AMER. MARKETING ASSN. SHOPS FOR PR

The American Marketing Assn., Chicago, with 80 staffers serving 40,000 individual members nationwide, is shopping for outside PR counsel after having had an internal PR staffer for five years. She left about nine months ago.

Dennis Dunlap, paid president, said there were no plans to have another internal PR director.

Current elected chair is Frank Haas of Ogilvy & Mather, Hawaii. Chair-elect is Robert Lusch of the University of Oklahoma. The New York chapter of the AMA is its largest. Elliot Savitzky, SVP of Opinion Research Corp. International, is president.

Edleman PR Worldwide may add parts of Rowland Communications Worldwide. Neither Edelman nor Saatchi & Saatchi, parent of Rowland, would discuss the possible deal. Rowland executives could not be reached but S&S has confirmed that it has discussed realigning Rowland. The PR firm was merged with an S&S ad unit last year... Fortis Financial Group, Woodbury, Minn., and New York City, owned by a Dutch/Belgium company, named Colle & McVoy PR, Minneapolis. Also pitching the $100,000+ accountt of the mutual fund and variable annuity company were Shandwick and Andrew Edson & Assocs... Tom Drohan, who was VP-communications at United Technologies from 1984-88, when he opened his own firm, has handled PR for the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., for 11 years, counseling Bishop Edward M. Egan, successor to Cardinal John O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York. Drohan said he is not following Bishop Egan to New York and that Joseph Zwilling, who handles PR for the Archdiocese, is known for his excellent PR counsel. Drohan has been quoted in a number of articles about the new Archdiocese leader... George Rosenberg, managing partner of KCSA and former CEO of Cohn & Wolfe, opened The Rosenberg Group handling corporate and marketing communications for emerging and established businesses. He was president of C&W from 1986-92, when he became CEO. He was previously at Burson-Marsteller 15 years, rising to SVP. Offices are at 51 E. 42nd st., #1100, NY 10017. 212/856-9573... MRI International, New York corporate barter firm, to The Lund Group. MRI turns excess inventory, unwanted real estate or under-used manufacturing capacity into trade credits. Also a new client is FreshLoc Technologies, which monitors temperatures of food from farm to consumer.

ONE REPORTER AT OMINCOM MEETING

Only one publication (this NL) covered the annual meeting May 16 of the Omnicom Group, the company controlling the most PR fees ($700 million).

Completion of WPP Group's acquisition of Young & Rubicam by WPP Group this fall would put WPP close to OMC in total PR fees.

WPP owns Hill and Knowlton ($243M) and Ogilvy PR Worldwide ($125M), and would add Burson-Marsteller ($274M) and Cohn & Wolfe ($47M) for a total of $690M.

The 23-minute meeting was uneventful but leaflets criticizing OMC's finances and its investments in dot-com companies were distributed by two union representatives to those entering 1285 Ave. of the Americas, where the meeting was held.

The Hotel and Restaurant Union is trying to gain recognition from Restaurant Assocs., which handles the restaurant at the Metropolitan Opera.

Union Seeks to Embarrass Crawford

Bruce Crawford, chairman of OMC, was long the chairman of the Met and is now honorary chairman.

The union's stated aim is to "shame" the wealthy patrons and leaders of the Opera into recognizing the alleged plight of the 95 restaurant workers.

Rallies have been held in Lincoln Center on Opera nights and have won headlines in the N.Y. Times.

RA wants to conduct a secret ballot but the union has rejected this, saying it has 76 signed membership cards and that workers would be pressured to reject the union.

Crawford told the meeting that the dispute had nothing to do with Omnicom or him and that a court order had forbidden union representatives from harassing him this way.

OMC president and CEO John Wren, asked if company officers might hold a press conference since ad conglomerates such as OMC are in the news because of WPP's proposed acquisition of Y&R, said OMC officers are "not government officials" and that they speak to the press when there are business reasons to do so.

Jack O'Dwyer, editor of this NL and owner of 20 shares of OMC stock (required to attend an OMC annual meeting), told the meeting that OMC officers, to his knowledge, had never held a press conference.

Wren said no one had ever requested one. Wren said he held a video conference in New

(continued on page 7)

F-H WINS YAHOO! ACCOUNT

Yahoo! tapped Fleishman-Hillard, San Francisco, to be its PR agency-of-record for an undisclosed amount.

Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Shandwick and incumbent Niehaus Ryan Wong were finalists.

