SAN FRANCISCO and LOS ANGELES: While maintaining separate offices in the Bay Area and Southern California, GCI Group has brought its two California offices under the same profit and loss statement (P&L) in an entity the firm is calling GCI California.
While Drake declined to say if anyone was laid off, he did confirm there was staff realignment.
While residents of both cities might argue San Francisco and LA couldn't be less alike, GCI sees both offices working in tandem at bringing the best PR talent to bear for clients, including Pioneer Electronics, Starbucks, Sony Ericsson, Radio Shack, and Dell's consumer division.
"We'll have separate offices, but they will work together," said GCI California president Jake Drake. "Most accounts have shared staff. And while each city is very different, as a whole the people aren't that different."
Creating one P&L will reduce overhead and administrative costs, said Drake, allowing more resources to go toward business development and client services.
The formation of GCI California is a natural progression of the two California offices falling more and more in sync with each other over the past couple of years, said Drake, particularly as GCI delves more into consumer electronics, drawing on the consumer strengths of its LA office and the tech strengths of its San Francisco office.
GCI California also marks a closer alignment with Grey Global Group's other units, including advertising. Casey Jones, chief executive of Grey Global in San Francisco, said he would serve on the board of GCI California, and help oversee the closer alignment between Grey Global's units in California, such as PR and advertising.
