B.A.R.C. Communications has hired Lori Leiva to replace a founding partner who has retired.

Leiva becomes executive vice president-management director, a new post at B.A.R.C. She had been president of Arc Worldwide’s San Francisco office, where she led the Visa USA account.

Leiva, who joined San Francisco-based B.A.R.C. at the first of the year, comes on board to oversee account management following the 2004 retirement of Scott Adams. She reports to agency president John Randazzo, who wooed Leiva for nearly 18 months.

B.A.R.C. specializes in retail marketing; its clients include Dole, Clorox Co., J.M. Smuckers Co., Hewlett Packard (for Wal-Mart Stores) and Pay by Touch. The agency was formed in 1998 through the merger of promo shops Randazzo & Blavins and the Promotions Partnership, and has honed it retail chops over the past five years.

“After the dot-com bust, we had to look at how we were doing things and come up with a fresh approach,” Randazzo said. “That soul-searching resulted in a banner year.”

Last year the shop went from 19 staffers to 27, and won new business from current clients HP, Dole Packaged Foods and The Wine Group as well as new clients Paramount Farms and Pay By Touch, Randazzo said.

Leiva said she was drawn to the small shop because it gives her the chance to do a wide variety of work without “corporate bureaucracy.”

“We’re doing cool new work for existing clients—such as an exciting animated TV commercial to run on Oscar Night—and getting in at the ground level with others, such as Pay by Touch,” she said in a statement. “[B.A.R.C. also has] a unique strength in channel-specific marketing, having practically written the book on how to partner with Wal-Mart.”

B.A.R.C. ranked No. 73 in the 2006 PROMO 100 with 2005 net revenues of nearly $2.8 million, up 18% from 2003.

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