Interep Creates National Agency Teams In Response To Changing U.S. Ad Agency Marketplace.

Interep announced the formation of National Agency Teams to better understand and serve the needs of their advertising agency customers. The goal of the teams is to partner with agencies to remove obstacles to the planning, buying and
processing of radio advertising.

The formation of the National Agency Teams comes in response to the changing agency landscape, especially the effects of consolidation. According to Interep, 53% of national radio billing currently comes from the Top 5 consolidated agencies.

“Consolidation has necessitated change not only for the large conglomerates, but also for the remaining independent agencies. Our partnerships will allow us to react to, and anticipate those changes, customizing our services as needed. In this way, we will grow our clients’ billing from the largest buying shops, to the desks of the smallest transactional buyers,” said Ralph Guild, Chairman/CEO Interep. “In today’s competitive marketplace we must not miss any source of
revenue for our client stations, regardless of size, or market. Every dollar counts.”

While Interep’s leadership team has been developing relationships with key decision-makers at many advertising conglomerates for the past 12 months, the first official National Agency Team meeting was held recently with Carat USA. Attendees from Carat USA included David Verklin, CEO, Charlie Rutman, President, Andrea Gallo, Senior Account Supervisor, and Dennis McGuire, VP Account Supervisor. Marc Guild, President of Interep/Marketing Division, led the Interep team.

Some of the primary findings, or the “wish list,” from Carat include:

· More Personal Communication with Rep – Clearly indicating that EDI technology will not replace the need for reps, Carat expressed the desire for more face-to-face communication with radio representatives, thus strengthening the agency/rep partnership. Personal and frequent communication will facilitate the discussion of marketing strategy and creative solutions for Carat clients.

Carat was very receptive to the idea of forming marketing partnerships with radio representatives that stretch beyond traditional spot sales to the selling of “bigger ideas.” In today’s highly competitive arena, agencies need assistance in offering their clients fresh ideas and marketing concepts.

· Receptive to Recommending Radio to Current Non-Radio Clients – As a natural progression of developing innovative marketing concepts for its clients, Carat stated that they would be willing to direct more clients toward radio if given relevant, innovative incentives to use the medium.

Anticipating this opportunity, Interep recently launched their Consumer Lifestyle Networks, which match customized radio networks to a specific advertiser’s heaviest consumers. So far, response from both agencies and advertisers to the networks has been exceptionally strong.

· Streamline the Radio Buying Process – Carat stated that one obstacle to buying radio was
the time and complexity of negotiating rates on a multi-market, multiple station buy. While they agreed that negotiation is necessary, they would ideally like to narrow the wide gap that sometime occurs between submitted rates, and final negotiated prices.

· Automate “Back Office”/ Improve Efficiency – Carat believes that the efficiency of processing radio buying would be strongly improved through the use of electronic transfer of data once the buy has been completed. This would greatly facilitate the reconciling of discrepancies and billing, and speed up payment to the stations.

“Today more than ever, the best way to increase revenue for our client stations is to listen to and serve their customers, the advertisers and agencies. It is driving all of our current innovations, including national agency teams, Consumer Lifestyle Networks, and the development of RadioExchange as the industry standard for EDI technology.” said Marc Guild, President of Interep/Marketing Division. “Using this customer-focused approach, we believe that we can achieve another 2% share increase for radio by 2010, just as we achieved similar share growth during the past decade.”