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They may not have trendy Westside addresses, but the top advertising firms in the San Fernando Valley say they have little trouble finding talented employees. “We attract people who live in the city, in the San Gabriel Valley and as far away as Thousand Oaks,” said Robert Charney, president of Sherman Oaks-based Mosaic Advertising and Marketing. “We like the Valley. Our location at the intersection of the Ventura (101) Freeway and San Diego (405) Freeway allows us to draw on a large talent pool.” The number of potential employees in the Valley is why Robert Yallen’s company, Inter/Media, moved to Encino from Beverly Hills 22 years ago. “We got tired of the traffic,” said Yallen, Inter/Media’s executive vice president. “More companies are moving out of (Westside) L.A.” Inter/Media ranked No. 1 on the Business Journal’s list of the top ad firms in the San Fernando Valley, with $45 million in gross billings for 1998. (Gross billing is the total cost of an advertising campaign, including cost of media, production and agency fees, which usually total 12 percent to 15 percent of the total ad campaign.) Nationwide, Inter/Media, which has 35 employees, reported $70 million in gross billings in 1998. Inter/Media specializes in direct-response retail advertising, usually in the form of short television commercials that sell items directly through an “800” number advertised on screen. Once an income stream is generated through commercials, the firm follows up with a mainstream campaign. Clients include Miracle EAR and Auto Insurance Specialists. Sherman Oaks-based Sagon-Phior Group ranked No. 2 on the list, with gross billing of $26 million in the San Fernando Valley. Clients include Kenwood U.S.A., DreamWorks SKG, MediaOne, Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. Cameron-Newell Advertising Inc. snagged the No. 3 spot, with $20 million in gross billings in the Valley for 1998. (Nationwide, Cameron-Newell reported $52 million in gross billings.) The agency employs 175 people in nine offices nationwide. Clients include On Assignment Inc., Cardservice International and HealthNet. Cameron-Newell specializes in classified help-wanted advertising through newspapers, direct mail and the Internet. Online marketing is expected to increase five-fold this year, with billings handled by the firm reaching $500,000 in banner ads and Web marketing, said Byron Newell, company president. “There’s more media choices,” Newell said. “The audience is more segmented. As an agency, you have to work harder to make (a campaign) good.” The top 10 Valley agencies did a total of more than $125 million in local gross billings for 1998. That doesn’t even come close to what some individual agencies elsewhere in Los Angeles collected in 1998. In fact, no Valley agencies have made it onto the list of the top 25 ad firms in Los Angeles County during the past several years. Still, Valley agencies say they don’t think there’s a stigma associated with their location. “There used to be,” said Charney. “Now clients are more interested in finding someone nearby.” Yallen said most of Inter/Media’s clients are from other markets nationwide and aren’t aware of any difference between the Valley and the rest of the L.A. Basin. “The type of clients we have don’t tend to care,” Yallen said. “Traditional agencies sell on creative abilities, rather than media abilities (as we do).” Still, Yallen suspects the company has lost some business over the years because of its suburban locale. “I see that shifting though,” he said. Sagon-Phior specializes in entertainment, retail and corporate advertising. The company started in Venice in 1985 and moved several years later to Universal City and eventually Sherman Oaks. Glenn Sagon, president of the firm, said clients don’t complain about the agency being in the Valley. But they have heard complaints from prospective employees, concerned that the agency loses out because it’s not in West L.A. Don Potter, president of Potter/Katz, said success is not a matter of location. “The point is this: Good creativity knows not where it lives,” he said. “You can be successful in the Valley (in advertising).” Potter/Katz, based in North Hollywood, was among the Valley agencies that made the top 10 list. Its clients include Mount Sinai Memorial Parks, House Foods U.S.A. and Great Western Bagel Co. Potter/Katz did $14 million in gross billings in the Valley in 1998. Also on the list was Kern Direct Marketing based in Woodland Hills, which reported $6.5 million in San Fernando Valley gross billings for 1998. Kern specializes in direct marketing for business-to-business advertising, with only about 30 percent of its campaigns geared toward consumers. Russell Kern, firm president, said most clients are technology companies, which can make advertising more difficult because of the industry’s complex products and terminology. “It makes it tougher,” Kern said. “You have to understand your audience better.” Kern said most of the direct marketing is done on the Internet or through direct mail or direct-response print ads.

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