A slow motion car wreck: The unravelling of Droga5 Sydney

“What clients want and what will pick up awards are two things you have to balance”

Um…What about whats right for the customer? Maybe thats where they went wrong.

Very well written and a good scope of where the industry sits.

It somewhat comes back to the supplier verse value generator mentality that clients have placed on ad agencies in the last decade (if not more). I get that perhaps in the early days ad agencies took it all for granted and got everything they could out of that trust, but it’s to the point now where you’re rarely going to get unshackled responses to marketing problems – and in doing so, are forced to justify the payment of the idea. The industry is completely ring-fenced and at the mercy of the status-quo.

I think the biggest thing to take from this entire piece though is determining the clients you want to work with. There will always be clients that only want service suppliers. And service suppliers are for clients that can’t create value. Where does the actual opportunity lie with these types of clients? Droga tried to find that and inevitably it ended up killing their culture, and their agency. I can remember the announcement of Droga winning Woolworths, and for all the people I spoke to, everyone was asking the same thing – why?

I know it’s easier said than done, notably for those who operate within the mincer of international groups, but one day agencies need to be confident enough to say no. Less attracted to the short term reward and more focussed on the long term reward.

I feel bad for Droga (the idea of it, the initial reason it existed in this world) – the innocent hope that a truly aggressive and risk-taking creative shop could find it’s place in history. It’s a sad, and confronting day when agencies built on the passion of what advertising is supposed to all be about, cannot exist.

The Mars rover add should be held up forever as a jumping the shark moment in the industry. What did it mean? A visiter from Mars! How could you possibly get any more impersonal in a category that’s about trusting an Airlinre to moving people across the world.(Neil Lawrence got it right.) How did it get through layers of approval? Answer this and you’ll have the answer to what happened to Droga.

in my humble opinion, not replacing Marianna is close to the top of the list of problems

to have an agency run by a Planner and a Creative is asking for problems in any scenario, but when you add a client as operationally challenging as Woolworths, not to mention Telstra and others, you just need senior leadership with experience of managing the volume and scale and they didn’t have that

Great Article!

Whoever blamed the juniors is despicable.

Sobering and unsurprising. The boss of every Australian ad agency, and every CMO, should read this article. Well compiled Steve.

great writeup steve, lovely stuff

very interesting & thorough chronicle of the “car wreck”

one thing i don’t like is the anonymous sniping of juniors – quotes like “clients irked by the cockiness of relative juniors “without a track record or experience to back it up”. and “Sometimes you need juniors to do the hard work…it was quite a top heavy structure which threw things a bit.”

it’s so easy to kick juniors especially after an agency failure – be it a bad campaign, a clumsy tweet, some nefarious activity within the ranks… juniors are put in the stocks. tons of juniors are exploited and either work for free or on minumum wage, work late hours, put up with the egos of the “untouchable” founders – only to be slagged off and blamed the instant something goes wrong.

For a time it was fun and it was amazing. But Nobby was lazy and entitled. Duncan was smart but too emotional and Sudeep was in the wrong job. They gave it a go and it worked until it didn’t.

For all it’s innovative positioning, D5 was probably the most old school agency in Sydney right from the get go in so many ways. Only realised it was stuck in another time when it was way too late.

Its ok to Outspoken, brash, arrogant and creatively brilliant, but much more productive and relationship building to be passionate, creatively brilliant and ‘charming’ while still standing vigorously by your ideas…Mo and Jo were brilliant and outspoken but in their own way were ‘charming’, Philip Adams was brilliant and disarming and charming, Neil Lawrence was brilliant and was able to charm, Droga himself also has charm while committed introducing great work…this does not negate confidence and well deserved ego but helps create approachable and respectful “vibe” for clients to enjoy working with.Of course getting the communication right in the first place also helps!

Great to see some real journalism in the Australian trade press.

Great article!

However, I do disagree with the person saying D5 NY aren’t as good as the hype. Of course they do a lot of average day-to-day work, but putting out groundbreaking campaigns several times a year, year after year, often for clients just like Prudential, that deserves all the hype it gets.

