Ally & Gargano receives Commodore Business Machines' advertising account for Vic 20

Advertising

By Philip H. Dougherty
The New York Times

June 16, 1982

COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES, a leader in microcomputers, has assigned its Vic 20 computer to Ally & Gargano. Billings will soon grow to the $20 million level.

In April the subsidiary of Commodore International based in King of Prussia, Pa., gave the agency its first assignment, for the Commodore Max Machine and Commodore 64, both of which combine features of home computers, video games and music synthesizers. The former is intended to sell for under $200 and the latter for $595. Vic 20, now in the process of achieving national distribution, is in between at $299.

The news of the new business might have heightened joy levels considerably at the Ally shop. But at Kornhauser & Calene, the Vic 20 agency for a year, the bad news - the first account loss of any significance in its two-year history - was like a physical blow.

''We felt that Ally & Gargano is a very creative agency and will be right for us in the 80's,'' was the reason cited by Kit Spencer, vice president-marketing at Commodore.

In the last few years Ally & Gargano has been getting a considerable amount of press on its winning ways at advertising awards competitions, especially with the Federal Express campaign. But it has other winners, too. The recent Clio TV ceremony saw Ally corner the market on victories with MCI Communications and Timberland boots as well as Federal.

You don't suppose that advertisers are swayed by that sort of news, do you? At Kornhauser & Calene, whose chairman, Henry Kornhauser, is exceedingly proud of the work his people did for this client, he ended a staff memo on the Commodore loss: ''We feel like the boy in Abraham Lincoln's story who stubbed his toe in the dark; we're too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.''