In this downward arcing economy, businesses are cutting back on their advertising dollars, if not significantly altering their marketing efforts. That is the case in the San Fernando Valley at least, according to local public relations specialists who say some companies are rethinking how they market themselves in a period where sales dollars are becoming harder to come by. Larry Cohen, president of Woodland Hills-based Glyphix, an advertising and web design firm, says some of his clients are responding to the changing economic market. While many local firms refused to speak on the subject, Cohen says it’s a natural reaction to the market. Downturns in the economy are nothing new to Martin Cooper. As president of the Woodland Hills-based public relations firm, Cooper Communications, Inc., he says he’s seen it all before. But after about a third of his prospective clients in the last six months balked at the traditional six-month contract, Cooper is concerned. “Clients are very timorous. They are skeptical that we do a six-month contract and it’s a question that they don’t know where they’re going to be in six months,” said Cooper, who founded the company nearly 20 years ago. Cooper has so far been able to turn away companies seeking short-term contracts and he says he plans to stick with that practice. “To only agree to a shorter-term relationship, they’re hurting themselves for the long term,” said Cooper, who estimates he may have turned down $100,000 in new business. Cooper said most successful public relations campaigns take at least six months to take hold. Thus, anything less is destined for failure, he said. Swimming against the tide One client who did agree to a year-long contract after first requesting a three-month pact is the accounting firm, Lever, Lippe, Hellie & Russell, LLP in Woodland Hills. Greg Lippe, a managing partner in the firm, said his company needed to improve its revenue since many of its clients had been swallowed up in mergers and acquisitions. “We brought (Cooper) on because of the fact that we too were experiencing a slowdown and we wanted to add more business to our firm than we had previously,” he said. The firm was venturing for the first time into the world of public relations and its leadership was unsure whether it needed a long-term contract headed into an economic downturn. Like Cooper, Lippe and his other partners agreed that a long-range public relations plan would be needed to improve revenue. Such thinking is fueled by a turbulent national economic picture. A U.S. Department of Commerce report earlier this month showed how much the economy had slowed since the second quarter of last year when it was chugging along at a brisk 5.6 percent pace. By the fourth quarter of 2000, the growth had slowed to just 1.1 percent lowest since 0.8 percent in the second quarter of 1995. Lippe said his company’s public relations goals rely on a campaign targeting local small and midsize businesses. Though he won’t say how much the company will spend on the campaign, he’s committed to the firm’s marketing strategy. S. Marc Tapper, president of Woodland Hills-based T/G Marketing, Inc., said many startup firms are especially hesitant about long-term commitments. “New businesses are reluctant to sign any agreements for six months or more,” he said. “They want results right away and, in public relations, it doesn’t work that way.” Building a brand name, then promoting it is a long-term proposal that requires a major commitment from potential clients, Cooper says. “We had a client that started running television commercials and they expected to have the phones ringing the next day,” he said. According to a March 6 report by the Newspaper Association of America, ad revenue in 2000 increased by 5.1 percent over 1999, for a total of $48.7 billion nationwide. But that growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 4.1 percent, or $13.9 billion. Similarly disheartening figures are expected for the first quarter of 2001. Moreover, a study released last week by Merrill Lynch forecasts that overall advertising spending in the U.S. will grow by just 2.5 percent this year less than its previous estimate of 4 to 4.5 percent.