Droga5

Droga5 told us that 2025 was its strongest commercial year on record. For one of the country’s premier creative agencies, that’s quite something.

It isn’t hard to see why. Over the course of the year, it won some seriously important and sizable accounts. It won the strategy, creative and production for Seek and Transport for NSW from TBWA and Ogilvy, respectively, and a number of other accounts.

In one of the most hotly contested pitches of the year, it won the Optus creative, production and strategy pitch. Its newer Accenture Song Media division also won the telco’s media planning and buying work. 

Song lost one small account during the course of the year and signed retentions with three others.

The year’s new business efforts, Droga5 said, marked a shift away from “shorter-term, campaign-only engagements” to “deeper, more integrated partnerships spanning creativity, media, customer experience, data and technology”. Nearly all of the world’s holding companies are pushing towards that end.

This approach would also be reflected in its work for clients including NRMA Insurance, ASB and Qantas, covering areas as diverse as visual identity, CRM and one-to-one communications, customer experience, service, marketing transformation, personalisation, martech and adtech.

Also new new for the agency in 2025 was its focus on what it called “borderless creativity” across its operation. To that end, it unified its ANZ leadership model, including the appointment of Barbara Humphries and Damon Stapleton as co-CCOs and expanded its chief client officer role across the region — though Belinda Drew, who had served in the role, departed at the end of the year to become the ABC’s head of marketing.

Droga5 would expand other roles, too, adding new customer strategy, design and digital products gigs alongside the creation of a head of effectiveness role. This, the agency said, would broaden entry points and progression opportunities for talent from varied backgrounds and skillsets.

Droga5 truly excelled in the quality of its work during 2025.

‘The Comments Section’ for Meat & Livestock Australia was, as usual, one of the most talked about ads of the year. But it also delivered seriously impressive numbers for the brand.

Similarly, producing the follow-up to Tourism Australia’s ‘Come and Say G’Day’ would have been an unenviable task for any agency, but Droga5’s work smartly updated the platform to bring it bang up to date with cultural relevancy for more people in Australia and, crucially, overseas.

Its work for 11 separate clients was recognised at 21 separate awards shows around Australia, the region and the world. Sadly, however, it couldn’t follow up its 2024 Cannes Lions Film Craft Grand Prix with another in 2025, having to settle for a Silver Film Lion for ‘The Comments Section’.

Droga5 chose not to disclose its headcount or gender pay gap figures to B&T as part of its Agency Scorecard submission. Instead, it provided WGEA figures that cover the entirety of Accenture in Australia, not just the agency or the Accenture Song business. Men account for 60 per cent of Accenture’s workforce as a whole in Australia. Its median total gender pay gap was 13.6 per cent and its median base gender pay gap is 12.8 per cent.

Regardless, we’re splitting hairs here. That our Advisory Panel described Droga5 as a “gold-plated agency” might be underselling it somewhat.