David Droga on being “the last Don Draper,” AI’s impact on creativity, and why the boldest ads are the easiest sells

22:17Before I sold Droga 5, you know, in just a New York office, I think we had 850 people. And now, you know, now across the globe, we're about 1 ,200 people, but New York's probably 600. There doesn't need to be an advertising agency of 850 people anymore. You know what I mean? That doesn't mean the skill or the abilities there. And to get that size, you'd have to have so many different verticals, which is also necessary because the industry has shrunk. But as I said, the influence of creative thinking and strategy is needed in more C-suites, in more chairs around the C-suite, more so than just the CMO.

22:49So I would definitely encourage any creative person to start a company that can influence businesses, but I would ask them to, I would nudge them to not just start an agency that's based on the model before. Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll be back with more with David Droga right after this.

23:12Max:In this week's Branded segment from Think with Google, I talked to Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about YouTube's growing share of the big screen. Josh Nielsen recently reported that YouTube has been leading in streaming time for three years now. Why are people spending so much time watching YouTube? So Ben, at heart, we're all human, right? We all want friends, we want family, we all want strong Wi-Fi, and we want entertainment. YouTube delivers that entertainment. Now we've had decades and decades of TV programming telling you what to watch, when to watch it and that's all gone by the wayside which is why there's over a billion hours of watch time on YouTube every single day on the largest TV screen in the household.

23:53Max:That's remarkable. There was a recent survey done by Kantar that found that 62 % of their respondents actually choose to watch YouTube between 6 and 10 p.m. YouTube delivers the you in your programming. Instead of being told what to watch, you get to decide what you want to watch. And I can tell you from my experience, I would rather have one hour of my content on YouTube chosen by me than three hours of top-down someone else telling me what I need to watch. The unbelievable ability to personalize on YouTube in the content you watch, and then for the advertisers to take advantage of that is incredibly powerful.

24:28Max:More relevant ads, more relevant messaging, more relevant content. it makes for just a much more enjoyable advertiser experience, a much more enjoyable consumer experience, and a much more powerful platform that people spend more and more time on. It's a win for everyone. Where can people learn more about this? Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com. We just published an article looking back on three years of streaming leadership and three marketing opportunities for brands in 2026.

25:00Max:Another part of the business, you were down on salespeople earlier, but I do think you're in some sense one of the great salesmen of the media business. And I mean, one of the real truisms of advertising is that CMOs, chief marketing officers, often very conservative, careful. And you've had this incredible run of persuading them to take risks and do really kind of bananas, controversial stuff, you know, at the risk of honestly their own careers. CMOS are very short 10 years. How do you do that? Well, first of all, let me just call for the record. I'm not anti-sales people, as I said, because, you know, our industry - We love sales people, Jesus.

25:33If you don't sell stuff, there's no business, right? So I'm not anti-sales. I was just making the point that if the only people going to Cannes are trying to sell a deal and not learn something, then it's a disaster. David, it's our job as members of the media to exaggerate your claims.

25:48Max:One of my great editors once said, you know, two moves in journalism, simplify and exaggerate. Oh, perfect. I love that, actually. Look, I also say, like, you know, the only thing worse than not having a great idea is having a great idea and not being able to sell it. Okay? So I believe that, right? So the salesmanship of something is crucial, right? Particularly in our industry. My thing is, I always think that, you know, people always ask me a lot about some of the things that I've convinced clients to do. I'm like, first of all, I never try to sell them something based on it's just a crazy or wild idea.

26:21I always try and explain the logic of why this idea is right for their business. And that's why I was saying start at the end, right? And sometimes if it's based on a really granite strategy, a backbone of a strategy that makes sense and that they can understand and they can see the logic flow, if they buy the strategy and the logic flow and what the intention is, then the creative manifestation that has always been easier. And it's some of the most boldest things that I've done, or we've done, what might actually easier to sell than people would really anticipate. Because I think, you know, great ideas are also very contagious.

26:59And as you said, a lot of them risk their jobs. You know, the people who lose their jobs are the CMOs who do bland, generic, beige shit.