As a client with a >$40 m budget here’s 3 observations:

1. Agencies, especially media agencies, have disappeared up their own arseholes.They’re so busy peddling the best deal for them they’ve completely lost sight of what is good for the client.
2. There is a lack of personality in the business. Charisma has been completely exited. We sit in meetings with rooms full of agency people. We don’t know what they do or who they are. And the presentations do not change from one week to the next . A WIP meeting used to be the focal point of the week, now it’s a ground hog day experience.
We need to get back to going for lunch. There was more achieved over a good red (in a Riedl glass) than there has been over a coffee (in a papercup)

The buck stops with Nobby. He was charged by David to keep the torch alight. He didn’t. You can blame David, and let it be said that I agree that Australian clients are far too conservative – let’s be honest about that; they are in fact Frightened – but fear aside D5Oz made the wrong client choice in WOW. Ironically though, we stand back and say Nobby lost his passion nuts in indulging in TV appearances and a play, but look at Todd Sampson at Burnetts. Wins Woolies, does his own docos and TV; yet Leo’s still shines. Strange eh. Probs says a lot for Bos.

Nicely written article, well crafted and clearly researched.

As a former client I have to agree that we absolutely bear some responsibility for the work that is produced (or not). It always frightens and saddens me when I see where we end up creatively, versus where the agency started. However you can’t escape the fact that Nobby was a [Edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy]. He continually pitched ideas to the client side upper echelons, using his entitled lifestyle and out of touch personal ideology as his only frame of reference. For an agency charged with reconnecting iconic brands to every day Australians, that combination spelled disaster.

Sinilarly, whilst blaming the Juniors is poor form, in this case many (not all) of them took on the egos of the agency heads. That’s a severe cultural issue. I’m not a marketer who gets ticked off easily, and in my entire career I can only recall getting into a shouting match with an agency once; with a D5 junior. They weren’t really to blame though, again it was the whole culture of the place. As the article points out at the top; Droga failed to deep dive into the trenches with clients, failed to get under their skin and figure out exactly what makes them tick. Couple that with really poor account service and Nobby’s attitude it’s not all that surprising that we all left.

Great article. Insightful.

This is business journalism at its best.
It’s a case study all agency leaders ought to read.

I don’t see it as blaming juniors. Instead the blame is laid squarely on the complacent and highly paid top management who chose to put juniors on the accounts.

Punter X….you’re over a $40m budget but you can’t count to 3?

The company name is Droga5 not Droga ffs.

99% of D5’s work was simply wrong. As Lionel Hunt once said, “It’s got to be right before it can be great” and very little of what D5 did was right. It’s time the world stopped making excuses for an agency that was handed client after client on a plate only to have them complain ‘their clients didn’t want cutting edge creative’ the moment the shallowness of their own work was exposed. That’s why VB left, QF left, Cadbury left, Telstra left, ING left, Woolworth’s left etc., etc. It’s as simple as that.

The other day i was watching TV with my mum and she was scathing of the ads, finally saying: “They don’t have ideas like the ones you wrote in the 1980s” To me the whole Droga thing is an anomaly in an age that is long past where he might have been seen as a creative amongst creatives in an era where creative was king for a while.

Taking on Woolworth’s when, I suspect, it’s an ill fit with your mission statement (I imagine it to be to produce award winning ball tearing work or something like that) shows many things, not least that you can’t survive on boutique ads for boutique clients when the accountant does the numbers. The difference is that back in the 1980s the Campaign Palace would never have taken on a client they couldn’t be themselves with. Droga 5 might be ok in NY where they like excitement on a daily basis, but for Aussie cients I suspect they were a loose cannon.

@anon 16. Its interesting you talk about the culture being a problem here. I’ve lived in London for 20 years. I quit agency life to go to the other side and eventually freelance and having worked with lots of marketers directly, I hear them tell me that agencies are out of touch and up their own arses. Also when there are experienced writers (who can do strategy) and loads of clever people about, why should they spend big bucks on an agency when it’s not pleasing them? Seems to me that marketers here are paying for padding and some desultory writer to pick a pop song and persuade the client to pay for it so they don’t need to come up with proposition.

Lena Semaan (London and Melbourne)

Excellent piece of journalism.

One question, were Nobby or Gohil approached for comment in preparing this story?

They fooled everyone.
Including themselves.
The surprise is you’re all surprised.
Good article.
In fact, I’m shocked the SMH haven’t lifted it…

@fleshpeddler maybe they’re having a productive wine drinking session?

