Integration the key as customers seek holistic approach: Droga

Accenture Song’s global chief David Droga tells The Growth Agenda about his plan to engage the c-suite with a holistic integrated customer-focused vision.

Australian advertising executive and global chief executive of Accenture Song David Droga . Photo: Nigel Barker

Businesses are seeking integrated services as marketing gains a louder voice and customers take centre stage, according to Accenture Song global chief David Droga.

Mr Droga told The Growth Agenda that businesses wanted broader customer-centric solutions rather than traditional ­advertising or marketing approaches as they chased growth in narrowing markets.

“More than ever, clients are coming in, not just through the marketing door. They’re coming in wanting an end-to-end, full suite of customer agenda, customer acquisition, customer experiential, everything holistically put together,” he said.

“Clients are saying, let’s talk about anything to do with the consumer, from the awareness to the conversion to the service to the building. Because the consumer doesn’t stand in a supermarket aisle going, ‘I’m in the conversion phase of my relationship now with the brand’.”

Mr Droga, who is regarded as one of the leading creative voices in the industry, made the comments this week as he revealed that Accenture Song’s design practice lead, Bronwyn van der Merwe, would assume the top role leading Accenture Song ANZ. She replaces Mark Green, who has relocated to New York as global CEO of Droga5.

Ms van der Merwe’s design background is a key selling point for Accenture Song’s integrated offering, which includes design & digital, data & AI and service.

“The marketing practice is a very important part but it’s just one of the levers that have to be integrated across the offering,” Mr Droga said. “That’s why I love the fact that Bronwyn comes from a design background. I want product people in charge at the top because product people think about the output and the actual product that we make.”

Accenture Song’s focus is shifting from the marketing department as it broadens to target the entire c-suite as it positions as a holistic solution to customer engagement.

“It’s not just about talking to the chief marketing officer any more, there’s so many more chairs around the C suite,” Mr Droga said. “You’ve got to be talking as much to the chief growth officer as the chief technology officer. Obviously, all that ladders up to the CEO. A lot of the structures have changed now because clients have to fight harder for growth. Back in the day, a client thought the catch-all solution to growth was to get more awareness and marketing, but now that’s only one part of it.

“The marketing department is not just in the business of awareness any more and CMOs now have a lot of pressure on them. They’re not just about building brands. They have to build businesses. They’ve got a louder voice now and I think a lot more brands are going back to understanding the power of brands.”

Mr Droga confirmed that the highly anticipated media business, which is due to launch in ANZ in the near future, would be another core part of the integrated offering. However, it would be more ­focused on strategy and data, rather than a traditional media arbitrage business. “I don’t want us to replicate the old media model, because I think that’s why the traditional [players] are in peril, because they’ve built their business around stalking the media dollars,” Mr Droga said.

“So all the decision-making is followed by the media money, where it goes, and then they start giving away the other things. Give away the creative, give away the stretches. That’s a whole different issue. It is why there’s no value for that for a lot of clients.

“We definitely believe in having an understanding of media strategy and beyond, particularly in digital media as that’s where the weight and real influence happens. But we don’t necessarily want to be arbitrating the media as such. In digital media, it’s a very different thing, because that’s a more open spectrum, and it’s a more transparent and more ­future-facing opportunity.”

The media business will be helmed by Accenture’s newest recruits, Melissa Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter, who were previously the chief executive, national managing director and chief strategy and product officer of IPG media agency Initiative Media, and will operate within Accenture Song’s marketing practice and report to Matt Michael, Accenture Song marketing practice lead, and the chief executive of Droga5.

Mr Michael will also oversee the relaunch in the local market next month of the Droga5 brand, which Mr Droga said marked a new era for the business. The brand first launched in Australia in 2008 to fanfare, but struggled to maintain its early success and closed in 2015.

“I always said the first iteration was way too premature, it was almost destined to fail,” Mr Droga said. “It was opened by sheer excitement and I think I got carried away with that and let it happen. I didn’t really have my eye on it, to be honest. I was focused on building Droga5 New York and even though there were pockets of greatness that happened, it didn’t have the rigour or the structure.

“This next iteration is light years apart. We’re taking the best brand in the country with The Monkeys, not just the name or the reputation, but the leadership and the work and the way the teams work and the structure, rigour and connection. So it’s light years apart.

“One was a moment of flight and fantasy, whereas now there’s been so much thought. For the last decade or so, there’s been a lot of pressure and willingness. People have wanted us to open and I resisted at every turn, because I was burnt by what happened before, but I felt I’d let a lot of people down by letting that open.

“I shouldn’t have let it open, and I should have made broader decisions about leadership and all that sort of stuff.

“But now I feel like this is the only circumstances which I can really see succeeding. It’s a mutually beneficial new era.”