David Droga Didn't Kill the Movement. He Mastered the System

Mulling Droga's legacy as he prepares to step down as CEO of Accenture Song

I heard a lot of people say David Droga left the ad industry in 2019. Joined the machine. Sold out. Ended the movement when he moved his agency to Accenture.

But some were more hopeful.

If anyone could merge creativity with consulting, chaos with calculus, it was David F*ing Droga.

I was more optimistic.

I thought maybe, just maybe, he’d blow it all up. That he’d show us the future. That he’d make the world run on ideas again. That he’d create a renaissance for our industry.

Consulting and creativity have always been at odds. Not in purpose, but in process. Consultants build frameworks. Creatives break them. Consultants scale certainty. Creatives build movements.

And the real problem? Consulting measures everything in hours. Creative work is measured in impact. And sometimes, all it takes is one second to change everything.

But maybe that was just a dream. A childish one. Or maybe it’s just the wrong perspective.

Because Droga didn’t tear down the machine. He always was the machine.

The man led Accenture Song—a creative consultancy and a tech company combined—to $19 billion in revenue, up 34 percent since 2021.

That’s not selling out, that’s building. And let’s not pretend Droga5 wasn’t already a machine of its own. Tight. Sharp. Prolific. That’s not a movement. That’s mastery.

Here’s the thing about perspective. We like to think movements are greater than machines. But maybe they never were. Burnett. Ogilvy. Bogusky. They were visionaries, yes. But they were also great operators. They sold belief systems, but they also built businesses.

Agencies that scaled. Profited. Lasted. Ones we admired. Ones we joined. Ones that made meaning and money. Many of us thought it was something more.

Accenture Song is no different. It’s a system. Global. Efficient. Well-resourced. With great creatives. And great ambitions.

That’s power. And that’s the hard part to admit. This industry we love and the ideas we chase … at the end of the day, it’s all a business. At its best, it’s a beautiful one, too. It inspires. It provides. It gives creatives a way to matter. Sometimes, it even changes lives.

But it is still a business. So where does that leave us? The believers. The builders. The independent shops are still dreaming. This looks like our time again.

As the big holding companies trip, tech erodes and accelerates the process. We’re in the same place we’ve always been. Cogs in the machine. The product that gets bought and sold by the better business operators.

And now, in the rise of the independent agency. It won’t be the loudest or the rawest who get their name on the door. It will be the ones who quietly bust their ass and do the real work it takes everyday to build a great business.

Just like all the greats like Droga have always done.