He is a quintessential modern American celebrity: an audaciously ambitious marketing whiz with an insatiable need for attention: not an artiste but a collaborator, a tapper of trends and other people's talents.

At BankAmerica, the state's leading bank, Richard Rosenberg, a marketing whiz, is replacing A.W. Clausen.

But that someone wasn't a marketing whiz at Sears or an engineer at Fisher-Price.

"No one was offering friendship," says the marketing whiz.

In fact, an outsider is his probable successor - Robert J. Keegan, a marketing whiz recruited from Eastman Kodak in September to be Goodyear's president.

He tapped Ruth Strong, a retired New York toy sales and marketing whiz, and Rob Meyer, manager of Island Wonders.

If he sounded as if he had just walked out of a conference room at Procter & Gamble, Mr. Whiston, a 41-year-old marketing whiz, was unapologetic.

The first, "Mister Squishy," conjures a marketing whiz whose mind is so packed with arcane abbreviations and case studies that his personality is crowded out.

While Eve was getting a temporary breast enhancement, Peabody was winding down with a bowl of frozen non-dairy dessert some marketing whiz had named Iced Delight.

He got together with Foreman, who liked it - and the deal - so much that they went to Salton's marketing whiz Leon Dreimann, who pounced.