51.5 F
Laguna Hills
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Y & R; Grabs Another Piece of Ford Business: Land Rover

Y & R; Grabs Another Piece of Ford Business: Land Rover

T & O; Picks Up a Pair of PR Accounts; Former Freedom Exec Launches Relocation Guide

Marketing & Media

by Jennifer Bellantonio

It wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Ford Motor Co.’s Land Rover North America division shifted its $50 million U.S. advertising account from Austin, Texas-based GSD & M; to Young & Rubicam Inc.’s Irvine office last week. Industry insiders and observers had been buzzing over an expected move for the past week or so.

Young & Rubicam already handles Land Rover’s global advertising account. And Y & R;’s local office has held Lincoln Mercury’s account for the past few years. Last year, the shop added Jaguar to its portfolio (Y & R;’s New York office also works on Jaguar).

Jaguar and Land Rover are part of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which moved its headquarters to a new building in Irvine,just steps away from Y & R;’s swanky office,last year.

Growth by Design

The local office of Whippany, N.J.-based Stephen Gould Corp., a packaging design company, is growing.

The shop, which opened in 1999 in the Irvine Spectrum, says it has more than doubled its staff and revenue. It now counts 12 workers,seven sales people and five customer service workers,and about $12 million in sales.

“We picked Irvine Spectrum because after we did searching we found it to be a phenomenal market that’s going to grow,” said Ori Rosenbaum, the Irvine office’s sales manager.

Rosenbaum moved from Stephen Gould’s San Francisco office and set up shop here.

The company supplies packing and marketing material to various local players, including Irvine-based Billabong USA and Santa Ana-based Powerwave Technologies Inc.

Stephen Gould, which has 37 offices nationwide and sales of $400 million a year, also recently opened another office in San Diego that has six employees.

Rosenbaum said the Irvine shop grew last year despite a crummy economy, and is expected to be one of the company’s biggest producers down the road.

T & O; Lands PR Work

Irvine-based T & O; Group is beefing up its public relations division.

The agency recently hired an associate director of public relations, Ruth Rosene, former public relations manager at Gateway Inc. computers.

“The market landscape is constantly changing and in order to stay ahead of the curve to build a technology practice that works, it’s crucial to have personnel that are market savvy,” said Jennifer McLean, vice president and director of T & O; Public Relations.

The new hire comes on the heels of an account win at T & O.; The PR division recently beat out five undisclosed shops from Orange County, Seattle and Los Angeles to win public relations work from Mission Viejo-based Foundstone Inc., an Internet security company.

T & O; will help promote their products and key personnel, who write books about security.

Billings for the account were undisclosed.

In other news, T & O; recently broke some print ads for new client Commercial Capital Bank of Irvine. The agency also is working on some branch collateral materials, such as posters and direct mail pieces, for the bank.

Moving Mag Launched

There’s a new magazine in town.

Irvine-based McClain Publishing LLC recently launched McClain’s Orange County Executive Relocation Guide, which serves professionals relocating to the area and the companies that serve them.

Paul Thiel, former vice president marketing for the Orange County Register and past chief executive of myOC.com, is the publisher.

He started the company with his wife, Lori, who has a background in marketing communications. She served as a director for an unnamed Fortune 100 company, and was a former marketing and distribution director for Atlanta’s Relocation Guide in the early 1990s.

Thiel has invested about $250,000 in the venture. He said that includes his own money and a round of funding about to close from private investors in Georgia.

“As someone who has moved all around the country the past 17 years, I was surprised to find that Orange County didn’t have a top-tier source for the kinds of information new movers need,” said Thiel, also managing director of McClain Publishing.

The magazine is set to be published twice a year. Circulation will be about 40,000 each six-month period.

McClain is targeting people between 30 and 54 years old with annual household incomes in the $140,000 range. The publication is set to be available in bookstores, on Amazon.com and via real estate brokers, executive recruiters and OC employers, who will pay $7 a copy.

“McClain’s goal is not simply to publish the magazine, but to help employers welcome new recruits to OC,” said Lisa Wayne, vice president of public relations and marketing at San Diego-based mediatongue, which was tapped to handle McClain’s public relations.

She said McClain has various distribution packages available.

Riverside-based Turning Points Marketing & Design Inc., founded by Jana Rawling, former communications and art director at Irvine-based Freedom Communications, is handling McClain’s design work.

Want more from the best local business newspaper in the country?

Sign-up for our FREE Daily eNews update to get the latest Orange County news delivered right to your inbox!

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-