A year and a half after losing LensCrafters as its top client, Media That Works (MTW) rebounded Monday by winning a $30 million media-buying account with the second-biggest spender in the optical business behind LensCrafters.
Cincinnati-based MTW will buy national and spot television time for Transitions Optical, a Tampa, Fla.-based retailer of eyeglasses that change tint.
MTW began rebuilding shortly after losing the $40 million LensCrafters account in 1995. Later that year, it picked up the $26 million planning and buying business for consumer-products maker Andrew Jergens Co., as well as accounts with Corona Extra Beer, Gentry Clothiers and Bush Brothers & Co.
''We were already on the road to making up all the LensCrafters business,'' MTW founder and President Mary Beth Price said. ''This (assignment with Transitions) on top of that puts us well over the top."
MTW posted about $160 million in billings in 1995 and expects to close 1996 with $160 million as well. With the balance of the Transitions Optical business taking hold next year, MTW projects $185 million in billings for 1997.
To win the Transitions account, MTW beat out the nation's top two media buyers: Western International in Los Angeles, with $1.6 billion in annual billings, and SFM in New York, with $725 million in billings.
A venture of PPG Industries and Essilor International, Transitions Optical ranks between LensCrafters and Pearle Vision in media spending on optical advertising.
Ms. Price said the Pittsburgh owners felt that they would get better treatment and attention from a Midwestern ad shop than from a big agency on either coast.
Published Nov. 26, 1996.
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