Accenture Is Buying Droga5, an Ad Agency, Making a Bet on Creativity

What's the only thing worse than holding companies running ad agencies? Consultancies running ad agencies.

As a senior creative in a consulting environment this is a huge win for Accenture and a disaster for the creatives at Droga5. The culture of consulting is crushingly toxic to creatives. Turnover is extremely high at every level, especially with top performers. The merger of Fjord and Accenture shed most of the top talent and is still a source of friction for the organization. Deloitte's acquisition of the much smaller Heat, based in SF, was trumpeted the same way and has yet to yield significant results for either party, largely because of the culture mismatch. Global consulting partners don't want to hear it from a bunch of "hipsters" about what's good for their clients. Very few creatives are allowed to make it into sr. leadership because they don't have the right "look" for the partnership class, so creative studios end up run by IT integrators or accountants who don't understand why the cultures fail and they drive off talent. Accenture will be best served by feeding business to Droga5 and preserving a firewall around the agency or creating a specialty class of sr. leadership that come from creative disciplines to foster a creative culture top-down and bottom-up.

Accenture has been getting in the digital marketing space since the early 2013. It is indeed digital/interactive the space that they have continued investing with the acquisition of Acquity Group, Avventa, Fjord, Javelin, Clearhead, Wirestone Karmarama etc etc. This is not something new and risky for Accenture. We have been doing this successfully for the past several years. Some have left , some have grown and have reinvented themselves, regardless of opinions.. such acquisitions have allowed Accenture to go to the market with an E2E offerings ; services of depth and breadth that our competitors cannot offer. To the naysayers, Digital/Interactive (the arm that has absorbed most of the marketing & ad agencies) has been one of the most profitable arms at Accenture for the past several years. This is not the largest acquisition we have made and won't surely be the last. Droga5 is lucky to have the opportunity to work with the client roster of Accenture. This is where their creativity will be really put at test.

Have been responsible for merging several marketing agencies with a purchasing firm. It's challenging, not so much from the discipline perspective rather from the cultures of both companies. Still, essentially all the agencies did the same thing, often serving a consulting role to clients. Have represented big consulting firms such as Accenture and can see how some processes are similar to those of marketing agencies - the most prominent is identifying and capturing the benefits of the client's own culture. Still, need to think about how one would merge an ad agency into a multi-national multi-sector consulting firm. Looking forward to what I learn.

Retired Accenture partner here. This stupid move exactly replicates the failed strategy of Dot Bomb bankrupt marchFIRST. Also, ACN's record of integrating prior acquisitions is abysmal. I give this 24 months before the layoffs begin. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

“Droga5, which was founded in 2006 by David Droga, has become one of the best-known independent ad agencies in the United States. (The ‘5’ was appended because Mr. Droga, 50, grew up as the youngest of five brothers.)” Cool. An advertising agency can come up with a plausible cover story to explain why their company is called ‘drugs’. I’m hooked already.

No doubt clients want a resource that can connect brand creative and technology to create remarkable experiences across consumer touch points. The key will be if it can be pulled off as a truly integrated, united offering that respects both brand and technology. That's the Holy Grail that the global holding companies have been chasing for the past two decades, and alas, they're ultimately silos operating inside of holding companies without much connective tissue. We'll see if Accenture can succeed where the holding companies have failed.

An employee at a large consultancy like Accenture only succeeds if they 'excel at mediocrity'. Given an atmosphere where employees cannot and will not take risks, the only way to find creative people is to buy another company.

"We expect to have an Uber-like, Amazon-like experience..." Nice quote showing the mental compartmentalization in the Ad industry. In other words, we want to have convenience and not care about screwing workers, rapacious monopolies, or the future of work for our children, as long as we can use our educations and "creativity" to create more demand for stuff people don't need, feed capitalism, feather our beds, and most likely contribute to the degradation of the environment. The article writer questions none of this, either.