Great journalistic investigating and research!
A lot of anonymous references, from seemingly anonymous people.

Put a name to a quote, or else the quote means nothing…

Punter x, so busy drinking wine from proper lead crystal, that he/she has lost the ability to count. Probably A CLIENT and not THE CLIENT at a >$40m advertiser I’m guessing.

@Simple I think has nailed it. I saw first hand a lot of their work and very little of it was right, regardless of how great it all sounded.

@ Punter X – I applaud your call for more fun and charisma in the ad biz. Agree whole heartedly but as clients cut costs and raise expectations, understaffed agencies need to hire more buttoned down staff – especially the creatives – to cope with the long hours and relentless pressure to perform. Those ‘characters’ you loved don’t deal very well with 14 hour days and endless serious powerpoint meetings.
Marketing has turned the business into science so you need scientists to deal with it.
If marketers could except that communicating with the public is largely an applied art they could actually save money and time but that’s a whole other article…

I’m with Isherwood… @Simple, Lionel got it so wrong himself – he had an MD who bagged his work as rhyming couplets, a Group MD he (understandably) hated, couldn’t win a car pitch twice, fucked off a telco and got upset if anyone else did good work and got a glow on. A fish rots from its head, but you clean it from the tail is the salient phrase I believe.

Awesome article SJ – now THIS is what should win an Award

Excellent read and great perspective. Much appreciated.

I’d say too clever by half… but how many Australians would see anything clever at all in vandalising an aircraft, misusing the VC to sell a brand of beer, or representing the supermarket supply chain as the cast of a reality show? Plainly dopey, all three.

Not to mention the parody of an Anzac Day march.

Droga5 must have cornered the market in out-of-touchness with Australia.

“It is generally considered that Nobay, regarded as the best creative brain in Australia at the time ”

Based on what? Can anyone here name three significant campaigns that came from the pen of Nobby?

Well done for the interesting article.

As with all Ad industry discussions the quotes focus on agency or client AND NOT customer. When will this industry figure it out. If the only two goals you see are industries reception (awards) or the clients (retainers) you are wildly out of touch. At least some people got some trophies over the years to make themselves feel better.

D5 is a cautionary tale for our time.
Stop doing ads for your glory.
Don’t believe your own hype.
Run it like a business not a hobby.
Turn up to work everyday.
Don’t send untrained juniors without adult supervision.
Winning AND keeping business are two seperate challenges.
Hint: Any fool can have a one night stand, it’s another to make a marriage work.
Creative rankings don’t matter with clients.
And AWARD school teaches nothing which clients value.
But I guess we will never learn.
As Jon Stewart put it: Learning curve are for pussies.

Here are a couple of reasons it didn’t work:

1. Woolworths went with Droga cause M&C were on the out and they wanted to be edgy and creative. Unfortunately too many people at Woolworths didn’t want to change.
2. Retail work, Droga were going to partner with a production house to handle the retail churn while being the ideas agency. I think there decided to be greedy and take it all.
3. Out of touch, hearing comments from D5 staff shocked that families live on $45k. Move out of Bondi and try the burbs for once
4. Coles, due to Coles winning, Woolworths was always reacting and everything was last minute. (same goes for the Saatchi\Big W relationship and Carat in 2012)
5. Too many fingers in the pie, everything had to be signed off by GM and the mixed messages D5 were getting on direction.

I hope Bubbles, Trisha & Liz are doing well.

Dear Wow!

Your comments are interesting, but that doesn’t excuse the work being wrong.

The MD of WW’s appointed D5, so they had the chance to anything they wanted regardless of what the WW’s underlings thought. D5 chose to do ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday’ – a complete waste of money that gave Coles another 12mths free air.

D5 staff didn’t want to work on WW’s so it was all done by freelancers. Everyone in the industry knew that. What sort of agency doesn’t have their own people working on an account that represents 40%+ of its entire revenue? [Good luck trying to get that past Rob Morgan or Tom Dery].

WW’s started to interfere more when it became obvious that D5 kept getting it wrong and only had freelancers working on the account. In other words, they brought the ‘client interference’ on themselves.

Truth is, the only outcome D5 were ever interested in with their work was the impact it had on their own reputation.

