TV presenter, impresario and media guru – all of these can be used to describe the ubiquitous Donny Deutsch, but in the fast-moving digital age, has he got what it takes to make sure his own business keeps up with the tech?
Deutsch has spent over twenty years at the head of one of the country’s largest and most successful ad agencies, and while he’s certainly a well-known and highly regarded figurehead for Deutsch Inc., whether or not he can drag the 40-year-old company into the 21st Century by embracing new technologies to help his clients achieve an attractive ROI, has been a matter of speculation for some time.
Who is Deutsch?
The 55-year-old ad man is no stranger to controversy and hits the headlines more often than the businesses whose marketing he is managing. He certainly courts the media – with plenty of ups and downs in his personal life, a public spat with Donald Trump on Twitter and making some controversial statements regarding Republican nominee Mitt Romney on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He also revealed his $21 million Manhattan townhouse to the nation in Architectural Digest and paid $36,000 to share a urinal with Seth Rogen as part of a charity auction. There is no doubt he knows how to manipulate the press.
Deutsch Inc. was established in New York in 1969 by Donny’s father and the younger Deutsch took over in 1989, opening an LA office in 1995 and selling the business to the Interpublic Group of Companies in 2000 for a cool $265 million.
Donny continues to have a hand in the business as chairman and Deutsch Inc. is one of the few full service agencies remaining in the sector. The company has been awarded ‘Agency of the Year’ numerous times by the trade press and has more Clios, Effies, Cannes Lions, Webbys and even Emmys that you can shake a stick at. They know what they’re doing as the client list attests; VW, Johnson&Johnson, Real California Milk, Go Daddy, Microsoft, PlayStation and Unilever are all on the Deutsch books.
Deutsch Goes Digital
Donny himself is no stranger to social media as the aforementioned Trump incident demonstrates, and you don’t win that many awards by standing still and letting the grass grow under your feet. Regardless of what his peers may think of him, Donny Deutsch is a businessman who is not afraid to take a risk and move with the times.
Take a look at the Deutsch Inc. website and you will see a raft of services that include creative technologies including apps, websites, physical digital devices and platforms from which clients can promote their wares. The company also offers digital services that can help optimize any existing digital offer or, if you’re on lookout for a digital marketing strategy, they can create one for you and create, build and even invent anything that’s needed to make it happen.
As well as traditional advertising, Deutsch can also provide mobile marketing in the form of apps, mobile websites, mobile display ads and MMS/SMS campaigns. Heck, the leadership team at Deutsch LA even held a week-long 101 course on digital marketing to help develop a ‘common literacy’ among its own employees and the company’s ad for the VW Passat, ‘The Force’, became the most watched viral ad of 2011 with over 60 million views.
So ask us again, is Donny Deutsch embracing the digital age…?