Products Group, Purolator’s Brentwood, Tenn.-based parent. “[Buntin] brought us four campaigns [and] three struck us as usable, which is unusual. One stood out as being very strong.”
Silverii said other finalists for the business were Ericson Marketing Communications in Nashville, Tenn., and Chicago’s Bagby & Co. There was no incumbent; advertising was farmed out on an ad hoc basis.
Jeffrey Buntin, president of the Nashville, Tenn., shop, said new print and broadcast will break in first-quarter 2000. He noted the work would eschew the automotive oil and air filter maker’s current celebrity tie-in tactics, which have used Nascar racers like Bill Elliott and Ken Schrader.
“[Purolator’s] looking for creative that is going to jump-start the brand,” Buntin said, hinting that the new work will be “like scratching your fingers down a blackboard.”