Marquardt & Roche/Meditz & Hackett
Business Marketing Association
"Best of Division" Advertising Awards

Stamford, Connecticut, May 31, 2000 — The Business Marketing Association just announced the winners of its 1999 Pro-Comm creative competition. With three Best of Division titles, Marquardt & Roche/Meditz & Hackett won more top awards in the advertising categories of this year's contest than any agency in the country.

M&:Roche/M&H has regularly been a leading winner of the nation's top business-to-business creative competition. Over the past five years, they won more Best of Division titles than any agency in the country with multiple winners in direct mail, radio and five separate print advertising categories. Along the way, they also won 17 Awards of Excellence.

This year the agency's :60 radio spot for Crystal Rock Water Company and its two spread ads for Duracell's Procell Professional Batteries won their respective division titles competing with hundreds of entries from around the world.

The humorous radio commercial for Crystal Rock, titled "Mice at Work," portrayed a mad scientist proving that drinking water at work is good for you through his experimentation with "teensy, tiny little mice."

Duracell's big wins came from its two half-page spread ads promoting Procell Professional Batteries to hospital purchasing groups and the entertainment industry. One of the ads shows a Procell AA sized battery inside a hypodermic needle with the headline, "Prescription Strength." The other presents a crazed, electric blue-haired rock star over the headline, "You want to be the one to tell him the battery in his microphone died?"

Rick Kean, executive director of the Chicago-based Business Marketing Association, remarked, "Over the last five years no agency won as many Best of Division titles as M&R/M&H did. They are clearly one of the premier business-to-business advertising agencies in the country."

The Business Marketing Association promotes better business marketing communications practices throughout the world. It can be reached at www.marketing.org.

Marquardt & Roche/Meditz & Hackett is a full-service marketing communications agency located in Stamford, Connecticut, with billings of $38 million. It can be reached at www.mrmh.com.