shots 159: D is for Droga

Unlike many daydreamers, David Droga is also blessed with drive, derring-do and a heroic work ethic; qualities that saw him swiftly move from 18-year-old mail boy at Grey to partner and ECD at Omon, Sydney, at just 22. By 33 he had the unquittable role of Publicis worldwide CCO. He quit, of course, to set up Droga5 in New York. A brave move that paid off due to the agency’s bold work, from the apparent defacing of Air Force One for Ecko, to comic Sarah Silverman waving a fake penis around for the Equal Payback Project. He and his agency have won every accolade going, but as the Aussie daredevil tells Carol Cooper, he’s still happier chasing chooks with his kids than chasing awards

There’s no question that there’s an Australian-ness to my sense of humour and by default Droga5, whether it’s intentional or not. Aussie humour cuts to the chase – it’s direct and that goes into our work too, whether it be humorous or thoughtful. Too many people spend time circling the issue. I like stuff that doesn’t faff around. People appreciate you being straightforward, saying what you’re about.

I was really lucky to grow up playing in a national park [Kosciuszko, in New South Wales]. It allowed my imagination to run free. It was self-preservation – you had to create your own reality, your own fun, your own games. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m Bear Grylls but I was very comfortable in my own skin, in my own head. Also, because I was the fifth of seven children [his mother would sew labels in his school clothes that read Droga5], I had to get my opinion out there or I might just be invisible. It made me want to prove myself, be a scrapper.

At school I used to get into trouble for day-dreaming. I spent more time daydreaming than actually studying, but I knew I could sit down and write an essay about anything. I may not have known anything about the subject but I could tell a great story. I used to convince myself that I was going to write a novel or a screenplay, but I didn’t have the time, the patience, or the confidence to do that. I’ve written short stories but they’re not for publication, although my wife has read them. It’s good to get something out of your head, to see if it’s what you think it is, or whether it’s a piece of shit. You’ve got to clean all the pipes out.

It was fortunate that I managed to get into a career that allowed me to daydream. Our job is like those drawings where you join the dots by numbers. We all have the same dots, we just try and join them in a different sequence. Instead of 1, 2, 3 maybe you go 1, 4, 2, 4, 3 to try and create something original. That’s what daydreaming is – you’re not following anyone else’s footsteps, anyone else’s thought process.

On holiday I buy those cryptic puzzle books, which I’ve loved since I was a kid. I like trying to solve problems in original ways. A lot of creative is like that – you try and work out how to get to the end point and the end emotion, and there’s a million ways to come at that.

Not coming up with an idea is part of coming up with an idea. It’s weird but I’m not intimidated by pressure and problem-solving and working within the constraints of a brief and deadlines. I’ve always performed better when I knew the pressure was on, rather than having total freedom. I was once asked to paint a picture for an advertising auction, something that would be auctioned off, but knowing I could do anything was so debilitating. If I’d been given a canvas that had two lines on it and a triangle and told to do something with that, I would have been more excited. But being given a blank canvas…

I admire artists. From a standing start, to do something original and incredible, I applaud that. I love architecture. I love the thought that someone can be confined by budgets and engineering but still create something spectacular and amazing. And practical. It would be amazing to be a great architect, to build something that stands the test of time. But I wouldn’t have the discipline to be an architect.

I’ve never thought of becoming a politician. What is it that they say? Politics is showbusiness for ugly people. There’s too much dodginess in politics. Also I think I’d always get in trouble because I say the wrong things.

I didn’t want to go to university because the idea of parking myself there for three or four years just felt like treading water. I regret not having that social period in my life, but once I decided what I wanted to do I thought, “I’m just going to get into an agency and work my way up – I want to start now.” My four older brothers all went to university and got scholarships to Cambridge etc, so it was a foregone conclusion that I would do that too. But I didn’t want to wait. I’ve always been in a rush. Someone told me, in advertising, if you want to be a writer you write things and within a few months there will be different opportunities and that appealed to my short attention span. I kept thinking, “Wow, I can do that.” Maybe it’s a flaw, but I’m pretty tenacious. When I want to do something then I do it, all guns blazing.

As soon as I got into Grey in Sydney I loved the energy of it. It was run by a young hotshot creative called Simon Reynolds and he made me realise that you don’t have to be old to be good. It was just his attitude; he really had an impact there.

