Ad Agency

The Bravo Group announced the appointment of Kathy Whitlock, as VP, Managing Director and the promotions of Nilda Velez and José E. Arandia to VP, Managing Directors.

Volkswagen Latin America has retained Coral Gables-based marketing communications agency C.O.D (CreativeOndemand), to handle its Spanish-language advertising for its Bora, Fox and Jetta models in Puerto Rico as well as Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

Mosaica has been named by Unilever’s Foods North America business unit as its advertising agency of record for the Hispanic market. Mosaica will be responsible for all aspects of Hispanic strategic planning, advertising creative development, production and media planning for all of Unilever’s foods brands, including Hellmann’s, Knorr, Ragu, and Shedd’s Spread Country Crock. Mosaica has been handling Hellmann’s and Shedd’s Spread Country Crock since 2002.

WING Latino announced that it will handle all U.S. Hispanic marketing efforts for Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America Allianz Life. The campaign will launch in 2005 as part of a larger multicultural effort that targets insurance agents in Hispanic and Asian American and African American communities. Components of the campaign will include branding through B2B media vehicles, bilingual collateral materials, event marketing, educational seminars, and public relations.

The Bravo Group was awarded business from Foster Farms and Lifetime Television, basic cable’s top-rated women’s television network back in 3rd Q of 2004 and will begin executing for their clients in 2005.

Activity among marketers searching for the credentials and capabilities of prospective ad agencies continued to rise during the opening month of 2004, especially for media services. Searches among marketers specifically seeking out agencies with media buying/planning expertise rose 58 percent over January 2004, making it the fastest growing area of agency search last month, according to data compiled by online advertising resource AdForum.com.

The advertising Industry apparently dodged a bullet when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Thursday declined to require that television stations disclose all instances of paid product placements to viewers.

Long Beach based Grupo Gallegos has landed the high contested automobile account. The agency will handle all aspects of the account and is expected to break their 2005 ad effort very soon. They have been assigned a three month pilot effort.

LatinWorks Marketing announced the launch of a Media Services department to help meet the needs of its growing client roster.

John Ross has resigned as the Chief Financial Officer of The Bravo Group as of last Friday February 4th, 2005. Mr. Ross is a Young & Rubicam veteran with major advertising financial background, with his expertise helped the management team at The Bravo Group deliver unprecedented bottom line revenues never seen at any Hispanic advertising agency to date.

Grupo PyR has established an affiliation with JL Media, one of the largest independent media buying service companies in the U.S.

The California State Lottery has narrowed their review for the Hispanic portion to three finalist.

If you work for radio, TV, or cable, and sell advertising to local businesses for a living, you know how hard it is to keep local advertisers on the air. See if this sounds familiar. You attend some sales training seminars or perhaps your manager enhances your sales meetings with sales training tapes. You take this information and your best intentions and set off to sell local businesses. You go out and present your station or system, overcome objections, and close the business. Then what happens?