Congrats to New York's Droga5 for winning Creativity Magazine's 2011 Agency of the Year award.
From setting a record for most Grand Prix nominations received in a single year (three), to its poking fun at its largest competitor with a press release awarding them their holiday card business, to a website that is clearly far more focused on real employees than others I might think of, Droga5 represents the kind of agency we all want to work for: an effective ad house driven by ideas that cherishes the efforts of its people, works hard, and yet still finds the time to have a little fun.
While their ads varied tremendously in objective and tone, all of them consistently resort to emotion and honesty -- and humor where possible -- without once verging away from sincerity into annoyance. Their Prudential Financial campaign, a large, stately account that many wondered if they were stable enough to handle, kicked off with a terrific ad showing the same sunset across the country.
This ad for long-time client Puma put an alternative but familiar definition of athlete to good effect.
The Rihanna ad for UNICEF below took an approach familiar to funs of the "Bud Light Real Men of Genius" campaign and applied it to nonprofit fundraising.
And finally, the Yiaya campaign for Athenos' various hummus brands featured an bitter old granny who didn't necessarily approve of her granddaughter, or much else in this world, but did approve of the selection of Athenos.
Yiayia expresses her views on parenting.
Not sure that there's anything here that really changes the game, but seeing how Droga5 pulls everything they do, across such a variety of tones, together with such clean eleagance, it's clear that the lesson to be learned is to first get the process and the basics right, get the right employees and incent them to outperform, and then move on to the flash once everything else is working like clockwork.
Yiayia would approve.
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