27:06Max:Was there one example to you of something that like, should have been a hard sell, but was an easy sell? Oh, I can tell you many. I can tell you many. Okay, for HBO, the Super Bowl, I killed the Bud Knight on national TV. I had the mountain kill the Bud Knight. Do you remember that ad or not? Yes, I do. Now, we didn't have Bud Light as a client. We had HBO, Game of Thrones. And we presented an idea from the team, presented me this idea, which I loved. And I said, we're going to do it. And the idea was, you know, what's the most Game of Thrones things to do is to kill, just to be so badass and just kill the most beloved character.

27:41And we thought, well, who's the most beloved character out there that fits in the zone of Game of Thrones? And we thought, oh, the Bud Knight. They spend$150 million a year doing ads with the Bud Knight. So I called up the client. Actually, no, I didn't call the CMO. I called the CEO and said, this was where sometimes having my reputation allows me to at least get a meeting, and said, look, can I just get one meeting with you i just want to tell you an absolutely crazy idea that you can laugh me out of the room but if you like it let's talk and you can't tell anyone i'll sign any ndas but you've also got to sign a mutual nda so whatever i tell you if you don't like it you can't tell anyone hbo were like yeah if you could pull that off have at it they were like this is the fucking craziest and wildest thing because you know imagine so i said listen we're going to kill you know the biggest beer in the world's mascot and they're like fucking a we are um but also by the way because I'm not a schmuck, I also knew it was going to be hard.

28:38So I had backups in my back pocket, right? So if Bud Light didn't agree to let us kill the Bud Knight, I was going to go to Burger King and kill the Burger King. And if Burger King didn't let us kill the King, I was going to go to Coca-Cola and have the White Walkers kill the polar bears. So I had all these things in my back pocket, like I had layers of... Still, everyone was as outrageous as the other, but I wanted to start with them. So I go to the CEO of Bud and I tell him the idea. And first of all, again, I'm not an idiot because I know that Game of Thrones is culturally and momentum wise, pop culture as big as anything.

29:11So I say, look, we wanted you to use you in a Game of Thrones finale commercial. Before I even finished this sentence, they're like, yes, please. I didn't tell them what happened. And I said, but what you have to do is you have to let us kill the thing. And that's where he's like, oh my God, you can see the torment and torture. But I think again, they realized this was going to be something seismic. And now when they agreed to do it, again, because I'm a respectful person, you know, I did agree to, because Widen and Kennedy did the Bud Knight stuff. We were doing it. So I agreed that once they agreed to do that, on the shoot, they could bring their director for the scenes with the Bud Knight guy and their creatives, and we would just hand it, our creatives, once the mountain did anything, but when they had the guy talking.

29:57so it felt like it was respectful to all parties. Can I ask you about one other?

30:01Max:Yeah, I was going to mention the Coinbase one. That was one that I, like as a Super Bowl viewer, was just like, what is happening? Did anybody talk to the lawyers? There's this QR code bouncing around the screen. Is this malware? I'm just curious how you persuaded them to do that. The thing about it is... Because as a consumer, I was annoyed. No, of course, of course. The thing about it is I always start with it as well, not just the end, but I'm always like, know your audience, right? So everyone who was into HBO and Game of Thrones It's just new, you know, like violence and audacity and all that sort of stuff.

30:30And then part of the thing is that's why if you know sort of the history of a lot of the stuff I've done for the Super Bowl, Newcastle, if we made it, from Tourism Australia, from Bud Light, all that sort of stuff. Even this one, I was like, you know, you've got to zig with everyone's at it because even though there's so much money spent on the game, everything kind of looks the same. It's like everybody's got a celebrity. It's like Cannes parties. Everybody's got a cameo celebrity. So everything kind of blurs into one. and we thought if you are crypto and you're this we don't have to be for everybody we just have to be those in the know and that's the thing everyone wants to be everything to everyone which is sort of why everything gets quite the edges cut off and all that we're like we don't have to be for everyone let's just buck the system and do a qr code that bounces around screen like that dvd thing so there's an annoying song and a minute feels like it feels like five minutes in the superbowl because everyone used to, you know.

