Normally, when a Los Angeles government agency puts out a request for proposals on a $1.67 million P.R. contract, the biggest agencies in the area can be relied upon to pursue it hungrily. But the Los Angeles International Airport’s expansion plan is putting off all but a hardy few.
Those who follow such things will recall that Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, which runs one of the biggest and most respected public affairs practices in town, “resigned” the LAX master plan P.R. contract last spring. Officially the agency left to allow the Airport Commission to pursue a new strategy on the contract. According to sources close to the situation, the agency was actually pressured to leave by Mayor Richard Riordan, who is dissatisfied that more isn’t being done to promote an expansion of LAX.
If that’s the case, the mayor is unlikely to get what he wants. Not only has the PR effort been put on hold while the Department of Airports searches for a new agency, a process that won’t be completed until late fall, most of the biggest public affairs firms in Los Angeles have decided that the contract is too much of a political football.
Last week, 10 firms submitted bids to handle the contract. Not a single one of the top 10 agencies in L.A. is looking for the job. The biggest bidder appears to be Cohn & Wolfe, which ranked No. 19 on the Business Journal’s list of P.R. agencies in the county with $2.2 million in fee income last year.
Notably absent were Hill and Knowlton, Fleishman-Hillard, Porter/Novelli, Ketchum Public Relations and Rogers & Associates although L.A. airports spokeswoman Nancy Castles said it’s quite possible that some larger firms have signed on as subcontractors to one of the smaller bidders to handle pieces of the job.
Still, it’s clear that this contract comes with a great deal of political baggage.
“It is believed that if you take on this contract you have taken the mayor’s side, and if you want to work with any City Council members in the future that could hurt you,” said a senior P.R. executive who asked to remain anonymous.
That reaction stems from the political tug-of-war being played by Riordan and City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes LAX and surrounding neighborhoods. Galanter opposes the proposed LAX expansion and has been crying foul about awarding a P.R. contract to promote an expansion plan that hasn’t been approved by the City Council. The rest of the council appears to be siding with her.
“It’s quite difficult to promote a project like that when you don’t have the support of the council member whose district it’s in,” said Robert Alaniz, managing director of public affairs with Hill and Knowlton.
Doug Dowie, senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard and head of the agency’s public affairs practice, described the contract as a “political quagmire.”
“Anyone going after that thing runs the risk of alienating someone in the city,” he said.
Of course, there’s nothing to suggest that the 10 agencies bidding on the contract aren’t competent. They just tend to be far smaller players than the ones that are normally the top contenders for such a big assignment.
“The size of that contract suggests that you need a pretty big firm to manage it,” said the unidentified P.R. chief. “You wouldn’t give a $1.6 million contract to a company with only $1 million in revenues.”
Generic news?
Dean Singleton isn’t finished retooling his new Southern California newspaper empire.
After a prolonged buying spree, Singleton’s MediaNews Group now owns the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Daily News of Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star News and the Whittier Daily News. The acquisitions were in line with his “clustering” strategy, under which a bunch of neighboring papers are bought and costs are cut by unifying back-office operations.
The result has been a number of selected job cuts hardly noticed by people outside the newspaper business. But the latest changes being discussed at the Los Angeles Newspaper Group would be more apparent. According to sources inside the group, a plan is being considering that would merge the sports and entertainment sections creating common sections that would run in all of Singleton’s local papers.
Newspaper Group chief Ike Massey was unavailable for comment last week.
Some inside the group stressed that the plans were still preliminary. (One complication could be different front-end computer systems being used by the various papers.)
Newspaper analyst John Morton said such a move would make economic sense. “If you have a collection of communities that are close enough together that an entertainment or sports section could be fairly generic, you can get away with that sort of thing,” he said. “There are some opportunities for operational efficiency there that I think most publishers would take advantage of, if they could do it without harming the editorial product and angering readers.”
L.A. bashing
It’s not enough that L.A.’s neighbors to the north seem to get endless pleasure from denigrating Los Angeles. Now we’re getting it from both ends.
The San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau has launched a $4 million ad campaign seeking to draw tourists out of Los Angeles to San Diego. It recently placed billboards on the San Diego (405) Freeway and the main exit from LAX with slogans like “A day in San Diego is like a week out of L.A.” and “Welcome to L.A. (Let us know when you’ve had enough.)”
Regina Birdsell, head of the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership, finds those sorts of messages destructive for everybody. According to the group’s research, business travelers and international visitors are put off by an entire region when they think neighboring cities there don’t get along. Neighboring cities with cooperative marketing efforts seem to fare better than those that bash each other, she said.
“Maybe it’s just that step-sister relationship where they (San Diego) just don’t feel like they can compete,” snipes back Birdsell.
News Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
