It wasn't an easy decision, but choosing not to compete for an account that would have brought in a projected $2.6 million in revenue this year was in fact a wise decision for Lois Paul & Partners (LPP). Whether for agency execs or corporate communicators, LLP's decision not to vie for a major client underscores the benefits of constantly assessing your organization's direction and not be afraid to make changes.
Since its relationship ended with computer company Sybase, the Burlington, Mass., PR shop has added 11 new clients to its roster - clients it wouldn't have been able to handle had it kept Sybase.
LPP handled the Sybase account out of its LP&P office in San Francisco - and that was part of the reason it chose to shed the account.
"We founded our West Coast office with the intent of working with small companies in hot markets," said Bill McLaughlin, executive VP of Lois Paul and Partners. "But the Sybase account was taking up more than 90 percent of our resources and preventing us from pursuing our original purpose."
Sybase, which boasted more than $1 billion in revenues in 1996, is one of the darlings of today's computer industry. The company, however, has undergone some significant management restructuring in the past several years and has jockeyed PR pacts with several agencies: prior to its deals with Lois Paul & Partners and The Weber Group, it also had worked with the San Francisco PR agency Blanc & Otus.
(For the record, The Weber Group, Cambridge, Mass., announced that it won the Sybase account several weeks ago.)
McLaughlin said the company ended up taking on the Sybase account after its client, Powersoft Corp., was acquired by Sybase in the mid-1990s. LPP later handled a substantial portion of Sybase's PR, which ended up accounting for about 20 percent of the firm's annual revenues - projected to be around $13 million in 1997.
But around January of this year, McLaughlin said that Sybase asked the company to participate in a review process which prompted LLP execs to undergo some "soul searching." That search forced those in upper management to acknowledge that the Sybase account didn't gel with their long-term business plan, so the company decided not to compete for the account.
But in seeking to bring in 10 new accounts, to replace the revenue Sybase generated for the company (which also handles PR for Lotus Development Corp. and Tivoli Systems, an IBM subsidiary and Internet companies such as dejanews), the company faced a "steep task and a tall order."
Six months later, it has replaced all of that lost revenue, according to McLaughlin, and has announced some new clients, including InfoImage Inc., a Phoenix company specializing in groupware and Internet consulting and software development; and Structured Internetworks Inc., a San Jose start-up providing network solutions and corporate enterprise and intranet networks.