There's a big battle in Stor at Ikea, which plans to spend $3 million on its L.A. entry.

There's a big battle in stor at Ikea, which plans to spend $3 million on its L.A. entry

Sometimes a new ad campaign is only a hint of the battle to come.

An example is the recently launched television and radio campaign that the West Los Angeles office of Ketchum Advertising launched for Stor, the furniture retailer.

Stor has owned its own niche in furniture marketing in L.A. since it opened its first outlet in October 1987, and it now operates at three locations in L.A. and Orange counties. It was the first retailer to hit L.A. with what it calls the "supercenter" furniture retailing concept: a huge showroom with a children's play area, a cafe and dozens of fully decorated model rooms. It's the kind of place people can spend an afternoon shopping without feeling they've spent an afternoon shopping.

Stor, of course, didn't originate the concept. A Swedish company called Ikea runs 80 such stores around the world, including four in the Northeastern United States.

Stor's stores so closely resemble those of Ikea, in fact, that Ikea sued Stor. The Swedish company claimed Stor had copied the floor plans of its stores, some layouts from its advertising catalog, and the design of employee uniforms. The suit was settled with Stor agreeing to change its floor plans and not use certain catalog layouts.

The battle between the two may heat up in a different way this fall, when Ikea is scheduled to open a store in Burbank. It's shopping for an ad agency and is talking to four L.A. contenders.

Meanwhile, privately owned Stor is planning to go public with an initial public stock offering. Los Angeles-based Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards is co-manager of the offering, which is expected to raise more than $20 million.

The Stor prospectus suggests the company may up the advertising ante when Ikea enters the market. "As a result of Ikea's announced entry into the Los Angeles area, the company plans to incur greater advertising expense than would otherwise be incurred," the Stor prospectus says. That's about as exciting as the language gets in a prospectus.

This could mean an advertising shootout between Stor and Ikea, depending on how fast Ikea expands here and how soon they start fighting over the same market areas. Whether the ad shootout materializes, and how soon, is debatable. One executive of an ad agency that is trying to win the Ikea account said Ikea's Burbank store won't represent a big threat to Stor because it will be so far away from any of the existing Stor locations.

Those locations are in the City of Industry, Torrance, and the Orange County community of Tustin. But James D. Stadtlander, president of Stor, said something in an L.A. Times interview last year that suggests Stor and Ikea might be bumping marketing heads sooner rather than later.

"We want to communicate to people why they should be willing to drive 40 miles out of their way to go to Stor when there's probably another furniture store right down the street from their home," Stadtlander said.

Stadtlander was commenting after Stor switched its ad account to Ketchum from Gumpertz/Bentley/Fried, which had been the Stor agency from the time it opened its first store and won a Belding Award for best newspaper retail ad for its Stor work.

The new campaign by Ketchum is its first for Stor since it took over the account. Richard Groff, the agency's vice president for strategic planning and development, says the campaign is aimed at explaining in detail the variety of items offered at a Stor store.

"We found in our research that we got about a 60 percent awareness factor in Southern California," Groff said, "but people who hadn't been in the stores didn't know what they sold."

Stor spent $5 million on advertising in the 40 weeks that ended Jan. 5, according to the prospectus, which said the company's sales for that period totaled $50 million. Much of that $5 million goes into a 150-page, color catalog that Stor mails to 2 million L.A. households.

Ikea reportedly plans to spend about $3 million for advertising in its first year here. Regardless of how the ad battle goes, it will be good news for the L.A. ad industry, in which the lack of new business is a recurring lament and agencies are always happy to see new advertisers enter the scene.

Accounts

The hits keep coming for Dailey & Associates, which was named western ad agency of the year two weeks ago by Adweek magazine. The agency picked up millions in new billings from Carnation, a company for which Dailey already handles substantial business.

Carnation, which generally doesn't talk to the press about its ad budget, didn't say how much of its business it moved to Dailey from Lintas in New York. But ad industry sources said Carnation was moving more than $20 million from Lintas and splitting it between Dailey and McCann-Erickson in Los Angeles . . . Speer, Young & Hollander, a specialist in business-to-business advertising, said it picked up the $1 million account of Silicon systems Inc., an Orange County-based designer and manufacturer of integrated circuits.

People

HDM named Margie Gostyla, formerly director of advertising for Mexicana Airlines, to the new position of senior vice president and director of special markets. Chuck Reynolds, agency president, said Gostyla will focus on tourism and related businesses. The agency also promoted Ken Fitzgerald to senior vice president and hired three new senior staff members: Anne Allen as a management supervisor, Molly Ross-Colyer as director of media buying, and Carol Kaufman as associate director of consumer planning . . . John J. Sullivan and Philip K. Fitzsimmons Jr. joined Baxter, Gurian & Mazzei as account executives, and Nancy E. Richard joined the agency as a senior copywriter . . . Justin McCormack was named director of marketing and promotion for TSR West, a publisher of games, comics and magazines . . . Nanci Hoffman joined Aldrich & Associates in Long Beach as a public relations account supervisor . . . Chris Shalby was named director and Norma Perez was named manager in the newly consolidated corporate communications department at J&D Expo Productions Inc., a Canoga Park-based producer of travel trade shows . . . Felipe Bascope joined N W Ayer as a copywriter.

Miscellany

The Western States Advertising Agencies Association will enlist Dick Cavett, the relentless Energizer battery bunny and some tricks of the advertising trade on Tuesday this week to present its first "Leader of the Decade" award to Jay Chiat, founder of Chiat/Day/Mojo. This comes soon after Chiat's agency dominated the annual Belding Awards show conducted by the Advertising Club of Los Angeles.

The advertising association is having some fun with Chiat's name. It's publicity announcement for the award dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel dubs it "Chiat/Night." The announcement says Chiat will be awarded for work that "has radically changed the image of western advertising." It promises "Oscar-style, on-the-spot" interviews with guests" and "many surprises about Jay Chiat" . . . The Los Angeles Advertising Women will present the organization's 44th annual Lulu Achievement Awards on Friday this week at the Filmland building in Culver City . . . The Los Angeles Creative Club is launching a competition for advertising students, with awards to be presented May 31 at the Harry Chandler Auditorium at the Los Angeles Times.