31:22And it's the only Super Bowl commercial that, in the history of the Super Bowl, they've got voted commercial of the year and worst commercial of the year. Because, to be honest, 30 million people pulled out their phone and took a photo of that QR code. 30 million. So there's never been a higher ROI on any commercial ever. Because the people there, the younger generation who knew it, know that that's what you do if you saw a QR code. Because now they put a QR code in everything. And that took them to Coinbase's site and they did all that sort of stuff. So it's the highest. Now, the other 90 million people were like you, were like, what the fuck is this?

31:58Why isn't Peyton Manning in this ad? Why isn't there an explosion? And that was, I didn't care. It was like you go after what's your free audience and it was the first to do it. And now everyone tries to sort of bucket and do a little sort of weird thing. But it goes back to, see, AI is never going to do that. okay if someone if you put in before that if someone put in to do a commercial for coinbase and da da da for the soup bowl there's not a chance in the world ai would have come up with like what you should do is buck the system and have a floating qr code based on the dvd thing that used to occupy people you wait for hit the corner hit the corners that's just not going to happen it has to have the irreverent ridiculous minds of creatives to do that and then the restraint to do that and then the the tenacity to pull it off and want to have the little but also the strategy to do that, which is like, that's now you, now maybe your AI would tell you to do it because it's been done.

32:52So like, it's the absurdity and irreverence and ambition of humans and our ability to want to connect with people and stand out that this great creativity emerges. And that's why I love this industry and see our relevance is not diminishing, but the platform we have has changed. David, let's flip the question though. what's the best idea that you ever worked on that didn't get made what was the thing that you were like you know we just we we didn't get them there on the strategy or whatever and we just couldn't do this ad and this is i wish we could there's well there's many i think everyone has bottom drawers there's two vastly different that i can think of only because it and one's not funny one was like very influential that could have been very influential which is actually the first thing that everyone thinks the first thing that droga five did was when i graffitied air force one which actually wasn't the first thing I presented.

33:41The first thing I presented to any client, which was our first client, was for GE and it was for the Beijing Olympics. And they asked us to do a campaign for the Olympics. And again, this is where I didn't have to have, it was the ambition of what's the right thing to do and then even if we don't know how to do it, we'll get there. And my thinking was every Olympic sponsor does the same, basically essentially the same Olympic advertising. they get the athletes they tell them that they're supporting of them they might try and put a little backstory in it but it's always them like we've got your back and they spend 100 and 200 million dollars billboards tv ads our logic was you're ge you're one of the most innovative companies in the world why don't we do something for the same amount of money and i presented this to gee again i'm not an architect but i just thought this was the right idea why don't we build a building in the center of the Olympic village made out of GE technology that's going to purify the central river that runs through Beijing.

34:41And you turn it into an exhibition center for the Beijing Olympics. And then after the caravan of the Olympics is packed up, it stays there as an exhibition center for the next 100 years. So I pick up the phone. Again, there's four people in my company at this stage. So I call Bill McDonough, who wrote The Cradle to Grave, the book about environments and recycling and all that sort of stuff. So he's an environmental expert. So I need expertise that. I pick up the phone. Again, I don't know in person. Call Philippe Stark and ask if he'll design the building. He'll design the building. Again, ideas are contagious, great ideas.

35:15People that have no right dealing with a company that's two weeks old. But they're like, yeah, that sounds fucking. I find myself flying to Beijing with Philippe Stark with designs of a building that's going to cost the same as a campaign that's going to last two weeks. that's going to be a working model for the next 80 years of GE technology. Present it, GE wants to make it, and the Beijing Olympics rejected it because they didn't want anyone else to build a building in the village and because they were building extraordinary buildings and it might have eclipsed some of the stuff. So that was the first idea I ever presented at Drota 5.

