San Ramon, CA-based full-service agency AMF Media Group announced that it plans to expand its Golden State footprint with the acquisition of San Luis Obispo-based marketing and ad shop Barnett Cox & Associates.
The transaction, the financial terms of which were not publicly disclosed, is scheduled to close on January 1.
Central California’s BCA was launched in 1989 by husband and wife team Maggie Cox (president and CEO) and Dave Cox (executive VP and general manager). The agency, which focuses on PR, marketing, crisis and community engagement, counts Vista Regional Medical Center, Twin Cities Community Hospital, California Polytechnic State University and the California Mid-State Fair as clients.
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BCA will operate under the AMF banner in light of the acquisition. The agency’s physical office will remain, henceforth serving as AMF’s Central California location. Maggie Cox becomes president of that office, and Dave Cox holds the title of AMF vice president of operations.
The majority of BCA employees will join the AMF team, and there will be no immediate changes to the current staff structure.
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Vintage FosterAMF CEO Vintage Foster told O’Dwyer’s that the deal introduces AMF to California’s Central Coast region (the agency maintains additional offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose, as well as a sixth location in Dallas). BCA also brings to the agency deep expertise in a range of industries including land-use and development, tourism, health care and education.
“AMF has done extremely well in Northern California and it’s finding itself expanding its client base south,” Foster told O’Dwyer’s. “One of our largest clients had been in Central California, so we wanted to expand our footprint and the strongest agency we knew of in Central California was Barnett Cox & Associates. They have a strong reputation in health care and in real estate, two critical areas for us. They also have a second-to-none reputation on the Central Coast, and that was important to us.”
AMF, which was founded in 2007, provides marketing and communications services with an emphasis on clients in the healthcare and food and beverage industries. Clients include Armanino, Blue Shield of California, the city of Concord, California, Satellite Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente.
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