Creatives behind Droga5’s lauded NY Times campaigns start their own agency

Toby Treyer-Evans and Laurie Howell, the creative team who made acclaimed ad campaigns for The New York Times and Under Armour at Droga5, have launched their own agency, Isle of Any, designed to help clients bridge product, brand advertising and experience. Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Click here The British-born pair left Droga5 in 2023 after eight years and began working quietly on Isle of Any. Originally trained as industrial designers, they envisioned a creative company that could blend product design and experiential work with brand advertising to help companies connect with consumers in a more holistic way. Isle of Any employs a studio/maker model that prioritizes working with company founders and other clients to build brands in new ways, while also working on internal projects where the agency owns the IP around what it’s building. The approach stemmed from a frustration with traditional agency models, where typical ways of working often lead to typical outcomes. Treyer-Evans and Howell said they want to break down the barriers between product and advertising, something they began to do at Droga5 over their six years of New York Times work. “We were constantly coming up against the question of ‘Is this a newsroom idea or an advertising idea?’” said Howell. “The Times is such a contemporary brand—everything is blurring. We did start making products for them, like ‘Story Portrait.’ That made us realize there’s an opportunity to build a creative company that can do that for brands.” “A big thing we felt when leaving Droga was that the tropes of the ideas, the style of work, the thinking across the industry—it’s all becoming quite similar,” said Treyer-Evans. “We’re keen to push out of that, to use different skills and different talent to set a new benchmark for what a creative company can be.” Read more: Why ad agencies are launching design units One of Isle of Any’s early clients is Fair Warning, an auction app offering one-lot, live auctions of art works. Fair Warning was founded by Loïc Gouzer, a former top exec at Christie’s. (In 2017, Treyer-Evans and Howell worked on “The Last da Vinci,” a Droga5 film promoting Christie’s auction of the “Salvator Mundi” painting.) Fair Warning announces its auctions with little notice—it’s essentially a fine-art take on drop culture—and Isle of Any is tasked with creating buzz around them. (Below is a video IOA made for last year’s auction of Joan Semmel’s “Hold Tight.”) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Isle of Any (@isleofany) “We’re trying to surround each piece of work with its own story,” said Howell of Fair Warning’s mini-campaigns. “The whole thing is really fast,” said Treyer-Evans. “Because we’re building a team of makers means we can get these [campaigns] out a lot quicker.”Also: New ad agencies are opening rapidly—inside the trend Treyer-Evans, Howell and their small team of creatives, designers and technologists are currently working on other projects, including two immersive experiences for 2025 and 2026 as well as brand and product campaigns for two other clients, set for the second and third quarters of 2025, the founders said. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here Before they joined Droga5, Treyer-Evans and Howell spent two years at both Wieden+Kennedy London and JWT London. Their work at Droga5 was highly awarded, with “Rule Yourself: Michael Phelps” for Under Armour winning the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in 2016 and “The Truth Is Worth It” for The New York Times winning both the Film and Film Craft Prix in 2019.

Creatives behind Droga5’s lauded NY Times campaigns start their own agency

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