The most undercover P.R. agency in Los Angeles just had its cover blown. Paris-based holding company Publicis S.A. last week acquired a majority interest in Winner & Associates, a stealthy but powerful Encino-based crisis management and public affairs firm. Winner & Associates has never before disclosed its annual revenues and so does not appear on the Business Journal’s list of L.A.’s biggest P.R. agencies, but as part of the announcement of the Publicis acquisition, Winner disclosed that its 1999 revenues came to $7.3 million. That places it among the biggest independently owned P.R. agencies in L.A. County. Indeed, Winner & Associates flies so far below the radar screen that some local P.R. experts weren’t even aware it exists. “I haven’t heard of them,” said P.R. consultant Jerry Swerling, who advises corporations on choosing P.R. firms and heads up a P.R. education program at USC. “Obviously, they’re a very low-profile, yet highly successful firm.” Besides its headquarters in Encino, Winner & Associates has a satellite office in Washington, D.C. The firm will now be called “Winner & Associates, a Publicis Consultants Company.” It will keep its management team and stay at its present Encino location. The company was founded 25 years ago as a political campaign management consultancy. It specializes in providing crisis management and consulting services for national corporations with big headaches it provided crisis management services in the Challenger and Three Mile Island disasters in the ’80s and has represented Exxon Mobil Corp. since 1990 as its principal communications and public affairs consultant, and on Exxon Valdez oil-spill issues. More recently and more locally, the firm has been working for Burbank’s City Council concerning Burbank Airport’s long-stalled expansion. It also represents Los Angeles World Airports as the organization studies a controversial expansion of L.A. International Airport. Other current clients include America Online, a California Indian tribe developing casinos, Edison International and the National Soft Drink Association. The company’s affiliate firm Winner/Wagner & Mandaback Campaigns also handles initiative campaigns. Chuck Winner, 59, will continue as president and chief executive. His company has worked with Publicis in recent years on international public affairs projects for multinational clients. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and employees were surprised last Wednesday when it was announced, company officials said. “The company will not change, we’ll just have more resources,” Winner said by telephone from New York, where he was meeting members of the Publicis team. “I’ll still be the president, chairman and CEO. We will operate in the same way, and we’ll stay in the same location.” Winner said he had not been looking for his company to be acquired, “I wasn’t trying to do it at all,” Winner said. “But when they posed this as an idea, I paid attention.” Winner said the company will be flying a little less under the radar now that the acquisition has taken place. “We will provide our clients with the same sort of service, but now we’ll be a little more high-profile,” he said.
