Sales, image and business development - Professional Services - Zimmerman and Partners Advertising - Great Expectations
Author: South Florida CEO

You probably know the car commercials of Fort Lauderdale ad agency Zimmerman & Partners. You probably don't know that the agency created by CEO Jordan Zimmerman is a rising national star that will probably bill $1 billion this year.

As courtships go, Zimmerman & Partners Advertising was pretty hot for Great Expectations.

When executives at the Fort Lauderdale ad shop heard the dating service was looking for a new agency, they pulled out all the stops. Execs visited the company's Boca Raton offices to learn not only its marketing plans, but its business objectives, sales figure and competition. They then created five speculative ad campaigns, and tested each with separate focus groups -- dropping more than $100,000 in the process.

Worth the investment? After its pitch in December, the ad agency walked away with a $20 million account. "Others didn't take the time to learn our business. Zimmerman quickly identified the business we're in and the nature of what we needed from them," says Mitchell D. Brandt, president of G.E. Management Group Worldwide, Great Expectations' parent. "They're not going in by the seat of their pants."

In essence, Zimmerman & Partners is a business development company posing as an ad shop, a strategy that has served the company well. The firm closed 2002 with $127 million in revenues on $824 million in billings -- making it a top-25 national firm and one of the largest ad agencies off Madison Avenue.