Beginning June 19, F-H will work on all aspects of Yahoo's communications efforts, including corporate and property initiatives.

The account will be managed out of F-H's San Francisco office. The core team, still being selected, will be comprised of staff members from F-H's offices in California, New York and Washington, D.C.

STINSON TO RETIRE AS AT&T SPOKESMAN

Burke Stinson is retiring in June 2001 as senior PR director of AT&T, Basking Ridge, N.J.

Stinson was given the nickname "Bad News" by reporters, who he notifies and explains changes taking place at AT&T.

Stinson was a general assignment reporter for The Associated Press in New York from 1967-70, before joining AT&T as its spokesman for the international division.

He was named media relations manager in 1986, and was appointed to his current position in 1997.

Stinson reports to Adele Ambrose, who is VP/media relations and employee communications.

Stinson said he plans to lecture on journalism and PR ethics at several universities in the New York/New Jersey area.

He has been outspoken in his opposition to using PR for marketing, which he blames on the takeover of PR firms by organizations run by ad people.

He knocks PR firms, who "dumbed down" in the 1990s, for "de-emphasizing such disciplines as writing incisively, thinking objectively and speaking publicly."

"Instead, they became 'strategic thinkers' and 'facilitators', " said Stinson. "In other words, PR people stopped bringing strengths to the table and became internally focused folks who would rather meet with managers than meet the press."

"Having worked with a number of PR people from ad agencies over the years, allow me to observe that many have scant credentials—besides cleverness and swell clothes.

Nonetheless, they are conversant in marketing-speak," said Stinson.

MCGEACHY LEAVES MPA AS PR HEAD

Mary C. McGeachy is no longer VP/communications for the Magazine Publishers of America.

McGeachy, who joined MPA in 1998, said she left last week under good terms.

Nathan Christopher, who had been working for McGeachy, is manager of PR.

McGeachy said MPA has been reorganized by the new president Nina Link, who does not want to focus on media relations. Instead, Link is concentrating on advertising and promotional activities, according to McGeachy, who established MPA s PR committee, currently headed by Diane Stefani who was recently named PR director, Yahoo + eshopper magazines, which is owned by Ziff Davis.

"The fate of the committee is up in the air," said McGeachy, who is consulting from 212/874-3561.

RHYS-JONES' LONDON PR FIRM FOR SALE

Sophie Rhys-Jones, who is married to Prince Edward, is putting her London-based PR firm up for sale.

Press reports said the Countess of Wessex hopes to get at least $5 million.

As part of the deal, she will continue to work for the new owners for three years.

Rhys-Jones was recently criticized by Queen Elizabeth for posing for publicity photos after her firm won the Rover auto account.

INTERNET EXPO TO DEBUT IN NEW YORK

PR executives trying to help clients break through the dot-com clutter may learn more at eShow, the first-ever Internet expo aimed soley at the consumer.

Eshow will debut at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sept. 9-10.

Michael Kaminer PR is handling PR for the show, which will be sponsored by The New York Times and Yahoo! Internet Life.

The show will feature exhibits by more than 150 web companies, along with a wide selection of how-to seminars.

More than 20,000 are expected to attend the two-day event.
Bob Zuckerman, president of eShow, plans to hold shows in major cities, such as Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C.

PR TRENDS _________________________

Addison's survey of 100 top companies shows 67% have an interactive version of their annual report, and 25% have a downloadable version.

Only 8% have no online annual report, said Addison, which specializes in annual reports, corporate literature, interactive media and corporate branding.

Rivkin & Assocs. survey of communications managers at 600 U.S. companies with 200+ employees found 85% created a new name for a product, service, company or division during the last two years.

In 1999, 265,000+ new trademark name applications were added to the 1.16 million active and pending trademarks already registered in the U.S., reports the Glen Rock, N.J.-based consulting firm.

Worldcom PR Group's national poll of 122 U.S. executives shows companies plan to increase use of direct Internet retailing by an average of 35% and reliance on web-based marketing by 39% over the next six months.

Worldcom, which is a network of PR firms, found 52% of senior operating officers view the Internet as "very effective" or "somewhat effective" in helping to generate leads and/or new business.

In the financial services and healthcare sectors, the percentage drops to 36%.

HELEN THOMAS RESIGNS FROM U.P.I.

Helen Thomas has resigned from United Press International, which has been acquired by News World Communications, publisher of The Washington (D.C.) Times.

Lee Katz also quit as UPI s international editor.
Thomas, 79, had covered the White House beat since 1961. She has been a journalist since 1943.

