John Chambers has left Don Marketing and game cards to set up a new sales promotion operation for the world’s sixth largest ad agency
John Chambers (above) Pages 12/13 article, Promotions & Incentives February 1986 issue
Promotions & Incentives February 1986 (PDF)
John Chambers (right) has left Don Marketing and game cards to set up a new sales promotion operation for the world’s sixth largest ad agency
Burnett’s new ‘interaction’
LEO BURNETT is the latest advertising agency to establish its own separate sales promotion operation, and the fourth new London-based SP agency to open within the last twelve months.
Ranked number six among the world’s top ad agencies, Leo Burnett has sifted through a field of talent to head up its new department as chief executive and singled out John Chambers, ex-managing director of Don Marketing, the promotional games specialist.
He joins colleague Godfrey Morrow who came from Benson & Bowles to co-ordinate three departments – the sales promotions, advertising and another new entity, direct marketing with David Harrison as this department’s chief executive.
Speaking of his new appointment Chambers says that he is ‘glad to be back in the mainstream of promotions.’
After three years with Don Marketing he felt that the offer to switch was opportune.
‘Game pieces have been excellent and still have enormous potential, but the market tends to have levelled out a bit lately, the mistakes made by other people having had a bit of an undesirable effect on Don, which is inevitable.
‘Now here I can develop along the broader spectrum of sales promotion.’
It’s back to the industry again for Chambers who spent two years as head of sales promotion with Allen Brady & Marsh, pushing up billings by an extra £3 million. Prior to that he was three years with RHM Foods as promotions manager.
His link with Don Marketing gave him his first directorship.
‘I feel that I helped Don get a lot of exposure that it wouldn’t have normally achieved,’ he says.
‘Part of the success was the result of a more professional approach to advertising and public relations.’
During his stay there the company produced some significant promotions, namely for Shell with the well publicised Shell Make Money, Mastermind, Make Merry and Bruce’s Lucky Deal – costing around £15 million, but returning Shell to a dominent position in the market place.
‘One of the important things is that Don didn’t make any slips. The recent problems some companies have had with game promotions reveals a vulnerability that stresses the importance of going to the experts who’ll do it correctly.’
The potential of the games market was made apparent with the advent of the Guinness Game in 1982.
‘It was a justification of my beliefs in the market. There was no advertising campaign. The client spent about £1 million and put on an extra 25 per cent increase in sales.
‘What advertising campaign could equal that in such a short time?’
Now his new move brings him into contact with an entirely different aspect – the international scene. ‘Leo Burnett is bigger internationally than it is in the UK,’ says Chambers.
Morrow is no newcomer to the sales promotion market either, having spent some time with the Marden Kane Marketing Group as group head.
From Benson & Bowles he brings with him a handful of significant clients such as BAC, F Bender, Brittania Unit Trust and CDT – who will join two mainstays of LB’s current SP operations, Konica and Philip Morris.
‘By the end of the year we will really be something,’ he says.
Overall head is Richard Wheatley, chief executive of Leo Burnett Advertising.
‘A growing number of our clients have been interested in sales promotions in the past,’ he says. ‘Now we have a team of experts who will specialise in making advertising, sale promotion and direct marketing work hand in hand.
‘We call it our marketing group – and all under one roof.’