The Democratic National Convention isn’t just a tradition-bound method for producing a presidential nominee. It’s also the Super Bowl of schmoozing. And Los Angeles P.R. agencies are already making preparations not to mention reservations.

There are few, if any, events that match a national political convention when it comes to focusing power in one place. Not only will many of the nation’s most important political leaders converge on Los Angeles in August 2000, there will be corporate executives, foreign ambassadors and packs of hungry media types camped out at the L.A. Convention Center looking desperately for something original to cover.

Which means that of all the businesses looking to capitalize on the convention, few are as charged up as the public relations industry (with the possible exception of caterers and limousine drivers).

P.R. executives are already urging their clients to reserve venues for marketing events tied to the convention. All those politicians and business people and reporters will find themselves bombarded with invitations to parties, presentations, press conferences and assorted stunts intended to publicize a business or win political support.

P.R. agencies also are working on invitation lists for VIP tours, which will take delegates, media and others out to corporate headquarters or other facilities.

The brouhaha won’t end with tours and events. An array of strategies some original, some tried-and-true are being worked up to target the media and political elite coming to Los Angeles for the convention.

“You do have to be creative, because there is going to be saturation,” said Cathy Ann Connelly, president of the Los Angeles office of Stoorza, Ziegaus & Metzger.

As an example, Connelly is eyeing those in-flight magazines published by the airlines. Landing a story about a client in one of those during the month of the convention would be a sure-fire way of guaranteeing a captive audience.

“That’s a nice clean way of doing things, because most of (the conventioneers) will be stuck in the air for some time,” Connelly said.

Publications placed in hotel rooms also are being targeted, and in the months before the event there will be a competition to get listed on the convention’s official schedule of events.

Delegates will be bombarded with products as well. During the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, Michael Burns, managing director of the L.A. office of Burson-Marsteller, recalls passing out cellular phones to delegates that were supplied by client Qualcomm, so attendees could make calls from the convention floor.

New kid in town

Public-affairs marketers have a new competitor with the arrival of Apco Associates, which has hired a heavy-hitting local expert to start up its Los Angeles office.

Stephanie Bradfield is a well-known name in local media and political circles, having served for two years (from 1996 to 1998) as deputy mayor of Los Angeles and a key figure in Richard Riordan’s administration. She left last year after getting burned out on local politics, taking a job as vice president in charge of communications for the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau before being tapped by Apco.

“City government is a tough business,” said Bradfield, explaining why she left the mayor’s office. “It’s a 24-hour-a-day job. It’s exciting, but it gets very tiring.”

Washington, D.C.-based Apco has a strong reputation, being named the top public-affairs P.R. firm in the country last year by Inside PR. It has 17 offices around the world, including one in Sacramento.

“Los Angeles has been an important missing location for the company,” Bradfield said. “It’s hard to be a big international firm and not be in Los Angeles.”

Bradfield will start out on her own at the downtown L.A. office, but Apco is expected to add more staff as she grows the business. Right now, her job is to serve Apco clients located elsewhere that want coverage in the L.A. market, but she’ll be looking to dig up new clients here as well.

Apco is involved in a broad range of public-affairs services things like working on behalf of trade associations to further their political interests, creating marketing campaigns for ballot initiatives, government relations and litigation support.

I say Chicago, you say Chicano

Chicago is not usually thought of as a focus of Latino culture. But that’s not stopping Spanish-language ad agency La Agencia de Orci & Asociados from opening an office there.

Actually, there are 1.3 million Latinos in the greater Chicago area compared with the 7-8 million in the Los Angeles market though La Agencia President Roberto Orci concedes the West L.A.-based agency isn’t going to the Windy City because of its Latino audience.

“It isn’t where the Latinos are, it’s where the clients are,” he said. “We go all over the country where the consumer is already, but day-to-day, you want to (have offices located) where the clients are.”

La Agencia’s Chicago office has only one staff member and is serving just Chicago-based Allstate Insurance, but Orci hopes to add staff over time if the agency can convince more Midwestern corporate giants to jump into Spanish-language marketing.

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