News World Communications was started by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who founded the Unification Church.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is president/CEO of the news service.

REAL SIMPLE GETS A NEW MANAGING EDITOR

Carrie Tuhy, who was an assistant managing editor at In Style, was named managing editor of Real Simple, replacing Susan Wyland, who resigned after three issues.

Isolde Motley, who is the former managing editor of the now-defunct Life magazine, will oversee Real Simple.
Alex Kucynski, who covers magazines for The New York Times, said some advertisers have criticized the magazine as "overly spare and unwelcoming."

Wyland was editor of Martha Stewart Living.

FINANCIAL JOURNALISTS ARE NEEDED

Several job openings exist for financial journalists in the New York area.

The New York Financial Writers Assn. has listed the following openings:
—American Institute of Certified Public Accountants: Wants a freelance writer to handle writing financial columns, speeches, issue briefings, annual reports, etc.
Fax resume to Marsha Bonner, at 201/938-3783.

—Bloomberg Wealth Manager: This Princeton, N.J.-based monthly magazine for financial planners, wants to hire an executive editor and is giving assignments to freelance writers.
Exec. editor: Human Resources, 100 Business Park dr., Princeton, 08540.

Freelancers can submit story ideas and an application to Bob Casey, Wealth Manager s editor, at [email protected].

—US Banker: New York-based monthly magazine is looking for a writer/reporter to cover all types of financial companies. [email protected].

—The Walden Group: Tarrytown, N.Y.-based corporate merger and acquisition firm, which specializes in the healthcare industry, seeks a writer to assist in writing business plans and offering memoranda describing companies the firm represents for sale or investment.

Resumes to Richard Cohen at 914/332-9700 (fax), or [email protected].

—Ka-Ching: Oxygen Media s business, career and finance site, is looking for a producer for its "Your Money" segment. [email protected].

—OnMoney.com: This new financial services website, which is located in White Plains, N.Y., is looking for reporters to write news, columns and feature stories across the service, in every major area of the website.

Salary range: $75,000+ with stock options, benefits and bonuses.

Resumes and clips to [email protected].

—Doskow Assocs.: New York recruiter is searching for a senior proposal writer for a consulting firm, with offices in N.Y. and Jersey City.

The writer can sometimes work from home. The job pays $80,000. Fax: 212/754-1166.

—National Underwriter: Trade paper is hiring reporters, editors and a copy editor for its Hoboken, N.J.-based editorial office.

Sam Friedman is accepting resumes by E-mail or fax at [email protected] or 201/526-1260.

—The Journal of Lending & Credit Risk Management: Philadelphia-based publisher is seeking a free-lancer to produce a monthly 3,500-word article, possibly on a topic related to the editorial calendar.

Resumes, writing samples and salary requirements to Beverly Foster, editor, One Liberty pl., 1650 Market st., #2300, 19103; 215/446-4101 (fax); [email protected].

PEOPLE ____________________________

Mike Miller, previously "Marketplace" editor, was named Page One editor of The Wall Street Journal, succeeding John Brecher, who is now writing for the "Weekend Journal" section.

Roberta Myers, who lost her job as editor of Mirabella when it was closed down last month, was named editor of Elle, which is also owned by Hachette Filipacchi. Myers replaces Elaina Richardson, who is joining Yaddo, an artists colony (NL, 4/26).

Anna Maria Virzi, who was executive editor of Internet World, has joined Forbes.com as assistant managing editor, finance and technology.

Edward Carr, previously business editor of The Economist magazine, has joined The Financial Times as the newspaper s "Inside Track" section editor.

Mohammed Al-Jassem, who is editor-in-chief of Kuwait-based Al-Watan, a daily newspaper, was appointed editor of Newsweek s new Arabic-language edition, which goes on sale June 6.

Julstin Doebele was named Asia senior editor of Forbes Global, based in Singapore.

David Ignatius, an associate editor and op-ed columnist at The Washington Post, will become executive editor of The International Herald Tribune in September, succeeding Michael Getler.

FREELANCER WINS TOP TRAVEL AWARD.
Peter Guttman, a freelance writer, won the Grand Award as the top travel journalist of the year in the 16th annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, which is sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers.

Guttman topped two travel writers for The Chicago Tribune—Robert Cross, who was awarded the silver, and Alan Solomon, who took the bronze.

The Grand Award is based on a portfolio of work throughout the preceding year.

