Leo Burnett

This company has come up with some gr-r-reat ideas to promote brands. The #2 ad agency in the US (behind WPP Group's JWT), Leo Burnett has helped create some of the top consumer brands, including Kellogg's Frosted Flakes cereal and its Tony the Tiger icon. It offers creative development and campaign planning services through about 95 offices in almost 85 countries. Its Arc Worldwide subsidiary provides promotional and direct marketing services, as well as multimedia and interactive marketing development, while Lápiz Integrated Hispanic Marketing targets Spanish-speakers. The company, which does business as Leo Burnett Worldwide, is owned by ad conglomerate Publicis.

The company has integrated its traditional Leo Burnett ad network with the marketing services of Arc Worldwide, striving to offer a broader range of services under one umbrella. It has aligned itself closely with Arc Worldwide to invest resources in the digital medium, making the Internet one if its top priorities.

Instead of landing the big global accounts, during the recession Leo Burnett has been focused on capturing the local and regional businesses, hoping this will add up to sizeable growth. Most specifically, the agency has been focused on ramping up its operations in the Asia/Pacific region. 

In 2010 it launched its Leo Burnett Group in Thailand, combining its ad network with Arc Worldwide and Black Pencil, a brand consultancy and provider of training workshops. The regional network also got a boost in 2008 when Publicis acquired W&K Communications, an agency specializing in advertising, promotion, television production, and media buying, and owning a presence in Beijing and Guangzhou, China. W&K later changed its name to Leo Burnett W & K Beijing Advertising Co.

In addition to China, Leo Burnett is looking to expand into India; it plans to either open additional offices in the country or use it as an outsourcing post to serve other parts of the company. The agency's growth strategy involves focusing on the top 10-15 markets for each region and then aligning its resources to meet the needs of those clients.

In late 2009, Leo Burnett took over sister company Masius' New York City office, giving Leo Burnett additional expertise in business-to-business advertising and marketing. Clients for the unit, renamed Leo Burnett Business, included such global brands as Johnson & Johnson, Manpower, and BP.