Despite their dependence on Honda account, Rubin and Postaer are in the driver's seat.

Despite their dependence on Honda account, Rubin and Postaer are in the driver's seat 

If you're an ad agency and 70 percent of your billings comes from a single account, you're living on the shaky edge of panic, right?

You just have to be worried because you're not diversified. If you lost the big account, like a city dependent on aerospace when the defense budget is slashed, you'd suffer an earthquake.

But it's not necessarily so, says Gerry Rubin, president and chief executive of Rubin Postaer & Associates in West Los Angeles. RPA is the agency for American Honda Motor Co., accounting for 70 percent of its $150 million billings (fiscal year ending Oct. 31). Rubin thinks it can be a happy problem.

"I'd rather have a problem like that than not have it," he says. "Now if our relationship with Honda were wafer-thin, if we were the new kids on the block, I'd be cautious and guarded. But it's not (wafer-thin) and we're not (new to the account)."

He doesn't gratuitously add that being No. 1 provides a measure of comfort, but he would if you pressed him. The Honda Accord became the top-selling auto model in the nation last year, a reign that is continuing, and Honda as a company this month passed Chrysler Corp. to become No. 3 behind Ford and GM.

Neither Rubin nor Honda, however, are leaning back complacently. He reminds a visitor of what old Satchel Paige once said, "If you look behind you, you see somebody's gaining," or something to that effect.

Toyota as a company, also with rising sales this year, is pressing close to Honda, and Mitsubishi is ahead sharply in a generally declining market (down 5 percent in the first half of 1990). A champ, as in baseball, is always a target for the rest of the league. Rubin knows it well; he understands sport analogies to business, as evidenced by a hockey stick and golf clubs in his office.

He's particularly pleased with Honda's performance, however, since it was accomplished without rebates and fleet sales (which the company doesn't do because they take sales away from dealers) and also while under the attack of an anti-Honda advertising campaign by Chrysler, which blared: "Honda is the enemy."

Honda didn't fire back when Chrysler declared war. "The company posture was to act and behave like a leader, which it is," says Rubin.

He remembers a few years earlier when Burger King took on McDonalds, declaring war and then retreating. "McDonald's let it burn out," Rubin says. "Now we'll let Chrysler run its course."

The Honda account has been the lead business of Rubin Postaer since the agency was formed, in October 1986, but Rubin and his partner, Larry Postaer, go back with Honda advertising to 1981. They then were principals in Needham Harper, the agency that had the Honda account when it was merged with Doyle Dane Bernbach and BBDO. Rubin and Postaer left Needham to go on their own. In their laps fell Honda.

It wasn't quite that simple, of course. Since two of the agencies in the three-way merger were publicly held (BBDO and Doyle Dane), Rubin and Postaer were restricted by securities laws from soliciting accounts that fell out due to client conflicts resulting from the merger. They couldn't pitch until the deal was consummated. So when they broke away the Honda business wasn't assured.

BBDO handled Dodge advertising, Doyle had Volkswagen, Needham had Honda. It was all right at the time to handle Dodge and a foreign manufacturer, so the merged entity picked VW and let Honda go. It might have been one of the worst business decisions since Roebuck left Sears. VW went down, Honda up.

Rubin, with hindsight, thinks he knows why. An increasingly sophisticated and quality-conscious public, he believes, boosted Honda. And VW fell because it discontinued its "cult car," the beetle, and suffered a decline in quality reputation - "real or just perceived" - after it began to build cars in Pennsylvania. Americans weren't ready to accept that a quality car could be domestically manufactured.

Honda began to market motorcycles in the United States in 1960. Its first autos came in 1970. In 1974, just in time for the Arab oil embargo, it introduced its CVCC (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) engine, which burned clean on regular gasoline.

That started an extraordinary sales and marketing story. Honda's Accord now is in its fourth generation. The sell is still soft. "Hard tell, not sell," says Rubin. "Larry (Postaer) runs our copy desk like a city editor. We try not to exaggerate. It's not, 'Oh, what a feeling!' or 'We are driven.' We have never ever used an exclamation mark in our copy."

Rubin Postaer is not growing in extraordinary leaps, and Rubin is delighted about that. Its billings this year are up only slightly from the $143 million in 1989. The figures are real, Rubin points out, audited by accountants.

"When I was working for a large agency, goals were superimposed from the top and your rewards were measured against these goals," he says. "You had to put your bait down in every fishing hole, whether or not there were fish there. Now we only fish were we have a reasonably good chance of getting a bite."

The agency has three other Japanese accounts - Kubata Tractor, Seiko Instruments, Yokohoma Tire - bringing its "Japanese billings" to something over 75 percent of its total. In addition, it handles advertising for Ma Maison Sofiel, The Disney Channel, Price Stern Sloan Publishers, HomeFed Bank.

It might seem too heavily weighted toward Japan. Rubin doesn't see it that way. The Pacific Rim, he says by way of reminder, has an overwhelming influence in Southern California's economy.

"If a West Coast agency has an auto account, it just about has to be a dominating lead account," he says. As for Japanese business in general, it is, quite simply, a natural opportunity for local agencies. The Japanese, Rubin points out, haven't been partial to their own agency branch offices in parceling out business in America. They have a sense that Americans understand American business and the customer.

Miscellany

Business Wire, a public relations wire service, has begun to transmit graphic images along with news releases to 625 television stations across the nation ... Business Communications & Marketing Association members and guests will hear networking expert Mel Kaufmann Aug. 28 at the Bel Air Summit Hotel.... Foote, Cone & Belding reported a 9.4 percent gain in second quarter profits on a 6.4 percent gain in revenues.

Campaigns

Kerm/Mathai Direct Marketing has launched a blitz campaign for the Opto Electronics division of Hewlett-Packard, four-color brochures and personalized laser letters making use of robot images, appropriate for the computer age.

Accounts

J. Walter Thompson/Los Angeles has added two accounts - Bekins Box & Ship of Pasadena and ChipSoft, a San Diego computer software company ... DCA Advertising has been appointed agency for Klinview Corp., a subsidiary of Taiho Industries Co. of Tokyo ... Larsen Colby Koralek has been selected as agency for Subaru Northwest Region, billing about $5 million, bringing LCK's total billing to some $20 million of which $12 million is Subaru related.

People

HDM Los Angeles promoted four - Fran Nemeth to director of the new account support department, Carol Kaufman to director of research, Paulette Osterhage to producer and Evelyn Gonzalez to media planner for the Baja Norte Tourism Board; earlier, HDM elected Fred Koplin senior vice president and Len Zimmelman president.