Best sections

In the competition for the best travel section, The Baltimore Sun won the gold for newspapers with more than 500,000 circulation; the silver went to The Chicago Tribune, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer won the bronze.

In the 350,000-499,999 circulation category, The St. Petersburg Times won gold, followed by The Miami Herald and The San Antonio Express-News.

The winners for travel sections under 350,000 circulation were The Los Angeles Daily News (gold), The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (silver) and The New Orleans Times-Picayune (bronze).
In the magazines category, Hemispheres: The Magazine of United Airlines won gold for best monthly (or more frequent) travel magazine, while National Geographic Traveler and Caribbean Travel & Life shared the gold for best travel magazine appearing on a less than monthly basis.

Microsoft Expedia won the gold as best publication/website on the Internet.

The judging was done by the journalism department at the Univ. of Florida. There were 1,447 entries for the year, the most in the competition s history.

FOOD WRITERS WIN JAMES BEARD AWARDS

Gourmet and The San Francisco Chronicle each won two first place awards in the 10th annual James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards.

Gourmet won in the categories of "Magazine Writing on Diet, Nutrition and Health" for an article by Perri Klass, entitled "The Lunch Box as Battlefield," and "Magazine Feature Writing With Recipes" for a piece written by James Villas, entitled "P.C. and Proud of It."

The Chronicle received two first place awards in the categories of "Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes" and "Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs, with or without Recipes."

Cited were Robin Davis article on "Sushi American-Style," and Kim Severson s report on the "The Rise and Fall of a Star: How the King of California Cuisine Lost an Empire."

Journalist Greg Atkinson, Food Arts magazine, received the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award" for his article called "Diary of a Stagiaire."

The other winning publications and journalists by categories were:

--Magazine Feature Writing without Recipes—Boston Magazine (Lisa Amand);

--Magazine Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs—Vanity Fair (Mimi Sheraton);

--Magazine Restaurant Review or Critique—GQ (Alan Richman);
Magazine Series—Saveur (Colman Andrews);

--Magazine Writing on Spirits, Wine & Beer— Wine & Spirits (Rod Smith);

--Internet Writing on Food, Nutrition, Restaurant Review, or Beverage Not Previously Published— food.epicurious.com (Irene Sax);

--Newspaper Writing on Diet, Nutrition and Health—The Boston Globe (Michael Apstein);

--Newspaper Feature Writing with Recipes—The Dallas Morning News (Cathy Barber);

--Newspaper Restaurant Review or Critique—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Marlene Parrish), and

--Newspaper Writing on Spirits, Wine & Beer— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Michael Skube).

The winners in the broadcast category of awards which are sponsored and funded by Viking Range were:

--Best Local TV Cooking Show or Segment— "Bay Cafe," KRON-TV, San Francisco (Janette Gitler, exec. producer; Bertrand Pellegrin, producer);

--Best National TV Cooking Show or Segment— "The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter," APT, Honolulu (Melanie Kosaka and Robert Bates, executive producers);

--Best TV Food Journalism—"American Eats: History on a Bun," The History Channel (Ted Schillinger, journalist; Susan Werbe and Bruce Klien, executive producers);

--Best Radio Show Long Form on Food—"848," WBEZ, Chicago (Tish Valva, executive producer, and Justim Kaufman, producer), and

--Best Radio Show Short Form on Food—"Weekend All Things Considered," NPR, Washington, D.C. (Walter Watson, executive producer).

MEDIA BRIEFS ________________________

Shell and The Economist are sponsoring a new international writing prize dedicated to the theme of "The World in 2050."
The contest, which is open to anyone, was established to encourage and publicize "other people s views on the rapid pace of technological change and the controversies over the pace of globalization and the sort of world it may be creating."

The first prize essay will be published in an annual publication from The Economist, "The World in 2001," and all eight finalists will be featured in an announcement in the magazine.

Custom Communications, Boston, is featuring original articles about the custom publishing industry and marketing trends on its revamped website (www.custcomm.com).
David Brittan is editor, 617/437-9977.

The Gift List's new edition lists editors of holiday gift guide editorial features.

It includes national and regional magazines, top 250 newspapers, major wires and news services, and national TV, according to owner/president Amy E. Bernhard.

Priced at $349, the guide will be shipped to customers in two waves: Magazines in mid-June, followed by short leads a few months later.

Berhard, is taking orders by phone (626/797-8877), fax (797-2801), mail 2950 N. Maiden la., Altadena, Calif. 91001-1725) or online at www.giftlistmedia.com.

