Advertising is different today and more complicated than in the “Mad Men” era. “We try to do work that can be spread around the Internet, that creates movements as opposed to being disposable and disappearing the minute the media budget runs out,” says David Droga, Creative Chairman and founder of ad agency Droga5. Droga seeks to redefine advertising, making it viral and into a union of marketing and entertainment instead of a “disruption model of uninvited guests,” as he puts it, referring to the old model that relied primarily on TV commercials. This creative genius is rewriting the book and influencing the way other agencies are approaching advertising.
An example of the new paradigm is an online video that Droga5 created for clothing retailer Ecko Unltd. The Blair Witch–style story of a group infiltrating an Air Force base to cover Air Force One with graffiti became a viral–marketing sensation.
David Droga
For the release of Jay-Z’s biography “Decoded” last year, Droga5 broke new ground in outdoor advertising, media strategy, and open source publishing by releasing each of the memoir’s pages into the world before the book hit stores. The agency put every page of the book into a real world location that in pertained to the content on that page. So, while some pages were splashed on billboards, others turned up in less expected locations – like the bottom of the pool at Miami’s Delano Hotel, and on pool tables. The campaign also included a Bing Maps-enabled scavenger hunt, allowing the audience to uncover clues as to the location of each page.
In 2008 Droga5 enlisted comedian Sarah Silverman and created a video to encourage Jewish grandchildren to engage in a “Great Schlep” (trekking, in Yiddish) and visit their grandparents in Florida to convince them to vote for Barack Obama. If Obama isn’t elected, said Silverman, she’ll blame the Jews. The video went viral overnight and Obama won Florida by 51%.
Droga5 stands out as consistently the best and most innovative agency today in an advertising industry that seems to have a bruised self-esteem. At the ripe old age of 43, David Droga is already regarded as the most outstanding creative director in Advertising, and the most awarded person in the history of the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
David started Droga5 in 2006 with no accounts and a staff of 7 (The youngest of five boys, his mother stitched name labels in the boy’s cloths. Droga says that his mother found it quite amusing that he named his agency after her label). Today, the agency has about 200 staffers in 3 offices: the original one in New York, and then Sydney, and Auckland, New Zealand. Its client roster is impressive: Kraft Foods, Prudential, Microsoft, Puma, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Activision, and Hennessey.
Droga5, the agency, is not so easy to label. It is more an Interactive than a traditional agency, since two-thirds of its work is digital advertising. Unlike most agencies, Droga5 believes in social responsibility and it commits itself regularly to work on charitable projects. Its campaigns include the UNICEF “Tap Project,” which asked restaurant-goers across New York and beyond to donate a dollar for the tap water they received for free, and the “Million” project for the New York City Department of Education, which awarded mobile phones and minutes to schoolchildren based on classroom performance.
Another way by which it innovates is to expand beyond advertising and become a technology incubator. It has just established a product development studio that originates software applications, known as “De-De”, which stands for Design & Develop. Its purpose is to identify problems in big markets, test solutions, and scale the best into sustainable businesses.
When I asked Droga what is his ambition, he replied that his hopes “… [for] Droga5 to influence and inspire other agencies.” And, he added, to shape the culture, to continue with socially responsible work, and to continually innovate. It is these high aspirations and consistency in setting a bar high, that makes Droga5 the arguably the best U.S. ad agency.
