Marketing Drive Gets a Wheel Man
Marketing Drive Worldwide added event marketing to its repertoire in June with the acquisition of Event Management & Promotions, a Santa Monica-based agency whose resume lists work for Kraft Foods, General Mills, MCI Worldcom, and United Distillers & Vintners.
“We view event marketing as one of the core requirements of a fully integrated marketing communications company, whether it be intercepting people at retail or creating events so people can engage the brand directly,” says Marketing Drive co-ceo Wes Bray. “We have event capabilities internationally, but we didn’t really have a strong presence in the U.S.”
They do now. Twelve-year-old EMP runs mobile tours, sampling events, and on-premise activities. The shop has 40 employees and a database of more than 4,000 part-timers it can call on to staff up for execution. It also boasts a proprietary EventSearch database of 15,000 event marketing opportunities. It has offices in Chicago, Baltimore, and Raleigh, NC.
EMP already shares such clients as Kraft, TiVo, and Guinness with Wilton, CT-based Marketing Drive, and the agency has been successfully collaborating with Marketing Drive USA (the former Market Growth Resources) for two years, says EMP president Jamie Wark.
Becoming part of a larger, more diverse agency became a necessity “because our clients have been asking for stuff that we can’t deliver – P-O-P, sweepstakes, more creative – and we’re outsourcing all that,” explains Wark. “If we can wrap all that up internally, it helps us.”
Wark has fielded a number of overtures since deciding to sell last year. “We’ve looked at everybody. And frankly, every offer was terrific [money-wise]. But it kept coming back to the clients at Marketing Drive, and our philosophy has always been, `Take care of the clients and the rest [of the business] will take care of itself.'”
EMP will become part of Marketing Drive’s Promotion Services division, which is headed up by president John Block.
Marketing Drive still wants to enhance its hospitality and sports marketing event capabilities, says Bray, suggesting that the needs could be filled either through internal operating shifts from other units of parent True North Communications or additional acquisitions. “Then we’ll have a pretty good events offering,” he adds.
Marketing Drive Worldwide had total billings of $121 million and net revenues of $52.7 million in 1999 (including results from Minneapolis-based McCracken Brooks Maier). The agency ranked 15th on this year’s promo 100.