At Grey I delivered the mail and when I put mail on people’s desks I would look at their work. Maybe this is where my ego and naivety kicked in, but I thought, “I can do that,” and that gave me the incentive to move up faster. People there knew I wanted to write, but they told me I’d have to work my way through the agency, so I signed up to study at the Australian Writers & Art Directors School. I think I was the youngest there and I thought, “If I’m going to do this, and sacrifice being an 18-year-old guy who goes out and parties, I’m going to have to win this,” so I worked my arse off, won top student and got a job straightaway as a copywriter. I’ve been appreciative and working hard ever since.

Working at Saatchi Singapore was fantastic. Two years there, working at such a fast pace in such a tiny, competitive market, was like five years anywhere else, and that really embedded in me the idea of a work ethic. I felt that Saatchi London was dismissive of us as an agency, so I thought the best thing was to do better work than them. The irony is that they then offered me the job of running Saatchi London. That was a great learning curve because it taught me about the balance between creativity and business and craft. In the three years I was there I really gained in confidence and appreciation of scale, and then when Publicis bought Saatchi, they offered me the global gig [of worldwide chief creative officer] and I chose to live in New York.

It wasn’t lost on me that Publicis brought me in as the young gun to try and make them shiny again, which was a fantastic opportunity. But then I got to that thing… I was worldwide CCO of a big network, I was 33 – I didn’t want a job where I was wheeled in as this wonder kid. When you have a big position, you go to meetings and you talk about what you stand for and your principles, but you’re as far away from those as you can get when you’re in a position where you can’t implement stuff. And I thought I don’t want to be fixing something, I want to be building something.

Agencies try to make it impossible for you to quit, because they pay you enough and they incentivise you enough, and they’re smart, it’s smart business strategy. But I liked the idea of being the guy who quit the job no one else would quit. So I thought I’d go back to the rawest and purest thing – which is me, a plan, an ambition and good intentions and see where we go. I’ve been fortunate to collect a lot of good people on the way, and I try to stay true to the reason I set up the agency.

My ambition for Droga5 to be the most influential creative agency is one of those grand plans where there’s no real finish line. It’s not really measured by accolades or stuff like that, it’s more a focus on what we’re doing today and what we’re going to do tomorrow. The only thing the success we’ve had to date has allowed us is to have a little wind at our backs, a bit more self-belief that we can do it. Influence isn’t measured by the number of employees, or offices or awards. I just want to feel that our work has a positive impact. If we can contribute to our industry and make people believe that things can be better, then that’s a good thing.

Every campaign is just one dimension of a grander ambition, and it’s better that it’s something that’s always just out of reach, to keep running forward. Some days we’re sprinting forward, some days we’re falling forward, but we’re always moving forward, and I like that. I’m not a coaster. I’m not scared of failure – I’m scared of repetition.

In advertising sometimes you do have to compromise, you just have to try to do it as little as possible – I think whoever compromises the least wins. I like to think I’m a principled person, but I’m also an optimist, so there’ve been times when I have convinced myself something is better, or going to turn out better, than I thought. I have good intentions in everything I do.

At Droga5 we try to be authentic to each client. I love the fact that we don’t have an agency style, so what we do for Prudential is very different from what we do for Newcastle Brown. We have always had different styles – I can make you laugh until milk comes out of your nose, or I can make you cry and think about your family. I want us to be super smart and really thoughtful about why something is right for this client, why it’s authentic.

Each morning before I go to work I get the kids off to school. It’s unbelievable. Even the busiest day in the office, no matter what happens, it’s going to be calmer, more manageable. My wife is a fantastic mother and she’s a creative force as well, which is why my kids are all over the place!

The majority of my day is spent interacting with the work at some level. Sometimes my contribution is heavy-handed, and sometimes the best contribution I can make is to get out of the way – but every decision I make is about how to help the work. We are our biggest critics, and we look at what we can and should do better. We’re not growing the agency for the sake of it. Our biggest accounts are our most progressive accounts – you’ve got to be selective about who you work with, and how and what criteria you come together in. Fortunately, we’re not for every client – we’re aware of that, and we turn down more business than we take on. As soon as you take on one big account for the numbers that it brings, not what you can do together, that’s when you lose your soul.

