SS: David Droga, welcome to HARDtalk. Advertising revenues globally look as though they’re down 7-8%. How is it affecting your business?
DD: It’s a tough time, but it’s actually been a very, very good time for us. I don’t like hearing about what’s really happening out there in the industry and those that are suffering. I have friends that have lost their jobs and know agencies that are shrinking. But we’re in a very fortunate position because we’ve grown year on year, and even as things started to unravel, we’ve grown 80% since then.
SS: How can you deliver 80% growth in this sort of market?
DD: I think clients are obviously more aware now. The one thing that’s happened in our industry is that assumption no longer exists. A lot of agencies and marketing worlds existed on assumption, assumptions that you spend X amount of dollars and you’ll get this many eyeballs and the needle will move this much. Because assumption is no longer on the table, it puts the onus on agencies, on our thinking more, on our strategic insights and our creative, and the effectiveness of that. We’re only three years old as an agency, but we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve gained a reputation for doing work that stands out within the category. The brands that we’re attracting are the sort of feistier brands that are using this time to make a noise.
SS: And is that partly about being completely comfortable using the internet as one of the key platforms for your clients?
DD: The internet is obviously a major canvas and a major opportunity. Although it doesn’t mean it’s always the right solution. I mean, annoying advertising is actually worse online than it is on TV. So, just spending online isn’t necessarily the solution. It’s more than just banner ads and let’s do a video and whack it on YouTube, because there’s a million people doing that every day. It’s more understanding how people are consuming online.
SS: You’ve said in the past, for example, “you really have to believe in what you’re selling.” Do you really have to believe in the product?
DD: Well, it doesn’t mean I have to use the product myself. Not everything in our agency roster is targeting a 40-year-old Australian who lives in New York. I have to feel that there’s something real about it, that it’s a genuine thing. It sounds impossible to believe, but we won’t work on anything for the sake of it.
SS: So tell me what you’ve rejected recently?
DD: We rejected one Alco-pop client. The very first client that wanted to talk to us was a very mainstream pornographic magazine company and I didn’t want to build my company on that. I think there are enough brands out there that are really interesting and play a role in people’s lives. It doesn’t necessarily have to play a role in my life but I have to understand what role it plays in someone else’s life.
SS: You referred to yourself as a 40-yearold Australian man. Are you too old to be in advertising?
DD: [Laughs] No, well, it depends on your attitude doesn’t it? I’m still as restless and feisty and inquisitive and insecure as I was when I was 18.
SS: You made a specific decision to do political campaigning work. You did the very well known Obama campaign ad.
DD: When we launched, everyone asked – what’s your position on this? Are you anti-traditional, are you all-digital? I’m for whatever’s the best way to do it. I’m not taking a stance either way, I’m about stuff that I believe in and stuff that I think is right.
SS: But if John McCain had approached you with the right sort of ideas, would you have agreed to do campaign work for him?
DD: No.
SS: So, you are political?
DD: Well, I think absolutely, I got very engaged. They always say to you, never show your hand politically in America. I just felt that as someone who couldn’t vote, that I wanted to get involved. This was a seminal moment in political history in America, potentially. This may sound incredibly selfish but I said I wanted to be involved in things that matter to me. I made a conscious effort when I started that I wanted us to get involved with, as a minimum, one thing a year where we believed, on a social or environmental level, we were making a difference with our imaginations. So, the first year we launched something called the Tap Project for Unicef, the second year we got involved with the Department of Education, launched a whole programme for them, and the third year we were approached by the Obama people to see if we could get involved with one of the swing states, and I happily said, absolutely, we will.
SS: You attracted a lot of controversy with the Echo video game campaign, a very carefully produced video which was made to look like a home video of a couple of guys breaking into Andrew’s Air Force Base and apparently tagging with graffiti the President’s plane, Air Force One. Of course it was faked, a lot of people misunderstood that and felt cheated.
DD: There’s no question advertisers have to have a certain amount of transparency. But just step back from that, the brief for that one understood the people we were really appealing to. They were in the know on it being a hoax from the start. They were the people we put it out to and they were the ones who knew it wasn’t real.
SS: Weren’t you worried about the criminal element of all this?
DD: Well, the privilege of being naïve and ignorant is that you think, we’ll be fine (we weren’t that naïve, I did sign indemnity letters!). But this was the first thing we launched our company with; I was certainly paranoid when a lawyer in a pre-production meeting said I could be breaking the Patriot Act. I was worried that this would be the most short-lived agency in the world and Droga5 would have to relocate to some base in Cuba.
SS: You’d like to be the most influential agency in the world. That’s a grand ambition.
DD: It’s completely grand and I don’t know if it’s ever possible as there’s no finish line. But it’s a certain reality check for us to understand what we’re doing. Are we building brands? Are we working with interesting parties? Are we working with the brands that are going to be the 21st century brands? Are we recruiting the next generation of thinkers? It’s just a way of framing what we do.
SS: Are you being over confident?
DD: No, I don’t think I’m confident at all. I think I’m cautiously optimistic. There is no guaranteed success in any case. But out of adversity comes change. I think, as an industry that hasn’t really changed much in the last 50 years, this forces us to re-evaluate how we do things.
SS: Paint me a picture of how you think the industry might look in, say, five years, maybe even 10 years from now.
DD: I think companies will be much more diversified, I think there’ll be increased collaboration between industries. I think agencies always told clients they could do everything in-house, regardless of whether they could, they tried to protect everything.
SS: Sounds like what you’re saying is that a lot of advertising will be handled by agencies that look a lot like Droga5?
DD: I think there will be fewer big agencies. We’re more vulnerable than the bigger agencies. But I have to believe that we’re trying to do it the right way. Otherwise I wouldn’t have started it and I wouldn’t get up every morning. We’re not necessarily getting it right every time, but I would say at least we’re moving forward.
SS: David Droga, thank you for being on HARDtalk.