TargetCast Hits The Bulls-Eye, Lands Wyeth Consumer Healthcare

TargetCast TCM, a media boutique founded just 18 months ago by media agency vets Steve Farella and Audrey Siegel, Wednesday broke into the big leagues, landing the media planning account for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth's Consumer Healthcare division, after a long, hotly contested media review that included Wyeth's main incumbent, Grey Advertising's MediaCom Worldwide unit.

The assignment--which consolidates all media planning for Wyeth's consumer division, representing 16 major over-the-counter brands such as Advil, Robitussin, and Centrum--brings TargetCast's annualized billings to $350 million, putting it in a category with the other mid-size independents like Horizon Media and The Media Kitchen.

"In a period when the agency business has seemed unhealthy or stagnant to so many, we're probably the fastest-growing agency in the business," boasted TargetCast's Farella, who ran MPG, and the media departments of Young & Rubicam, Wells Rich Greene, and Ammirati & Puris before striking out on his own with Siegel. The Wyeth win is the biggest in a recent string of media accounts for the agency that includes full-service media duties for TIAA-CREF (awarded in February) and Eight O'Clock Coffee (July).

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The Wyeth win is also another example of a mid-size media boutique besting media shops of greater size and ostensibly greater resources. In addition to MediaCom, Wyeth incumbents that participated in the review included Universal McCann and Carrafiello-Diehl & Associates, as well as a number of undisclosed contenders.

TargetCast specializes in a total communications planning approach to media that has become the rage among the biggest media shops, and which includes non-traditional media as well as alternative marketing platforms.

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