Deutsch Plans Chicago Office

New York-based Deutsch is preparing to open a Chicago office to service its regional Mitsubishi dealers and Baskin-Robbins accounts, the agency confirmed last week.
The shop expects to have a full-service operation running here within a year, said Donny Deutsch, chief executive officer of the agency.
“We are opening a Chicago office with our initial benchmark client being the entire Midwest region of Mitsubishi,” Deutsch said.
Deutsch said he expects the service office to be open by the end of April and possibly within a month. The agency has been shopping for about 30,000 square feet of office space, sources said. Deutsch already has an account supervisor in town, Jennifer Shimp.
The Chicago office will be the shop’s third. A Santa Monica, Calif., outpost was opened in August 1995 and initially served existing clients Ikea West and Mattel. That shop quickly became a local player, winning assignments from Walt Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures and from the Wolfgang Puck Food Co. before the year was out.
“We hope to match the success we’ve had in L.A.,” Deutsch said of his plans for Chicago.
Deutsch said he will use the same formula in Chicago that was employed in Los Angeles. For the first year or so, the office will be staffed by middle managers from New York, along with a few new people hired locally. After the first year, Deutsch said, a full senior management team should be in place.
As in Los Angeles, the Chicago office will be run by a general manager, expected to be an executive vice president, a creative director and a head of planning.
Deutsch is the second New York-headquartered agency to land in Chicago in the the last eight months. Ammirati Puris Lintas started an office here late last summer to service Ameritech, the Midwest’s regional telephone company. APL has also announced its intention to seek additional business for its Chicago office.