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 21^st 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…?