35:51And I was like, holy fucking shit. If that had happened, that would have been unbelievable. But what it did prove to me is it doesn't matter whether I'm not an architect, but we're ideas people, right? And what is advertising? This is before people are saying that. My starting point was advertising is whatever you want it to be. If it connects and it moves people and it does the right job. And for me, that was a product demonstration that would have lasted 80 years, would have got more press than anything because the building was, as I said, cleaning the river through their own technology. And we got that close.

36:22Yeah. And that's one that I wish had happened. And there's a myriad of other funny ones. I wanted to do one. Actually, ironically, for Bud Light, I presented to them once, which they just wouldn't let me do. And it was Predator. Remember, you know, the - Yeah, Alien versus Predator. Predator. This is back in the day. And I wanted to have him as the spokesperson for Bud Light. But it was showing him at home, like, you know, without the helmet, with a girlfriend. and she's talking too much on the couch and she's pushing the buttons to blow up or whatever it was. And the tagline was Predator drinks it.

36:58I wanted to make that so badly and it made me laugh so much. Like it's still, even today, the team that wrote, I mean, I laugh still thinking about that because this is like 10, 12, 15 years ago before all the reboots of Predator. So I've given you two vastly different examples of totally worthy and what could have been a magnificent idea and just one that was a pop culture idea that made me laugh so much that would have been right for them. But there's hundreds. There's hundreds. I think every creative person has endless ideas. And as I said, to all the creatives whose work I couldn't sell, I apologize to that.

37:32I tried very hard.

37:33Max:I wanted to ask about one of the serious campaigns you did. We were one of the really most memorable campaigns a news company has ever done, which was the Truth is Worth It campaign for the New York Times. Did that campaign work? Yes. And how do you know? What does that mean? Okay. I know for a fact beyond sort of the prior, there's different metrics. I'll start with one that's soft and then we'll get to hard ones. The soft one was when we first started working with The Times, and that might have been 2016, the newsroom and the marketing department were like mortal enemies, didn't want to talk to each other.

38:10And then, you know, the time, it was an interesting time also because of 2016, 2017, where there was two things at play. there was what is real news so there was that dilemma people what what is what is real and then there is do people are people prepared to pay for the news so you had these two opposing things that were sort of both very negative negative things to the news industry people didn't want to pay for it and they didn't know what was real anymore so the truth is worth it was a as a rally call to try and do two things at once one it forced us to show you know to debate what actually is true and where the truth comes from so we could actually talk about the product.

38:48And two is to validate, as I said, that they're actually in the pursuit of the truth and it's not fake and it's worth paying for. Now, the big turning point for us was, which is a creative agency, and I say this to anyone who'll listen as a creative, no matter how creative we are or how talented we think we are, sometimes whatever we do will never be better than the products we're advertising right okay so no matter how clever we are the content that we create is never going to be more worthy or more in depth than the thing that comes out of the newsroom so our job was to create a vessel that we could hold that in and display it and really it was all just product demonstration not one we did that for six years i think the campaign over nothing we showed at any stage was not from their content every photograph we ever showed was from their thing every video we ever showed was from their cameras.

39:38Every news article we ever showed was from every headline. All we did was create a distinctive look and feel, you know, something creative and beautifully crafted, but it was a celebration of their product. And as soon as we did that, within year two, the newsroom was pitching to the marketing department for them to want their stories to go in the thing. And then suddenly everyone had credibility. So there's the softer thing there, so they became one unified brand internally. And then externally, their digital subscription, I think, and you can chase up on this detail and I can follow up, I think they grew from like five or six million to about 12 million digital subscribers.

40:14So they became the biggest digital subscribe network in the world. So that's the hard issues. I mean, the hard numbers. So there was whichever way you look at it, that was a huge success.

40:25Max:Why did you part ways with the Times or why did they part ways with you? The CMO, who was a great guy, moved on. and then the new incoming CMO, because everyone's budget's one and a small, they wanted to make it more a project-based thing and we didn't want to do that. This is now where the confidence and maybe arrogance, I was like, listen, we've done what is now, by many people's things, the best campaign, not one-off campaign for any news organisation in the last 30 years. And we are not going to do a project-based thing where we put things up for pitch or we pitch against anyone. so you can do what you want with it.

