Cliff Freeman in Freefall? Client Gains Don't Seem Big Enough to Cover Lost Revenue

(MoneyWatch)  This is the year that Cliff Freeman & Partners has to pull it out of the fire. When the agency announced a few days ago that it had won the Saudi Arabian Airlines account, the only reasonable reaction was: How has this venerable shop sunk so low?

As Adweek reported, Saudi Air spent less than $1 million in both 2007 and '08. That will not pay the bills. Perhaps the most crucial fact in the story was that Freeman had only been appointed "lead US lead agency." Saudi Air serves only three U.S. airports: New York, Washington, D.C., and Frankfort, Kentucky. The only other "American" airport they have is in Lima, Peru. (All the others -- and there are dozens of them -- are in Asia.) Adweek:

CEO Clayton Ruebensaal said the addition is significant because it gives Freeman a chance to work in a new category and perhaps fashion some high-profile creative.

So the word is out: Freeman is now willing to do its best work virtually for free. This was a shop that once handled Wendy's, Midas, Snapple and Little Caesar's.

It lost Bonefish Grill in the middle of January. Ad Age reported that Quizno's is "talking to other agencies." Its other major client is Baskin Robbins. If Quizno's goes, it is hard to see Freeman surviving on Baskin, Saudi Air, and Quamut (a collection of online guides).

Ominously, Freeman parent MDC Partners did not list the shop on its web site at the time of writing. That's just a mistake ... right?

As MDC is a publicly traded company, and is thus looking for efficiencies wherever it can find them. (It is currently one of the least-productive agency networks out there, squeezing out only 5 cents operating profit for every dollar of operating expenses.) One solution: to call it a day with Freeman and turn his shop into the New York office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, also owned by MDC. (CPB has no NYC office.)

• See BNET's previous coverage of Cliff Freeman and Partners:
• Cliff Freeman Names New CEO; Turmoil as Usual

Image: A BNET question typed into the Freeman web page.