An interview with Donny Deutsch
L.G.: He was thinking seriously of selling his company. D.D.: He was. It was interesting, he was going to sell his company. And somehow I had the stupidity, hubris, naivet to say, Don’t do it. We could do this together and blow it up. And I think I needed to force myself to take on that responsibility. And once I did that, I was maniacal for the next 15 to 20 years. We were with an amazing group of people, built an amazing company. He did the hard part, to start something from nothing.
That’s the hard part, I think. But, you know, I stand on his shoulders every day. He’s my favorite guy in the world. He was 78 in August. Fantastic. L.G.: So he must be extremely proud of you. D.D.: Yeah, he is, and I’m proud of him. L.G.: Looking back, how did you build this tremendous ad agency? D.D.: In no particular order: It was surrounding myself with very good people. I had a very good sense of talent, so it was really assembling a great team.
Then I made some bold moves in terms of trying to promote the agency, to get some very visible campaigns. And always just trying to be a little bit contrarian, you know, because when you’re the new kid on the block, you almost win by default by zigging when everyone’s zagging. And then just doing great work. At some point, it comes down to the work. And I think we really just did fantastic work, and that kind of grew itself. So my pet business is a very simple business.
The assets go up and down the elevator every day, and the people I assembled who are running the place now, you know, the management team, I feel it was the best in the business. And that’s why you win. I always said, in this business, the one with the best toys wins-and we had the best toys. And we had a blue-chip group of clients, and it was fun. L.G.: And what was the first big client that you got? D.D .: Me personally? At the time it was big-it’s a small client now.