RPA gets Acura at last

LOS ANGELES-Keeping their feet on the ground this time, Rubin Postaer and Associates staffers last Tuesday cracked open beers instead of pouring the traditional champagne upon learning they had won the consolidated $550 million account of American Honda Motor Co., including the luxury Acura brand. The response contrasted sharply with the scene three years ago, when executives at the Santa Monica, Calif., agency celebrated what they thought was their win of the $125 million Acura business by popping the corks-only to learn they had in fact lost the race to dark horse Suissa Miller.

The humiliating defeat taught RPA an important lesson: not to take its 20-year-plus relationship with the Japanese automaker for granted. In the years since then, Gerry Rubin, Larry Postaer and their "associates" have focused on servicing the flagship business and other existing clients, targeting only select new business.

"We are very much stylistically patterned after Honda,"...