News & Notes

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt

By Donny Deutsch

Collins, 272 pages, $24.95

He's cool. He's creative. He exudes sex appeal. A reader learns all this about advertising guru Donny Deutsch from the man himself in his new book, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt. Deutsch, chairman of the eponymously named Deutsch Inc., tells of an inauspicious start to his career. He was fired by Ogilvy & Mather, which had hired him after he said his outside interests were "chicks and basketball." After bumming around, he eventually settled down and took over his father's ad firm, where he came up with some memorable ads for monster.com, Zyrtec and LensCrafters.

Now the star of his own CNBC talk show, Deutsch loves talking about, and selling, himself. He takes the reader on a romp through his life, telling us things many probably would rather not know, in language we'd rather not hear. Do we really need to know what he'd like to do with his "hot" women clients? Or that "I don't think there's been a day in my business career when there hasn't been some woman at work that I fantasized about." Charming. If you can get through such cringe-inducing passages about Deutsch's bad self, however, a patient reader can learn a few things about building a successful advertising firm.

ON THE MOVE

Executive comings and goings in the past week:

- Mark Shapiro, former ESPN executive, as chief executive of Six Flags.

- Mario Monti, former European competition commissioner, as international adviser to Goldman Sachs.

- Robert P. May, interim chief executive of HealthSouth, as chief executive of Calpine.

- Bob Dylan, folk singer, as host of a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio.

- Jeffrey Zucker, president of NBC Universal Television Group, as chief executive.

- Kenneth M. Duberstein, head of the Washington lobbying firm that bears his name, as lead director of Boeing.

- Robert Peck, outgoing president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, as senior vice president at Staubach, a real estate services company.

Out

- Thomas M. Mobley Jr., as general manager of the Washington Convention Center, to take a senior position at facilities manager Global Spectrum.

- Marsha Evans, as president of the American Red Cross.

- Douglas Carmichael, as chief auditor of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

- Anthony Santomero, as president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank.

ON THE BRAIN

The term: wage clarity

- In securities regulation, a euphemism for the degree of public disclosure of executive compensation.

- Ideally, a comprehensive depiction of all forms of compensation, expressed in one place in clear, understandable terms and metrics.

- In practice, a partial, misleading and confusing picture given to shareholders of the range of pay and benefits received by top corporate executives.

- A top priority of the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as distinguished from capping executive pay.

- A turn of phrase coined recently by SEC chairman Christopher Cox in a speech to the Economic Club of New York.