Far from being cutting edge, they were as old school as it gets.

Their demise is no-one’s fault but their own. Simple as that.

Too concerned with promoting themselves instead of promoting their clients. It was a vanity project. Simple.

Really nice piece Steve – quality writing and real depth.

It’s a real shame about Droga and clearly there were lots of talented people there.

However, reading this I couldn’t help but be struck by how little responsibility people are willing to shoulder – everything is someone else’s fault, from the juniors (despicably IMO) to the expectations, Woolworths, clients in general.

Every agency deals with variations on these – and most would willingly take the expectations in exchange for being invited onto lots of quality pitches.

Re “I Call BS”. In the interest of fairness, the VB “Raise a Glass” Campaign absolutely came straight from Nobby’s pen. Others have disagreed here, but in my opinion, that campaign was beautiful and moving, and the fact that VB is still using the campaign years later must say something about its power.

And most ECDs/Global ECDs haven’t had anything that could be described as coming directly and purely from their pen in many years. But the fact that Nobby was named as one of the most published copywriters, the #1 most awarded Creative Director in Australasia, etc. certainly stands as some proof as to his creative creds.

Nobby can be criticized for many things, but not being talented? That’s not one of them.

However.

Sad to say, but Nobby squandered everything he was ever given: his talent, his client relationships, his personal friendships, and his employees’ respect. But the biggest thing he ever squandered was David Droga’s good will and reputation.

Still, Nobby might be the smartest guy in the room. After all, most people have to leave their company in order to “pursue other interests.” Nobby managed to do it while still collecting a hefty paycheck. For years. (Not to mention what was certainly a healthy expense account for all the “wining and dining,” as one source so delicately phrased it.)

P.S. In fact-checking myself before I wrote this post, I laughed out loud when I saw the slide for one of the Nobby’s Toohey’s ads: “I get money for doing bugger all.”
http://www.bestadsontv.com/pro.....avid-Nobay

I’m good, thanks WOW …..

The reference I quoted referred to when Nobby was hired for the gig at D5, not after.

Even so, surely someone here can name three “great” campaigns he wrote at any stage of his career.

Saying that he was the “most awarded” at that time is not the same thing as his producing anything significant.

Back to you.

“most ECDs/Global ECDs haven’t had anything that could be described as coming directly and purely from their pen in many years.”

that sounds like an excuse for those far less talented than Nobby who rose to ahem fame via creative “osmosis”, wouldn’t you say Craig??

As a client who worked with D5 for two years on one of those big corporate avalanches, all I want to say is we were all in the Sh it together. Sometimes a business is too big and ruthless for individuals to have any real influence.

Our D5 account and creative team were smart, committed, genuinely awesome people. I appreciated all the extra effort they invested to try and keep us happy. It was a monumental effort. And the work, initially, was reflective of that.

In time, when you have the client group marketing director writing scripts for ads, you know you’re f$*ked.

Sad to see D5 go. But I’ll have happy memories of the Friday night ‘damage-control’ sessions managed with a bottle of red.

Dear I Call BS/Back To You:

I still stand by my personal opinion, as someone who has worked with many very talented creative people around the world, that Nobby was among them. And awards are surely one (although only one) well-defined measurement of success in our business?

Personally, off the top of my head, I can name one great, influential, industry-changing campaign Nobby did in his career: U.S. Verizon’s “Can You Hear Me?” At least I think he did that campaign. He always said that he did.

But in terms of defending him further? Nah. I’ll leave that to any of the people who still “love him” to do that. So, all you out there in Adland: anyone? Ready to name more great campaigns Nobby personally did in his entire career? (What’s that I hear? Are those crickets?!)

Personally, I’d love to hear anyone respond. Because I think that Nobby’s failures were not related to his talent. The reality is that, in this business, sheer talent isn’t enough. There are lots of extremely talented people in this game. But someone who is “Talented and Great to Work With” will almost inevitably triumph over someone who is “Talented but a Lazy, Entitled Jerk.”

It isn’t the CD, ECD or CCO’s job to come up with great ideas. It’s their job to recognize them, steer them and manage the department.

No creative wants to work for a E/CD who does all the ideas (or more precisely, rewrites all of yours and credits himself as copywriter), it’s f-ing awful.