41:02Now, I still look back with love at what the work is. And actually, the good thing is, you know, my friends who I advise now, who actually were at Droga 5, now do the New York Times stuff. But it's now project-based stuff.

41:14Max:There are a lot of news brands right now that are really getting, are sort of battered for a number of different reasons and kind of dirtied up. If you were brought in by, say, CNN, what would you do? It's funny you say that because I was, where was I the other day? And I saw, it might've been the BBC or someone like, I was like, wow, they just blatantly ripped off the New York Times. Like they will try and do literally blatant, blatant, blatant, blatant. I was like, you know, you almost know that the creatives or the client just went through our stuff and was just like type everything. But I think the thing is, it's not just, everyone just always tells you what they're reporting.

41:48Doesn't understand like why does it matter to anyone? What's at stake? And what's the connection point? And what's life without it? And sort of, you know, how do you serve it up to them? can the marketing also serve it up to them in new ways and can that also influence the business model of these news companies do you mean that's what i'd be trying but you know i would i wouldn't want to do a campaign for just cnn now or you know or the wall street journal but if i was asked to come in i would say yeah i'm happy to help you and consult but i'd like to talk to you about your business model as well as how you go up to audience and how you serve your content not i wouldn't tell them what they have to write about.

42:24Max:If you were, say, running a four-year-old startup with 100 employees aimed at a leadership audience across events and newsletters, would you hire an agency and do a paid marketing campaign? Well, I would definitely pay someone to think about it that's subjective, that doesn't know all the ins and outs that you know, but knows enough to be filled with insight, but not caught up in the realities like they can i think because also as i said before lots of industries are being disrupted now like you're in the perfect place to disrupt as well do you know i mean in the sense that you know success is not nostalgic so it doesn't mean you know you doesn't guarantee that you because you're not the biggest player or have 12 000 people and all that sort of stuff but if you can find why you are crucial in the c-suites repertoire and find a way to deliver it to them not just with what they're getting from it, but what it says about you to them and other people.

43:20See, this is the nice thing about, you know, doing a media focused podcast. Eventually, every single one of these episodes turns into a meeting for us, which is great. But David, this has been fantastic. I want to ask you one last question before we leave, which is, you know, what's next for you? You stepped down, you know, as CEO a few months back. What's next for David Droga? You know, I still haven't decided because I sort of stepped back and originally I was going to step out and just sort of retire and decide what I wanted to do. And I'm glad they asked me to stay in as vice chair, which basically is a way to say, to spend your time doing what you're interested in for a broader Accenture, which has been great because, you know, I'm out of the weeds, but I have been able to sort of insert myself into looking at certain acquisitions that we might make or certain big projects that I think could have a seismic effect on us or on sort of culture.

44:09so I've cherry picked those and you know hopefully a little bit of a mentorship and adding value here and there but I'm as I said when I stepped down I said I really also wanted to catch my breath because I've never done that I have I've worked my ass off since I was 18 and with zero regret you know it's as I said the industry's been better to me than anyone well David thank you so much for joining us you've given us some value to this podcast both by coming on and also literally giving us some free advice so thanks again I'm happy to I love chatting about things I care about. As I said, watch this space because there will be some interesting announcements soon.

44:42Max:I can't wait.

45:06Max:the insights that turn strategy into growth. So don't just talk about the AI opportunity. Operationalize it. Visit thinkwithgoogle.com.

45:21Max:So Max, do you feel like you understand now why that guy is so good at what he does? I do. After kind of doing a little bit of a dive and listening to the podcast, then having him come on here, you definitely see it. It's funny because you had in our notes that he was kind of seen as the last Don Draper. And I kind of always thought, of course, the ad guys want to kind of be seen that way for many reasons. I think the similarity and the thing that makes him more interesting than some of the guests that we've had, I mean, all of our guests are amazing, but some of the people we talk to on occasion in this world is the fact that he's really looking for something emotional and kind of true at the core, right?