OMNICOM MEETING (cont'd from page one)

York the previous day to announce OMC's co-sponsorship of an Israeli technology venture fund.

No answer could be heard when O'Dwyer said he would make a request for a press conference.

Randall Weisenburger, CFO, turned down a request by O'Dwyer for a list of all of Omnicom's acquisitions in 1999. Half of the group's revenue growth in 1998 was from acquisitions, he told last year's meeting. The cost of acquisitions in 1999 was $748M in cash or stock. The 20.7% increase in U.S. revenues included 6.1% from acquisitions while 10.9% of the 18.4% jump in international revenues was due to acquisitions.

Interpublic, which acquired 55 firms in 1999, had also turned down a request by this NL for a list of the 55. WPP Group and True North provided lists of their 1999 acquisitions when requested.

The OMC meeting stressed the growth in revenues, profits and OMC's stock price over the years. Revenues and profits have gained for 35 straight quarters and the group has scored high on rankings published by Fortune and Forbes magazines based on quality of management and return on investment.

Several slides with numerous statistics were displayed but no copies were made available to the press. Wren and Weisenburger also spoke but no texts were supplied. They were asked for copies of the slides but the reply was that normally slides were only made available to security analysts.

Profit Has Been Made on Dot-Coms

While OMC's dot-com investments have declined lately, the original investment of $17 million is now worth about $700M. Omnicom sold four million shares of Razorfish at $35 on March 14, recording a pre-tax gain of $110M on the sale. Weisenburger pointed out that this means Omnicom has

made a net profit on its dot-com investments, wiping out any original cost.

Agency.com, in which OMC has a large stake, went public at $26 in December, hit $98 and is now $15.50; Organic reached a high of $59 in February but is now $14; Razorfish reached $56.94 but is now $15, and L90, which went public in January at $15, is now just over $9.

While the union leaflet claimed that current liabilities exceeded current assets by $1.2B as of Dec. 31, this had shrunk to a $562M gap by March 31, a figure that had been filed with the SEC the day before the annual meeting.

While OMC owed media $755M more than clients owed it on Dec. 31, this gap had shrunk to only $18.4M by March 31. OMC's cash and marketable securities declined from $600M to $392M.in the three-month period.

Byron Criticized OMC in 1997

The union based its criticisms of OMC's finances on a 1997 article by Christopher Byron for MSNBC, who wondered, "How long can (OMC's) gobble-up game go on?"

The article claimed OMC had a "weak and strained" balance sheet, noting the gap between accounts receivable and accounts payable.

Byron observed that OMC's intangibles were $1 billion in 1996 and that under accounting rules, they had to be written off against earnings at least 2.5% each year (40-year write-off). He said the intangibles don't matter if the company is growing rapidly but that unless OMC keeps replacing the written-off intangibles with new acquisitions, "the company's assets will eventually shrivel. The intangibles were $2.49B as of March 31. IPG's intangibles were $1.7B as of March 31.

OMC, which employs 43,000 people, is a tightly held company, reporting 3,721 shareholders as of March 15. This does not reflect the total of individual stockholders because employees may own stock via company purchase plans rather than their own individual accounts and some stock of non-employees may be held in the names of brokerage houses.

CAUSE-RELATED MARKETING WINS APPLES

Cause-related marketing was the most effective PR technique among winners of PRSA/N.Y. s 2000 Big Apple Awards, presented May 23.

Of 28 awards, 13 are for PR activities related to causes such as the World War II Veterans Memorial, domestic violence, blindness prevention, children and mentoring.

The Internet also emerged as a factor in the annual awards competition—which is now in its 13th year—with four web-based programs from Levi Jeans Online Challenge, handled by Ketchum, to the Victoria Secret s webcast (The Full Picture).

Ketchum won three Big Apples for campaigns involving Levi's Jeans; Vision 2020, and Aventis, and an honorable mention for its Halogena campaign.

Other big winners were Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Ruder Finn, and Burson-Marsteller, which each won two first place awards and an honorable mention, and Stanton-Crenshaw and Cohn & Wolfe, which each won two Big Apples.

Other winners are: Alan Taylor Comms., Christian Torsney Complete Comms., Creamer Dickson Basford, Fleishman-Hillard, Hill and Knowlton, Maloney & Fox, Manning, Selvage & Lee, PaineWebber, Patrice Tanaka & Co., PepperCom, Porter Novelli, Rowland Comms., The Full Picture, Viviani Assocs., and West Glen Comms.

