• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, February 1, 2015

You were expecting some witty Super Bowl commentary here? Hey, I'd love to provide that -- and maybe I will tomorrow. You see, this column was written on Sunday at 12:48 p.m. hours before kickoff.  That's just the news cycle for this particular column. But, hey, don't let that stop you from digging around the rest of MediaPost today for all kinds of Super Bowl coverage. But for now, life goes on outside the Super Bowl in the ad world, believe it or not.

Cedar Falls-based direct marketing agency EdgeCore acquired New York City-based Cooper Group, a direct-response agency that in a certain other fictitious world might be an offshoot of Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce founded by Don Draper's grandchildren. The move follows a prior acquisition of Florida-based .Com Marketing.

Of the acquisition, EdgeCore CEO Scott Stackhouse said: “It’s similar to the earlier acquisition, but it’s a little different in the reasoning. The reason we bought .Com is they had a service we thought we could utilize for our clients nationwide. This time, the Cooper Group has clients we feel we can help grow, and they’re national clients that you can’t just go knock on the door and expect to bring them in.”

Cooper Group has a nice stable of clients which include Delta Airlines, Time Warner Cable, Morgan Stanley and American Express.