A gency Proliferation In 1971, the Rx advertising scene was disrupted by the untimely death of L.W Frohlich and the breakup of his agency, which had been one of the largest in the U.S. and, when the overseas offices were included, the biggest in the world. The American agency closed its doors in 1972 but the branches in Europe and Japan continued. Two new agencies emerged from the Frohlich partition: Medicus Communications formed by V Edward Dent, William G. Castagnoli and Lawrence Lesser as a joint venture with B&B, and Lavey/ Wolff/Swift named for its founders Kenneth Lavey, Bruce Wolff and John Swift. Both agencies would become significant players in medical advertising. Although Medicus and LAV/S came about from the demise of one of the founder agencies, proliferation of medical agencies did not depend on the failure of organizations that had established the field in the 1950's. The robust growth of pharmaceutical advertising created opportunities for new agencies and the older shops became the training ground for talented individuals who "went out on their own." Sudler & Hennessey proved to he a particularly fertile field in nurturing "Medicine Avenue" entrepreneurs. It was the source of Dorland, Sweeney, Jones (Harry Sweeney and Dick Jones) 1971, Dugan/Farley (John Farley, Clay Warrington and Martin Ross) 1974, Ferguson Communications (Thomas Ferguson) 1974, Dorritie, Lyons, Nickel (John Dorritie, Michael Lyons, and Albert Nickel) 1979, and Lally McFarland Pantello (John Lally, Jim McFarland and Ron Pantello) 1980. Rolf W. Rosenthal left McAdams in 1972 to found his agency (RWR) and, to add to the growing number of medical agencies, James Barnum, after a dispute with JWT management, set up Barnum Communications in 1977. Barnum's legal clash with JWT closed the Deltakos office in San Francisco. Principals from that agency—Robert Buechert, Reginald Bowes, Lester Barnett, Jerry Kennedy, Thomas Spooner and John Roche—came together to found Vicom (1977) in San Francisco becoming, with Baxter, Gurian & Mazzei (1968) in Southern California, West Coast outposts of pharmaceutical advertising. Some of the Vicom founders had previously worked for the branch office of Klemtner that had been opened in 1965 to serve such Bay Area clients as Syntex and Barnes Hind. Other significant foundings in this period were Gross, Townsend, Frank, Hoffman (1978), Salthouse, Torre, Ferrante (1979), Bologna (1980), and Sutton
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