46:04I think you hear a lot of words thrown around in the space about storytelling and things like that. But you can tell the way that he was thinking about the New York Times newsroom campaigns and the problems with other newsroom campaigns that he saw, which was like taking this step back and saying, OK, well, it's not just that we do good stories, but it's like, but what's the value of doing any of this? right? I think taking that extra step to ask, not only like, why is this thing that I'm advertising good based on assumptions that everybody kind of has? It's why do those assumptions exist in the first place?

46:38And should we flip them on its head? It's, it was fun listening to him talk about the problems with Superbowl commercials and trying to get out of this celebrity trap. And he's obviously not concerned about AI because he understands that at this stage, AI is going to spit out the answer. it thinks that you want to hear based on the stuff that's available out there. It can't come up with the idea that would maybe piss people off and maybe you wouldn't want to hear, which I think is his strength.

47:03Max:Do you think that's true? There's just some combination with him of the big picture abstract view and then just being really good at cracking himself up. It's not just advertising. It's such a core media skill. That sense of the relational intelligence and understanding where something's going to land, not in the abstract, but right now. There is the right him laughing about certain ideas that he had never been made or just being able to dive right back into some campaign that he worked on years ago on command. It's the sense of fun that you need to bring to being in, you know, these media and kind of creative industries.

47:35I mean, we see this in our our our world as well. The media companies oftentimes that are the most successful are the ones that are just out there having just a shit ton of fun. Right. And once it stops being fun, people can smell it on you. And just him talking about the Predator Bud Light ad that didn't get made and he's just cracking himself up. You can't teach that necessarily, right? That's just something you kind of have to have to reach that high high. But Ben, there's one thing I wanted to ask you about. A lot of people who listen to the show obviously are in the worlds of marketing and advertising.

48:05This is executive level. They might know this stuff. I do not meet those criteria. So once you guys started talking about the obvious problems that the big advertising holding companies have, If I wasn't on camera, I would go into Claude and ask for some questions. But can you explain for the audience, myself included in this case, what the problems are that are facing these holding companies and if you see a way out for them the way that David does?

48:32Max:Yeah, I think what specifically he was talking about, and this reflects his point of view a bit, but I think it is pretty real, is that these companies most successfully publicists, which essentially bought up lots of creative agencies like Droga 5 on one hand and then bought up lots of— It didn't buy up Droga 5, though. Like Droga 5. Agencies full of creative people who want to make cool Don Draper-style ads and then simultaneously bought up and come from the industry of buying ad spots, of saying you want to buy a spot on the Super Bowl and you want something on local radio. That's that old business.

49:02Max:The strategy that those firms have taken is, we'll give you the cool, fun advertisement for free. We'll make you the cool Super Bowl ad and now give us tens of millions of dollars We promise you we're doing it in the highest tech, most efficient way ever. But we're not going to give you a ton of insight into how we're doing that. We're going to disguise or we're going to jam our profit margin all into this digital distribution stuff that is a little hard for you, the client, to see. That is how these companies now mostly work. I think what he's saying is one thing that AI probably is going to be pretty good at is figuring out where to place the ads.

49:40Max:and if you've bet your profit margins on that kind of technical side of the industry rather than on the creative side of the industry you could be in trouble. This is an old fight between the media side and the creative side of these businesses in which the media side basically won. But I think it's also certainly true that these ad holding companies they're just stuck in this place where anybody who tries to position themselves as a tech company and then is competing against the really giant tech companies get squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. That's a little bit of a depressing note to leave it on.

50:12But I guarantee you next week when we're walking around Cannes, more likely than not, it seems like they'll probably be in a big, huge, fancy building that cost a lot to set up drinking spritzes and whatnot. So clearly it's not that bleak yet. Tough assignment for you, Max. Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media. Our show is produced expertly by the great Manny Fidel with special thanks to Josh Billinson, Amber Olley, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Daniel Haift, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur.

50:45Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Steve Bone. Our public editor is Andrew Essex, who had some fun and interesting ideas for questions to ask David.

50:54Max:And if you like the show, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube. And if you still want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.

51:09Thank you.