Leo Burnett acquires high-tech marketing firm Leo Burnett acquires high-tech marketing firm 04:48 p.m. Jul 14,1998 Eastern By Barry Hanson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Leo Burnett Co. is acquiring TFA Communications LLC, a Chicago-based firm specializing in business-to-business integrated marketing for high-technology clients, the companies announced Tuesday. With the acquisition, Burnett, one of the world’s biggest advertising and marketing companies, said it planned to form a new unit, TFA/Leo Burnett Technology, to operate separately within Leo Burnett USA. The move gives Chicago-based Burnett, known chiefly as a premier package goods agency, an expanded roster of high-technology clients and the expertise to serve them. And for TFA, a seven-year-old company with offices in Boston and Dallas, the combination extends its reach throughout the global Burnett network, especially as its clients develop products aimed at consumers. "What we’re able to do is bring together their expertise in technology and business-to-business and our expertise in brand-building to consumers," said Linda Wolf, group president for Burnett North America. "We think it’s a fit that just makes all kinds of sense. Wolf and TFA President and CEO Sean Bisceglia, who met with reporters in New York to discuss the acquisition, declined to disclose terms of the deal. Both companies are privately held. The acquisition is Burnett’s third within the past year in continuing efforts to remake the 63-year-old agency, which last year lost a number of marquee clients. In July 1997, Burnett took a minority interest in Williams--Labadie advertising, specializing in health care, and last December acquired a 49 percent interest in London agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty. In December it also formed an urban marketing unit called Vigilante in New York and launched its Starcom media-buying division. Burnett’s worldwide billings last year approached $6 billion. With a staff of about 85 people, TFA, which stands for Total Focus Approach, had capitalized billings of $68 million last year and projected $88 million in 1998, "and that is before the Burnett coattails," Bisceglia said. Among TFA’s clients are ADP Dealer Services, Avid Technology, 3M corporate marketing and public affairs and Motorola. Rick Kean, executive director of the Chicago-based Business Marketing Association, said the deal made sense. "This acquisition makes them (Burnett) available in markets where they’ve never been before," Kean told Reuters. He noted that business-to-business agencies were becoming more attractive to consumer agencies, which are experiencing a limit to what their businesses can do. "By acquiring TFA, they acquire a running business. It makes sense, especially since they’re both in Chicago." The move by Burnett may signal more to come, Kean said. "This is the first really big consumer agency that has reached down and purchased a business-to-business ad agency in a number of years," said Kean. We’ll probably see more of this." Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Press Archive