Back in the 2010s, Droga5 was flying high.
The agency had risen to icon status with groundbreaking work for clients like Under Armour, The New York Times, Puma, and Microsoft, scooping countless awards at all the major ad festivals. Founder David Droga transcended his Australian roots to become one of the most globally venerated creatives of the decade–possibly the 21st century.
In 2019, that prestige paid off with a blockbuster $475 million acquisition by consulting giant Accenture, putting Droga5 at the center of a new marketing offering from one of the most deep-pocketed companies in the U.S. By 2020, ADWEEK named Droga5 its first Agency of the Decade.
However, it has taken time for Droga5 to find its footing under its new owner. A 7% layoff took place shortly after the deal was announced in 2020. In 2021, Droga became CEO of Accenture Song. Long-tenured leadership began to depart, from global chief strategy officer Jonny Bauer to global CEO Sarah Thompson to Americas CEO Susie Nam.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 hit the New York-centric agency hard. In late 2024, ADWEEK reported that Droga5 NY had cut 4% of its staff and lost business with the New York Times.
But Droga5 has entered 2025 with a fresh resolve to embrace its positioning within Accenture under global CEO Mark Green. So far, it has refilled its leadership bench and brought on 17 new clients, including Xbox, Tourism Australia, HP, Bosch, and more. Droga5 declined to share revenue figures but said it grew double digits in 2024, due to both organic and inorganic activity.
“These are the things that give lifeblood to an agency,” Green said.
ADWEEK sat down with Droga5’s leadership to unpack how the storied agency is embracing its future as it aims to move on from the burden of its past success.
Green’s new garden
Hailing from Australia, Green founded The Monkeys in 2006 and sold it to Accenture in 2017 for $63 million. In 2019, he was promoted to president of Accenture Song in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), before moving to New York City for his current role in October.
At that time, Accenture Song merged Droga5 with The Monkeys in Australia and New Zealand and SOKO in Brazil, adding 450 people and a new continent to its global network, expanding headcount to over 1,000. Droga5 has offices in New York, Tokyo, São Paolo, Dublin, London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland.
“Truly, this is the first time Droga5 has been global,” Green told ADWEEK.
The agency began filling gaps on its leadership bench before Green’s arrival. Chioma Aduba was named president of the flagship New York office in August 2023. In March 2024, former Activision Blizzard and BBH exec Pelle Sjoenell came on as worldwide chief creative officer, joining CCO Scott Bell, one of the remaining veterans from Droga5’s early days.
Green has rounded out the team with global chief strategy officer Emma Montgomery, who joined in October from her post as CEO of DDB Chicago.
This group is aligned around “restoring Droga5’s glory” as “the most influential creative agency in the world,” but “doing it in a way that’s not looking back, but looking forward,” Green said.
Beyond an ‘ad agency’
The key to Droga5’s next act is embracing its ownership under Accenture, a cultural shift that has taken time to shake out. The ambition is to use creativity as an entry point to steward communications from the big idea down to every brand expression on the customer journey.
The opportunity here is “immense” compared to the “jump balls happening in advertising for projects that you spend more money on trying to win than you will earn back,” Green said.
It’s a vision holding companies have been chasing for some time—but with the backing of Accenture, former Droga5 employees told ADWEEK the agency is in pole position to pull it off.
“The holding companies are trying to reinvent what was. They aren’t interested in doing anything new; they’re capitalizing on the money they can make today,” Montgomery said. “That’s not the ambition here.”
Under Accenture, Droga5 can theoretically extend its capabilities without the silos and infighting present at many holding company cross-agency solutions, Aduba added.
“When one client has a problem, and it requires something outside of what your agency offers, you’re trying to develop it, build it, hire it,” she said. “Now, there’s the depth and scale of being able to tackle that with a level of expertise.”
Green pointed to clients in ANZ, such as NRMA Insurance and Qantas Airlines, as examples of the kind of relationships he hopes to export globally. But bringing this vision of being a “marketing partner” to clients to fruition across all markets has been a slow and steady endeavor.
“There are days where it feels like it’s literally the golden solution, and there are moments in the same day where you go, ‘this is really hard to orchestrate and get right,’” he said.
Creative ambition
Keeping Droga5’s creative prowess front and center has been key as the agency adapts to its home inside Accenture. While Droga5 has a legacy as a creative leader, former employees who spoke with ADWEEK said that the magic of its independent days suffered in the period after the acquisition.
Bell claimed that while Accenture’s corporate influence isn’t felt by Droga5’s teams today, he admitted the agency went through a “moment of adjustment” post-acquisition.
But while Droga’s ascension into Accenture’s corporate sphere was initially challenging, Sjoenell now views it as proof that “creativity can go places where it has never gone.”
As Droga5 looks to leverage Accenture’s capabilities, its future creatively is about “recommitting to our birthright and doing it for now, with the tools we have now, in the system we have now, and [using] all the amazing resources we have now,” Sjoenell added.
He pointed to Droga5 winning its first Emmy this year for “Battle of the Baddest: Rumble,” a campaign for boxing tournament Riyadh Season, as well as its work on “The Down-Less Jacket” for SOLAMENT, “The Dove Code” for Dove, “Coors Light, Coors Light” for Coors Light, and an activation for Max’s “Dune: Prophecy” at ComicCon, as examples of Droga5’s creative legacy enduring in new ways.
It’s this type of work that is catching the attention of new clients.
“Partnering with Droga5 was an easy decision for us, thanks to their incredible ability to craft compelling, human-centered stories that truly connect with audiences,” said Craig McNary, head of global brand and platform at Xbox, which brought on Droga5 last spring.
“The team understands how to take a brand with a deep heritage and inject fresh energy while keeping the vision true to our DNA,” added Boris Dolkhani, CMO at Bosch, which hired Droga5 in July.
Droga5’s leadership is not naive to the fact that its creative legacy carries with it a burden of past success. But the future is “not about looking at the past and trying to be as good as what we were. It’s trying to do it in a different way,” Green said.
Figuring it out
Green admitted there’s still work to get Droga5 to its future state.
“Establishing a vision, a plan, working out the operating model and the talent strategy to support that—all of those things need to be better than they are today,” he said.
Despite constant change, Droga5 has kept staff turnover “pretty consistent with industry standards,” Green said but declined to share a figure. Though some longtime clients, like The New York Times have left amid the shuffle, others, like JPMorgan Chase, have stayed the course.
“[Droga5’s] consistent collaboration over the years, along with the quality of their team and ours, has helped redefine the traditional client-agency relationship,” said Leanne Fremar, global chief brand officer at JPMorgan Chase.
According to Bell, the creative department is hiring and people are sticking around. “I have ECDs here that could go be CCOs somewhere else, but they choose to stay here. I know [the best creative talent] still wants to work here, because we’re talking to them now,” he said.
Plus, those who have been at Droga5 long enough know that change is constant.
“There has been change here. But we’re attracting great people. We’re growing and hiring around the world. We’re not shy of the things that we need to do to be successful,” Green said.
This story appeared in the April 8, 2025 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.
This story appeared in the April 8, 2025 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.
