• by John Gaffney , January 27, 2003

It used to be the Port Authority building. Down on 15th and Eighth, a cultural world away from midtown Madison Avenue, Deutsch Inc. is doing its part to keep the spirit of the dot-com office space alive. Its space in the building is cavernous — tall ceilings, concrete floors and a literal city-block-long field of cubicles. On the sides, modest office spaces house the agency’s executives. It is so big that many employees, if they need to travel from the Eighth Avenue side of the office to the Ninth Avenue side, ride scooters to their destination.

But it’s not dot-com irreverence that Deutsch is after. The office is symbolic of the agency’s “one roof” approach. According to chief media officer Peter Gardiner, Deutsch wants to afford its clients every conceivable advantage by having everything from direct marketing and Internet services to advertising creative and media planning and buying at the same company. This month Deutsch has two campaigns breaking from Mitsubishi and Revlon. It recently won the Coors Beer account, and other major wins are expected to be announced by year’s end.

“A company has to breathe the same air,” says Gardiner. “I don’t care whether it’s direct marketing or traditional media campaign work. Here it all comes from the same place and the money all goes to the same place. We’re constantly evaluating whether we have all the components that we need, always looking at new things. Do we need sports marketing? Do we need an entertainment division? What’s the best way to build the business? And if we need something new, we’ll build it organically, not through acquisitions.”

Deutsch has taken away the turf wars that are the scourge of other shops by working from one P&L. For example, iDeutsch is not a separate profit center. All the revenue goes to one coffer. The other, more important point of differentiation is in its approach to client pitches and actual campaign execution. According to Gardiner, Deutsch approaches clients with business solutions, which could very well be different from advertising solutions.

“We’re not afraid to tell a client that the area of business they want to venture into is potentially unprofitable,” Gardiner says. “At the end of the day my goal is not the ultimate post-buy analysis, or how cheaply we bought media, although that is important. At the end of the day I want our solutions to help companies increase sales.

That’s the most important metric.” Gardiner expects the ad business to remain “firm” for the balance of the year. The critical period, he says, will come in Q1 of 2003, when many companies have to make a decision about renewing cable and network TV options. However, he expects that the market for most of 2003 will be strong.

“The key goal for 2003 will be tying media and promotions together,” he says. “We’re also looking at ways to better utilize our database management capacity, because that is becoming more and more important to every client. There’s also the matter of blurring lines between promotion, advertising and content. We’ve done a lot of that with our Revlon placement on All My Children.”

Gardiner wants business solutions to win out over advertising solutions. His focus on ROI, he says, is a great differentiator.