Droga5 expands to Tokyo with plans for offices in China and Brazil

Accenture Interactive-owned Droga5 is expanding its global footprint by opening an office in Tokyo with plans to add others in China and Brazil within the next 12 months. This marks the third location for the agency, which has berths in New York and London. The Tokyo office’s leadership team consists of Chief Creative Officer Masaya Asai, who has held various creative roles TBWA offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo, most recently serving as global creative director for TBWA/Hakuhodo; General Manager Chris Burgess, who most recently served as Droga5’s business lead for Chase and Allstate; and Head of Strategy Dan Ng, who served as a group strategy director for the agency since 2016. Droga5 Tokyo will partner with Accenture Interactive to provide services to not just clients in the Asia Pacific area, but from around the globe, collaborating with other offices when it makes sense. It’s important for each Accenture office to emulate the culture of where it is based, says Brian Whipple, CEO of Accenture Interactive. “Our bread-and-butter are the big multinational accounts where they need—in this particular case—a Japanese native-speaking, native-thinking team, but with the Accenture Interactive and Droga5 mentality,” Whipple says. “There will be projects that will be Japan only, but more so, if for example, you're the chief operating officer of a major non-Japanese consumer packaged-goods company, and you need help breaking into the Japan market, that’s where we come in.” David Droga, the founder and creative chairman of Droga5, says the timing was right given that its partnership with Accenture, which acquired the agency in 2019, has now been in place for two years. Expansion is viewed as an important strategic move for the agency because it seems "antithetical" to the consolidation of agencies that has been occurring across the industry, says Susie Nam, chief operating officer of Droga5. Referencing the fact that Droga5 was Ad Age's Agency of the Decade, Droga says: “We don’t win that award if we just push repeat. We have to look to exciting new places that challenge us and open up new dimensions. Japan is unlike anywhere else from a creative perspective and Accenture Interactive is the largest digital agency in Japan. You take that superpower and our unrelenting ambition and a belief system about creativity, and I'd love to see what we can do in a market like that.” Droga says that its crucial for the agency to avoid opening an office simply because clients are asking for it. Instead the focus must be on the quality of its offering, leadership, and maintaining its identity. And that identity, says Whipple, is something that “marketers value globally.” “Accenture is actually the first to say that preserving that sense of identity is the most important thing and diluting that will actually cripple our ability to expand it [Droga5] at the breadth and wealth that we need to," Nam says.

Droga5 expands to Tokyo with plans for offices in China and Brazil

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