 David Droga |
Consulting giant Accenture is buying creative advertising powerhouse Droga5 in a deal that will reshape the marketing communications landscape.
Droga will become part of Accenture Interactive, which aims to help clients develop, create and run customer experiences to grow brands and businesses.
Accenture bills the Droga5 deal as part of its journey to forge a new agency model, “one with the power to engineer transformative brand experiences and infuse those experiences with the emotional and inspirational power of brand thinking and creativity.”
Brian Whipple, CEO of AI, views the Droga5 acquisition a “game-changing milestone for us and the industry.” He said Droga5 will help Accenture "improve full human experience with brands."
Dave Droga will remain creative chairman of Droga5 and Sarah Thompson will continue as CEO.
“The world of advertising is changing,” said Droga. He views the Accenture connection as an opportunity to "add more dimension to our best ideas and push us beyond our existing ambitions.”
Founded in 2006, Droga5 has more than 500 staffers in New York and London. Clients include Amazon Prime Video, Kraft, Prudential, JPMorgan Chase, Tourism Australia, New York Times Co., Game of Thrones, Hershey and Under Armour.
Accenture generated $21B revenues and $2.4B profit for the six-month period ended Feb. 28. It employs 477K people in more than 120 countries.
Public Policy Holding Company registered 23.8 percent Q3 growth to $48.8M, with organic growth contributing 4.5 percent and the balance driven by merger & acquisition activity.
Publicis Groupe reported 3.1 percent in Q3 growth to $4B, sparked by a 3.6 percent jump North America, its biggest market.
WPP suffered a 10.2 percent drop in 1H revenues to $6.7B and a 47.8 percent plunge in operating profit to $297M.
Interpublic reported Q2 net revenues dropped 6.6 percent to $2.2B and operating income tumbled 23.4 percent to $243.7M. 
WPP has adopted a gloomier profit and sales forecast due to a deteriorating Q2 financial performance triggered by weak client spending as companies cope with the challenging economic backdrop.
