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TheBuzz

BY ERIKA ENGLE

Friday, June 1, 2001

New ad agency
wrests account
from ex-boss

The advertising team of Craig Matsumoto and Ed Clapperton and their 7-month-old self-named company, have beat out their former employer, AdWorks Inc., for a sizable local media account.

Matsumoto & Clapperton is now the advertising agency of record for the Honolulu Advertiser, seen as a big account in the local ad industry.

Page Gaylord, chief media officer of Ogilvy & Mather Hawaii, said the "small breakaway agency" has found "a very promising niche in the market that needs to be filled."

While employed at AdWorks Inc., Matsumoto and Clapperton created advertising for the now-defunct Hawaii Newspaper Agency that won state advertising awards.

In this year's competition, an AdWorks campaign created by Matsumoto and Account Supervisor Wade Nishimura before the split won the top award, a Pele, while two Matsumoto & Clapperton entries were presented with awards of excellence.

In March, when HNA -- which handled business functions for the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser -- was dissolved, the Advertiser kept its ad agencies and other branding and marketing partners. The Star-Bulletin hired its own agencies for advertising and other media work.

AdWorks now works with the Gannett-owned paper "on a project basis," according to company President Darrel Kloninger.

Advertiser officials told Kloninger "They needed to consolidate," he said, they were "figuring out how they wanted to proceed," and are "doing more in-house than they had originally intended."

Mike Fisch, president and publisher of the Advertiser, said the paper has and will continue to use the creative and media-buying services of more than one advertising and marketing company, "to spread the business around."

Clapperton said the company now lists nine clients on an "of record" basis, including Foodland Supermarket Ltd., Schuman Carriage, Altres and Subaru of Hawaii.

"In this business," Kloninger said, "accounts come and go, it's a reality of life." Since the paper changed agencies, and GE Capital downsized and severed its AdWorks ties, "We've picked up twice as much billing as we've lost."

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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com