The Marlboro Man isn’t even in his grave yet, and they’re already talking about replacing him.

The famous Sunset Strip billboard, shot down by the recent settlement between the tobacco industry and the state attorneys general, is being officially run out of town on April 23, 1999. That’s when, under the agreement, all outdoor tobacco ads will have to come down.

So perhaps it’s little surprise that the agency that has so mercilessly lampooned the rugged Marlboro image is considering a plan to put an anti-smoking billboard in its place.

“We don’t know the availability of that particular board yet, but it’s certainly something we’re thinking about,” said Christine Steele, senior vice president at Miracle Mile-based Asher & Partners and account director on the anti-smoking campaign for the California Department of Health Services.

Asher created the well-known billboards picturing two cowboys riding across the plains saying things like, “Bob, I’ve got emphysema” or “I miss my lung, Bob.” This week, it’s launching a new billboard campaign in Los Angeles suggesting that the Marlboro Man might be a candidate for Viagra.

In the latest boards, a macho-looking cowboy is pictured smoking a limp, droopy cigarette. “Smoking causes impotence,” reads the headline.

“For young men, we think letting them know that smoking can damage their sexual performance is actually more effective than telling them about the long-term health impacts,” Steele said. “We did a lot of research with this target audience, and when they found out that smoking can cause impotence, they were very surprised.”

The new campaign is the second time Asher has tried to counter the tobacco industry’s sexual imagery with limp cigarettes; an earlier print and TV series portrayed elegant-looking, tuxedoed men at a party whose smokes start drooping as beautiful women pass by. This one, though, isn’t being paid for by the state Asher is launching the six billboards on a pro bono basis.

Consulting on the coasts

Is the advertising consultancy business ready for an international powerhouse? Bob Wolf and Dan Pearlman think so.

L.A.-based Bob Wolf Partners is forming a joint venture with AAR North America in New York to create what may be the biggest advertising consulting firm in the country and almost certainly the only one with offices in more than one U.S. city and several European and Asian countries.

The two companies, which will both henceforth be known as AAR/Bob Wolf Partners, are calling the deal a joint venture rather than a merger because there has been no swapping of equity stakes in either company. But Managing Partner Pearlman says that will likely happen at some point in the future.

While L.A. isn’t really among the nation’s advertising centers compared with New York and Chicago, and it has very few Fortune 500 corporations with their massive advertising budgets, it boasts a couple of the country’s most important advertising consultancies in the new AAR/Bob Wolf and Select Resources International of West Hollywood.

Advertisers are using consultants more often than ever before. A recent survey of national advertisers by the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that 27 percent had worked with a consultant during their last review. And whenever large accounts change hands, chances are good that an independent consultant will be involved; out of 42 reviews of accounts with over $30 million in billings conducted in 1998, between 14 and 26 involved a consultant, according to the Four A’s.

Consultants provide a variety of services, such as evaluating the relationship between agency and client and analyzing agency compensation. But the main function of the larger consultancies is to conduct reviews. They maintain huge libraries of the best work of agencies around the country, which usually pay a fee to be part of the library, and thus they give advertisers a way of quickly screening which agencies to invite to the review.

Bob Wolf Partners has moved into new offices in Century City following the joint venture, and has merged its library with AAR’s. Pearlman and Wolf are adding two associates to the formerly two-man operation, and they’re planning to open a new office in Chicago early next year. AAR already has satellite offices in cities like London, Paris, Sydney and Bangkok.

“The agency world is really turning upside down a little bit,” said Pearlman, explaining why so many advertisers are turning to consultants. “There are more agencies to choose from than there have ever been, and more spin-offs of agencies than there have ever been.”

Another one gone?

L.A. isn’t really losing another corporate headquarters with the planned acquisition of Petersen Cos. by British-based Emap. We lost Petersen a long time ago.

In 1996, when Robert Petersen sold all but a 13 percent stake in his magazine empire to a group of investors led by Chicago-based Willis Stein & Partners, the headquarters was quietly transferred to New York. That’s where Chief Executive James Dunning, along with the company’s five or six top executives with the exception of the chief financial officer, have been based ever since.

The circulation department is also based in New York, and much of the ad sales department is there. On the other hand, most of Petersen’s 600 employees remain in L.A., which remains the base for editorial offices of many of the company’s titles.

As a result, we can probably trust Dunning when he says the acquisition by Emap for approximately $1.2 billion will have zero effect on Petersen’s operations in Los Angeles (although there may well be a shakeup in the Big Apple).

News Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.