DROGA5

Using the fingers on just one hand, David Droga argues, you can count the number of agencies that possess a “strong soul.”

- Katie Richards

These are “the ones that are consistent, retain people and do some of the most interesting work,” Droga says.

He, of course, counts his own agency, Droga5, as one—which some might dismiss as a mix of idealism and ego by the agency’s founder and creative chairman. But even Droga’s critics—who frequently sigh and roll their eyes at each mention of his name—would have trouble arguing that he’s wrong.

Walking the halls of the agency’s crowded Wall Street headquarters and talking to its ever-growing staff, it’s easy to see that soul soaked into everything from the work on display to the conversations around Droga5’s communal dinner table. The 675 employees (at last count) include a mix of young talent eager to prove themselves at the industry’s hottest shop alongside those who have been with Droga since his earliest days as a disruptive force in the agency world.

That soul may have been at the heart of Droga5 since the agency’s inception, but it was certainly in full bloom this year. Droga5 enjoyed a 2016 that any agency would envy. It created some of the marketing industry’s best creative work in recent memory, won a litany of top-tier clients (occasionally even without a review), swept up 66 major industry awards and grew its revenue an impressive 35 percent.

The combination of all these factors made Droga5 a pretty easy choice for Adweek’s U.S. Agency of the Year for 2016.

Droga5’s strong revenue growth only served to let the agency enhance its capabilities too. Increasingly, the agency is bringing more resources in-house to deliver results for clients faster. It expanded Droga5 Studios—the shop’s own production studio that worked on the latest Google Pixel spots—and offered up its own media planning services (a team that’s eight people strong) to work on quicker, nimbler projects.