Honorable Mentions were: Cooney Waters Group, Edelman PR Worldwide, H&K, MS&L, Prudential Insurance, Publicis Dialog, Warschawski PR, West Glen, and Zlokower Co.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., found national media coverage of religion has doubled during the 1990s, but most of the coverage deals with political issues rather than matters of faith or spirituality.

The most frequently debated topics concerned sexual morality, church-state relations, women s issues, church goverance, and minority issues.

The CMPA examined a random sample of 2,365 religious news stories that ran from 1969 through 1998 in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts.

Omnicom, the biggest owner of PR (although WPP is close on its heels), simply doesn t want to be covered by the press. That s the only conclusion we can reach after attending our third annual meeting as a stockholder and reporter.

We arrived about 20 minutes early this year and asked CEO John Wren if we could have a "photo op" with him and Chairman Bruce Crawford. We said this would eliminate the taking of pictures during the meeting which might be distracting.

Wren said Crawford would never agree to it.

As usual, no other reporters were present and there is every indication none were invited. Nothing had been done to accommodate the press such as providing copies of slides and texts of speeches made by Wren and CFO Randall Weisenburger.

Last year Crawford objected to our statement that OMC had no PR person representing it, saying Pat Sloan of the DDB unit did this. We told the meeting this year that Sloan was not doing PR by our definition. We said we learned very little from her and never even went to lunch with her. Sloan, former New York editor of Advertising Age, once set up a lunch with this editor but we ended up eating alone. She said she had a sudden doctor s appointment and arrived after we left. No other lunch date was ever made.

We don t fault Sloan for this. She's just doing what she has been told. When we asked her at the meeting for a copy of the slides, she said ask Wren or Weisenburger ourselves, which we did. Wren promised to send the slides but we never got them. When we called Sloan the next day (Wednesday), her voice mail said she would be out the rest of the week. Calls to OMC executives were not returned.

We find a similar shunning of the press at Interpublic, which is close to OMC in size. We were the only publication that covered the final details of IPG's $675M acquisition of NFO Worldwide. No one else made any attempt to analyze IPG s biggest acquisition by far, an acquisition that initially took $5 billion off IPG s capitalization. IPG stock is climbing back but NFO s research business faces severe challenges by the Internet and other forces. This lack of coverage of OMC and IPG is beginning to make us feel spooky. Sometimes we feel we re like Mulder in one of the X-File episodes. What gets us is that marketing organizations and the owners of them study consumers in endless detail but bitterly resent anyone asking them questions.

The attitude that "we don t want or need press relations" is encountered often. Companies and institutions, puffed with pride at their financial success and confident they re offering excellent products or services, feel they don t need any "third party endorsements." They don t want anyone coming between them and their customers, stockholders, etc. The marketing dept. in particular does not want stories going out that are not "consistent" with the corporate branding message.

A simple device is not to have a PR person for the press to call. Almost all the major PR firms and all the ones owned by OMC follow this policy. The American Marketing Assn. itself, a 40,000-member group with 80 staffers based in Chicago, has no PR staffer and no intention of hiring one. It took us a week to get a return call from president and top staffer Dennis Dunlap. He said he was busy with a board meeting. He said the AMA will not replace a fulltime PR pro who left nine months ago but instead is interviewing PR firms. Thus, neither the marketers, PRSA, nor IABC has an on-staff PR pro.

George Hammond--now 92 and living in Mystic, Conn.--who headed Carl Byoir & Assocs. for many years until he sold it to Foote, Cone & Belding in the late 1970s, said he wonders what clients make of mega-mergers like WPP and Y&R. He said the sale of Byoir to FC&B worked fine for a year or two but then "blew up." He said the ad people resented PR because the latter dealt with CEOs while the ad people dealt at the sales and marketing level. Also, he said, ad people typically define PR as "publicizing the ad campaign." Byoir, once the No. 2 PR firm behind Hill and Knowlton, was cut down to the last 2-3 staffers by the early 1990s. Burson-Marsteller s sale to Young & Rubicam "worked" because Harold Burson kept B-M independent, said Hammond.

Coca-Cola offices in Britain and Belgium were raided last week by antitrust officials of the European Commission, who are looking for evidence that Coke is offering retailers discounts or rebates that block competitors products. Coke s market share in five European countries runs from 33.3% to 62.4%. The file on Coke is 100,000 pages and climbing, said the Wall Street Journal May 19. Coke is judged by some to be the No. 1 "brand."