Obama mentioning our Honey Maid campaign This Is Wholesome [on how it promoted more diverse perceptions of families] was definitely a high point for us. I think it probably drills down to the origins of most of our work – the best things are grounded in really smart roots and observations, and aren’t just trend-based or technique-based. I’m not afraid of the obvious – because obvious is a really core starting point, and then you can be exceptionally creative with that.

We can’t just bombard people with marketing messages anymore, we’ve got to put something out there that touches them in some way, and people can make a connection with it. Advertising at its best is extraordinary. The problem is that 90 per cent of advertising isn’t at its best.

People appreciate honesty. They don’t like things that are manufactured or curated, pretending to be authentic. That was the whole thing with the I Will What I Want campaign [for Under Armour, with the model Gisele Bundchen that won the 2015 Cyber Grand Prix at Cannes]. If you’re going to make a point about female athletes, that they’re in charge of what they do, you have to show that it’s not all positive and rosy.

A brand now has to be in sync with what it’s saying. A brand can’t just claim it’s something if all its behaviour behind the scenes isn’t consistent with that. So you’ve got to be a lot more transparent about what you put out there. And we’re all learning, no one has a formula for it, but good intentions get you half way there. If you’ve got good intentions then you’ll find a way.

The deal with the talent agency WME [in 2013 WME bought a 49 per cent stake in Droga5] hasn’t transformed us in the sense that we are still very independent, it hasn’t changed the fundamental core of our business. WME has access and influences that no one else in the industry has, so it’s more about being aware of what’s coming up in the pop culture pipeline – it doesn’t suddenly get us celebrities cheaper. I’m not anti-celebrities if there’s a good reason to use them beyond just using their identity, or if you can be a little bit subversive with them. In our industry, just putting a celebrity in an ad usually means you don’t have an idea. There has to be a reason to have them in there, beyond them just being famous.

What’s really interesting is that a lot of celebrities now see adverts as showing a different dimension to them, like with Anna Kendrick and Newcastle Brown. It was authentic to her character: she’s cheeky, irreverent and she put herself out there – it was fantastic. But if she had just been wheeled in and propped up to hold up a product then that’s just dime a dozen stuff, and you also pay for that, it costs you a fortune.

I think I’m both extrovert and introvert. If I’m in an environment where I’m comfortable around the people, I think I’m an extrovert, but I don’t have to be doing tap dancing jazz hands, I don’t have to be the centre of attention. I like being a leader of an agency, I definitely like that, but not just for the sake of being a leader. I like that with it comes responsibility and I like the thought that it gives you the opportunity to do stuff.

My mother [a Danish artist, poet and environmentalist] is not seduced by her children’s success – she wants us to be happy, contributing people. She’s not caught up in the shininess of success. She just wants to know if I’m happy, and being true to myself. She still talks about The Tap Project for Unicef or the stuff we do for equality – that’s what she wants to talk about, not awards.

I go back to Australia once a year at Christmas and it’s fantastic. I’ve spent a couple of years building a farm in upstate New York, so this year I’ve convinced my family to visit for Christmas – so I’ve got 26 people coming…

My time is divided between the office and my family. I’m not a social animal that has to go out three nights a week or go to galas and dos. I like skiing and the outdoors if it involves my kids. At the farm we have a trout stream, so we do a bit of fishing, trail bikes, chasing chickens…

I definitely feel like a foreigner in America, but I feel very at home in New York, I love it. I love the energy, the people, the attitude, the ambition, the quirkiness. And I’ve got deep roots here – the company, my wife’s a New Yorker, we have four kids who are 49 per cent American. I still get excited by the city. I don’t walk the streets like a tourist, but it’s not lost on me. I’ve worked around the world, and loved my time in Asia, but I always missed Australia. Now, when I go back to Australia, I miss New York.

The one thing that makes me angry is dishonesty. It drives me crazy. People make mistakes, that’s life, but people who are deliberately dishonest just infuriate me.

If I were US president for a day I’d try to ban guns. There are just too many incidents involving guns, it’s unbelievable. Then I would have a great party on the White House lawn.

If I could change careers with anybody, it would be David Attenborough. He’s brought the world to people and he’s done it so charismatically and honestly… has there been a better storyteller over the last 50 or 60 years? Isn’t that the best possible thing? To make people look at the world in a different, better way? To be able to see things for the first time that no one has seen, and bring it to everybody – that’s about as good as it gets, mate.