On the morning of September 11, Marchon Eyewear moved quickly to cancel TV spots for its newly launched Flexon ad campaign.

The company also began pulling print ads from consumer and trade magazines that had not yet gone to press. The print ad pictured a structure similar to New York City"s Empire State building bending out of the path of a low-flying jet.

The ad slogan read, "If only all metal were Flexon." (The ad appeared on the inside cover of the August issue of Review of Optometry.) The company also immediately asked its sales representatives to help customers pull down any point of purchase materials.

"We tried to work as swiftly as we could," says Marchon CEO Al Berg. "We can only say that we deeply, deeply regret this very tragic coincidence. And we"d like to thank our customers who expressed their support to us during the process."

The television campaign had been planned to begin only three weeks before the attack on the World Trade Center.