Chiat Day Company

Jay Chiat, 55, chairman and chief executive. He started the agency in 1968 with Guy Day, who has retired. Lee Clow, 44, president and executive creative director. Has been at Chiat/Day since 1973. Created the "I Love L.A." campaign for Nike and the "California Cooler" campaign. Fred Goldberg, 46, executive vice president and chief operating officer. Worked for Young & Rubicam in New York and Los Angeles for 17 years before joining the agency in 1981.

In a commercial world where frogs croak for a brewery and a bunny drums up business for a battery company, it's probably no surprise that a Chihuahua would end up barking about tacos for Taco Bell Corp. But not even advertising industry executives who created the quirky ad campaign guessed how popular the "Yo quiero Taco Bell" (I want Taco Bell) ads would become.

TBWA Chiat/Day said it is yanking an ad for Absolut vodka that shows a bottle wrapped in a plaster cast above the legend "Absolut Vail." The ad, which has angered the operator of the Colorado resort, first appeared in magazines this week--only days after Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono died in widely publicized skiing accidents elsewhere. "This advertisement was created . . . well in advance of the recent skiing tragedies," the ad agency said in a statement.

Chiat/Day, the influential advertising agency that created the drum-beating Energizer bunny and put Los Angeles on the map in the ad world, on Tuesday marched into the arms of international powerhouse Omnicom Group. The deal, combining the operations of Venice-based Chiat/Day with Omnicom unit TBWA, brings together two mid-size agencies with similar global ambitions but vastly different styles. New York-based TBWA has a European flair, whereas Chiat/Day is strictly Southern California.

Levi Strauss & Co. on Monday ended a 67-year relationship with Foote, Cone & Belding by awarding advertising for its flagship Levi brand to Venice-based TBWA Chiat/Day. The transfer of the $80-million account, which represents another high-profile client for Chiat/Day, underscores the severity of a market share slide that is forcing Levi to close 11 plants and eliminate more than 6,000 jobs.

The corporate utopia of the future stands on a little-traveled road in Playa del Rey, in a dull-gray converted warehouse amid a sea of parked cars. And this time the celebrated freedom of the Information Age is tinged with a calculated sense of mission.

The commercial marriage between Rice-A-Roni and the City of San Francisco is over. After nearly three decades of identifying its rice side dish with San Francisco, Golden Grain Macaroni Co. has dropped cable cars and city vistas from its television advertising and dumped the "The San Francisco Treat" line from its familiar jingle. The slogan will remain on the back of a redesigned package. Golden Grain executives insist that they have nothing against San Francisco.

The essence of Collagen Corp. is flesh and bone. From a sticky glop that is among the most common materials in animal and human tissue, the Palo Alto company has concocted a unique product. It makes a goo of natural proteins called collagens that it extracts from cowhide and modifies for human use. It then sells the stuff to doctors, who inject it under patients' skin to smooth wrinkles and scars or to rebuild tissue during plastic surgery.