OMNICOM BUYS BENCHMARK
By Adnews Staff
New York-based Omnicom Group has bought BenchMark Communications of Toronto. Under the deal, BenchMark will become an independent business unit of Copithorne & Bellows Public Relations, which has offices in Boston and San Francisco. BenchMark will maintain its name and location. Benchmark founder and CEO Stan Didzbalis will become chairman of Benchmark, as well as CEO and general manager of Canada Porter Novelli of Toronto, another Omnicom agency. Canada Porter Novelli was, until this week, named HR&A Porter Novelli. "Merging BenchMark's high-tech public relations practice with C&B gives our Canadian technology clients access to seamless comprehensive, global high-tech service capability, the broad experiences of Omnicom companies which we can apply to clients and the resources to further expand our presence in Canada," Ditzbalis says in a release. Benchmark specializes in high-technology business. Its clients include: ATI Technologies, Celestica Inc., Hewlett-Packard (Canada), Oracle Corp. Canada and UUNET, an MCI Worldcom company. C&B also specializes in high-technology public relations.
Because of the acquisition, there has been some executive changes at Benchmark and Canada Porter Novelli. At Benchmark, Terry Hrynshyn has been promoted from vice-president to general manager. Elise Fulop and Sheila Corriveau, former corporate accounts managers, have become corporate accounts directors.
At Canada Porter Novelli, Jaye Kornblum-Rea has moved up from vice-president to senior vice-president and consumer practice leader. Susan Stoyanovich has joined the agency as healthcare vice-president. Most recently she was executive director of the Canadian Prostate Cancer Foundation. Mary Sturgeon is now at Canada Porter Novelli as technology director. Formerly she was consumer technology accounts director at BenchMark. Canada Porter Novelli has a broad range of clients including: the Bank of Montreal, Bristol Myers Squibb, Panasonic Canada, The Steel Alliance, The Thomson Corp. and Whitehall-Robbins. It also has a working relationship with DDB Canada's group of companies.