McCaffrey’s Hobbs opens own agency
Bob Hobbs, former executive vice-president and general manager of McCaffrey & McCall, has established his own advertising and marketing firm in Toronto.
Hobbs set up HCS Hobbs Consulting Services after the closure last month of the Toronto office of u.s.-based McCaffrey & McCall – its only Canadian shop.
Past posts
The 25-year veteran of the business had been with McCaffrey & McCall for 14 years and with McCann-Erickson Advertising for 10 years before that.
He started his career in product management, taking his first agency job with the now-defunct Toronto shop, Spitzer Mills & Bates.
Hobbs says the loss of the more than $3-million Bacardi brand account in mid-January prompted McCaffrey & McCall to shut down its Toronto shop.
In the u.s., McCaffrey & McCall merged with Backer Spielvogel Bates.
The Toronto office had acted as almost an in-house agency for FBM Distillery, distributor of Bacardi, Brown Forman and Martini & Rossi brands, and Hobbs says there was nothing left to take to bsb.
Bacardi
Lintas:New York was awarded the u.s. Bacardi business and will also handle Canadian creative.
Initiative Media, the media buying arm of MacLaren:Lintas, will handle the Canadian media buy.
MacKinnon & Associates, a new Toronto agency established by former McCaffrey & McCall account supervisor Steven MacKinnon, has been awarded the Martini & Rossi brands, which are being handled in-house in the u.s.
Responsibility for the Brown Forman brands, which include Canadian Mist, Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort, has not been assigned.
Hobbs says only one of the six McCaffrey & McCall staffers, the office manager, is still looking for a job.
He says Michael Fogel, McCaffrey & McCall media director, has always operated his own media service, and, in fact, had been working on a consultant basis with the agency for the past five years.
Account executive Byron Georgeff continues to work on the same business he was responsible for at the agency.
Georgeff has been hired by Bacardi on a five-month contract. PS
