W.B. Doner & Co. in Newport Beach landed work from a local Mexican fast food chain.
The shop was named advertising agency of record for Lake Forest-based Del Taco Inc.
Its first assignments: develop creative for television and radio commercials and point of purchase marketing materials for the company’s some 500 restaurants in 16 states.
Ad shop Brainsaw in Tustin previously handled the account. There was no review for the work.
Del Taco spent about $12 million on advertising last year, down from about $20 million in 2006.
Doner, whose parent is headquartered in Southfield, Mich., has been hunting around for more business.
The shop recently hired an executive to go after more work, Mark Brown, senior vice president and media director.
Doner’s other clients include Irvine-based Mazda North America Operations, the U.S. arm of Japan’s Mazada Motor Corp.
The shop also has increased its focus on interactive marketing, which has helped spur more work.
The OC office has yearly capitalized billings of about $350 million and about 120 workers.
Palisades Media Group in Santa Monica handles media buying for Del Taco.
Beef Bowl Anyone?
It has been a few months since White Barn Group moved to San Juan Capistrano and went after more work.
The moves are paying off.
The advertising shop recently picked up a new account, Yoshinoya America Inc., the U.S. division of the Japanese restaurant chain, which has some 85 restaurants in America.
The shop will help develop U.S. sales strategies and growth plans for the Japanese restaurant chain, said Tim Hackbardt, White Barn principal. Yoshinoya has 1,300 restaurants around the world, including in Japan, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
White Barn’s experience working with other restaurant accounts helped it walk away with the win.
It started out doing a research and strategy project for Yoshinoya involving a segmentation study with 9,000 restaurant diners, Hackbardt said.
Work now includes developing promotional sales strategies, analyzing potential profit from menu specials and designing merchandising materials to support these programs.
Other clients include Elephant Bar Restaurants, Farmer Boys Restaurants and BJ’s Restaurants Inc. in Huntington Beach.
White Barn said it expects to look for workers to help with this account and other new work, which hasn’t been announced.
Last fall, the agency moved to a 2,900-square-foot office in San Juan Capistrano and beefed up its graphics and Web work by partnering up with FrontGate Creative, which took on the White Barn name.
The shop has about 13 workers and about $2 million in billings.
That figure is expected to double in the next year with new work that’s in the pipeline, Hackbardt said.
Good Business
The soft economy has been good for business at Mission Viejo-based Integrity Public Relations Inc.
“As marketing budgets shrink, businesses are reviewing their current agencies and we’re finding that many are opting to shift to smaller, more agile agencies that offer specific industry expertise,” sad Ken Hagihara, the shop’s president and chief executive.
That’s what tipped things in Integrity’s favor during a recent review for marketing work for Irvine-based Capita Technologies.
Capita wanted a small shop “that would provide more hands-on service with an account team that possessed specific direct industry experience,” Hagihara said.
The shop expects to see “significant growth” the remainder of the year, he said.
“The majority of our clients are in the B2B space and the impact that the economy has on these businesses actually favors the smaller, boutique firms like ours,” Hagihara said.
Among the reasons: costs are lower, services can be tailored and closely tracked, he said.
Still, Integrity said some clients are feeling the heat.
“The economic downturn and reports of a recession have definitely had a negative impact on our retail and consumer-focused clients,” he said.
Integrity recently hired a senior-level account manager to help bring in business and manage an increase in project work.
Clarification
To clarify, the size of the new bilingual door hangers by Newport Beach-based PowerDirect mentioned in last week’s column are the same as the old ones, 5.5 inches by 17 inches. But they’re divided into five coupons. Advertisers can buy one of the coupons, which cost a fraction of what an entire hanger costs.