The E/CD is the coach, it’s his job to inspire and guide the team. You don’t see the coach running onto the field and kicking all the goals, at least not in the good teams. He might kick a ball now and then on the sideline, but although he gets the credit (and the blame) for his team, he’s not the star striker.

Remember how successful Saatchi’s once was..

@all I know… do you mean back in Bob’s day, or before it got Love Marx? S&S got lost after H.E.L.P and S.A.V.E

As a former employee of D5 who lived through the Woolies/Qantas era. The biggest problem/cause for demise there was the lack of a true business leader. The ‘CEO’ was a planner with no account service or business acumen. The true boss was a egomaniac creative. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work out. All the best agencies have genuinely credible account-handling presence at the top (D5 New York included).

I’d 100% support the notion that a lot of fantastic work there was presented and not bought, or bought but not made. And there was some fantastic talent at all levels and in all departments. Bad clients, tough market plain and simple. No agency could’ve done a better job on Woolies/Qantas with those marketers holding the cheque-book.

That said, extremely weak quotes here from the anonymous ‘senior creative’, re: the creative merit and strategy/effectiveness of Droga5’s campaigns. Some of the opinions lazily quoted in this article are unfounded or just simply incorrect.

Maybe the D5 meltdown could have been sidestepped with having gender diversity in senior positions?
Clearly all the boys in charge weren’t the smartest tools out there.

This says so much about the industry: the inward-facing agencies and bureaucratically hamstrung clients trying to engage with each other and with the public from their privileged positions; the clients hiring agencies for all the wrong reasons (ego, personal career advancement); the agencies producing work for all the wrong reasons (ego, awards = money); and the whole thing underpinned by a coke-fuelled delusion that its participants are somehow doing something deeply worthwhile.

[Edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy]

Dear THX,
‘No agency could’ve done a better job on Woolies/Qantas with those marketers holding the cheque-book [10:56am 22 Nov]’.
For a former employee to suggest ‘no other agency could’ve done a better job’ only proves that it’s not just senior management who should be accused of arrogance.
To imply that M&C, The Monkeys, Leo Burnett’s, Clems, etc.,etc., weren’t capable of doing anything better than D5 is just further proof that the kool aid was being shared by everyone at D5.
It’s that simple.

“Anonymous said:
Great journalistic investigating and research!
A lot of anonymous references, from seemingly anonymous people.
Put a name to a quote, or else the quote means nothing…”

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen today.

Wonderful piece of writing and journalism

I agree.
Too many big male egos and not enough focus on getting results for your clients.

@APPLES
“For a time it was fun and it was amazing. But Nobby was lazy and entitled. Duncan was smart but too emotional and Sudeep was in the wrong job. They gave it a go and it worked until it didn’t.”

So succinct. My favourite so far from a brilliant thread of clearly suffering industry people. It’s the whole awards thing that gets so many creatives so wound up. Or more precisely, the job ads that ask for them.

Been thinking. Take it in-house WW & QA. I’ve worked on both accounts and can’t see any reason for either of them to have a creative agency. They are big enough to create their own economies of scale.
For focus, call the Woollies agency: Customer, Customer & Customer.
For Qantas it’s: All Yours All Hours.
Then invade Poland.

It could have been great. But Sydney and NYC weren’t in any way aligned.

D5 NYC turned down some serious business because they were worried how it would affect their culture (and reputation). And Droga himself has so little pretentiousness. So humble for a man that has achieved so, so much.

D5 SYD took everything on. But they had zero focus. The tiniest brief would become an all-agency f*ckfest because there were too many panic merchants one level down from the top, presumably scared of losing their job – because their bosses never gave them the trust required or delegated properly. Panic is a terrible motivator.

That aside, they did hire great people. Both agencies. Really genuine, nice people.

A shame that it didn’t work out, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Only in advertising does a failed business blame its customers. Hilarious and more proof that the so-called leaders of this industry really just don’t get it.

@Ashame: It sounds like it wasn’t a shame but a narcissist’s playground
@BrendaKilgour: Succinct and spot on. Especially Australian agencies it seems.

Late to the party, but affirm what others have said, this is some of the best writing I’ve seen on Mumbrella.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFMpySg_UrM