As a teen, Scott Brunjes landed his first job at Danbury Airport fueling airplanes made by Cessna and other manufacturers.
Years later, Cessna has refueled the pipeline at Brunjes”™ Mediassociates Inc.
The Danbury company last month won the media buying account for Cessna Aircraft Co., a division of Providence, R.I.-based Textron Inc., the largest civil aviation manufacturer in the world.
Brunjes and his colleagues will steer Cessna”™s advertising purchases in media outlets, both traditional trade publications as well as online campaigns.
“I told them, ”˜This isn”™t just a new account ”“ this is destiny,”™” Brunjes said of his meeting with Cessna managers in Wichita. “That got a few chuckles.”
Brunjes credits winning the account in part to Mediassociates”™ system for measuring the effectiveness of various ad campaigns. By assigning unique 800-numbers and Web addresses in ads running in different publications, Web sites and broadcast media, the firm is able to help companies instantly deduce which ads aren”™t showing return on investment.
“Experience shows 20 percent of a media spend gets nothing for the advertiser,” Brunjes said. “We can take that 20 percent and redeploy it into media that works, and your return on investment goes through the roof ”¦ If we can go in where someone has $5 million budget, and redeploy $1 million to something that works, it”™s powerful.”
For its part, Cessna spent $3 million on advertising in the United States last year, according to a Nielsen study recently cited by Adweek, and will now count on Mediassociates to help it track the return on its ad spend going forward. Cessna is going through its own cutbacks, having announced nearly 7,000 layoffs since last November amid order cancellations for business jets.
“Ad budgets need to work harder,” Brunjes said. “Everything needs to be more accountable than ever.”
Brunjes grew up on Long Island and then in Brookfield, attending Western Connecticut State University in Danbury where he ran WestConn”™s college radio station. After working in radio for several years, he started up Mediassociates. The agency has big national accounts such as Supercuts and Mobil, as well as area customers like Ridgefield-based Fairfield County Bank and Petro, a home-heating oil provider owned by Stamford-based Star Gas Partners L.P.
Mediassociates has about 20 employees today.
Fairfield County has just a small pocket of media buying firms like Mediassociates that regularly land national clients. In May, Wilton-based Touchpoint won the media buying account for Vancouver, Wash.-based Nautilus.
New York City-based Omnicom Group Inc. and other marketing agencies reported a 15 percent decline in business in the first quarter, and Brunjes said Mediassociates”™ numbers similarly are down slightly. According to Nielsen, overall advertising expenditures in the United States were down 12 percent, amounting to $3.8 billion in lost activity.
Sunday newspaper supplements fared the worst, with a 38 percent drop in advertising; at the other end of the scale, Internet and cable television advertising only suffered slight drops.
Still, Brunjes said he is seeing signs that the economy may be turning the corner and preparing to taxi down the runway ”“ though how long it will take to gain altitude is anyone”™s guess.
“It”™s definitely palpable ”“ we see decisions being made today that were being delayed before,” Brunjes said.
