Microsoft Notwork
Hear that giant sucking sound? It's San Francisco.

Portland's Wieden & Kennedy, already having lost some of its Nike ad account to S.F.-based Goodby Silverstein & Partners, lost an estimated $24.4 million worth of its Microsoft business to another Bay Area firm this month.

Because the company anticipated Microsoft's decision, says spokeswoman Liz Hartge, the loss won't have a big impact on Wieden & Kennedy. When W&K laid off 37 people last month, an Oregonian report attributed the move to Nike cutbacks; Hartge now says the layoffs were made in anticipation of the Microsoft loss as well. W&K, the country's 35th-largest ad agency, now employs 330 people in Portland and has estimated annual billings of $707 million.

"It's always a disappointment to lose a piece of our business," she says, "but we're still in charge of overall branding for Microsoft. So we still feel like we have the most important part of the Microsoft account."

That may be, but for the first time since working with Microsoft, W&K doesn't have a majority of the Microsoft account.

W&K has shared the Microsoft account with San Francisco's Anderson & Lembke since the two firms were hired in 1994. Until this month, W&K had an estimated $120 million of the $200 million account. Microsoft's spending shift, reported by Advertising Age magazine, means Lembke, a firm about half the size of W&K, will control the bulk of Bill Gates' ad budget.

The shift is part of a Microsoft consolidation move, Hartge says. Microsoft is moving all of its advertising for online products into one ad account (Lembke's) and all of its advertising for software into another (W&K).

That means W&K still has the high-profile Windows account, but losing Microsoft's expanding MSN account is a blow. The Microsoft Network includes Microsoft's much-anticipated "portal," the default home page for PC users who download Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The portal project, code named "Start," is important to Microsoft because the company is trying to establish its network as a rival to popular Web sites like Yahoo! and Netscape's Netcenter. Advertising Age reporter Bradley Johnson says Microsoft plans a major ad campaign to promote the Start project later this year. --Josh Feit

FOLLOW UP
Unwelcome GUEST
While Oregon's senatorial tag team of Smith & Wyden is proudly touting a new bipartisan approach to making life better for both farmers and workers, the state's farmworkers union is crying foul.

"This is a dark day for farmworkers when we have Ron Wyden proposing anti-worker legislation," says Ramon Ramirez, president of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, better known as PCUN.

At issue is a proposed revamp of national guestworker laws, controversial regulations that allow foreign workers to enter the country temporarily under controlled conditions ("Help Wanted," WW, July 1, 1998).

Sen. Gordon Smith, a Pendleton Republican, has taken a lead role in the guestworker revamp from the start. Meanwhile, PCUN had pressured Sen. Ron Wyden, a Portland Democrat, to keep a low profile. But this week Wyden signed on as co-sponsor of the effort, joining a mixed delegation of senators from other agricultural states.

Farmers say they need new guestworker legislation because there aren't enough domestic workers to bring in crops. The union says the proposal is clearly aimed at using non-union foreign workers to keep farm wages artificially low. PCUN argues that if growers would pay decent wages, they'd find plenty of willing workers. Farmers, however, say they can't pay higher wages and still compete with foreign-grown produce.

Wyden says the bill includes wage and benefit protections that worker advocates have wanted for years and a national job registry, which would settle the question of whether there is a farmworker shortage.

Wyden says that though he has tried to work with PCUN and other farmworkers unions, he can't endorse their "nihilism theory" that letting the labor market fall into chaos will force wages up for workers. "The idea that you have to have everything go completely into freefall and somehow out of that will come something better...just doesn't fly," he says. --Patty Wentz

Ever since Portland General Electric filed its energy deregulation plan in December, including a predicted 10 percent rate reduction, the utility has kept the math hidden from customers ("Rogue of the Week," WW, July 15, 1998). Attorneys for industrial, commercial and residential users have tried to force PGE to substantiate its forecast of lower rates by revealing the numbers. PGE, however, has argued that the calculations are proprietary information.

Last week, after first supporting PGE's request for a protective order, the Public Utility Commission changed its mind and agreed with the customer advocates. Though PGE still doesn't have to show the numbers to competing utilities or the general public, it now has to show the numbers to the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities, which represents huge electricity consumers like Oregon Steel and Boise Cascade; attorneys for the Commercial Energy Alliance, which represents smaller commercial customers; and residential consumer advocates like the Citizens' Utility Board.

PGE spokesman Kregg Arnston says the company will not appeal the
decision. --Josh Feit

She's Gone
Gail Shibley was back in Portland this week in her new job.

What? You didn't know that Shibley, an ex-legislator and City Council candidate, had left?

Neither did we, until she called last week from her new post with the Federal Highway Administration in Washington, D.C.

Shibley, 40, started her job as communication director for the agency last month and was returning to Portland for a day of "listening posts" at which federal officials heard feedback on their humongous six-year $217 billion transportation program known as "TEA21."

Her new job allows her to pursue her "passion for transportation and land-use issues," she says.

The position seems to be up her alley. Before representing Southwest Portland in the state House of Representatives, Shibley spent six years working for U.S. Rep. Jim Weaver of Eugene. Then she worked for the city of Portland as communications director for the Bureau of Traffic Management.

Shibley, who had been out of the public eye since she lost a close City Council election to Jim Francesconi in 1996, says she's selling her Portland home and buying one in the Washington, D.C., area. --Bob Young

 

originally published July 22, 1998