EXCLUSIVE: Accenture Announces “Go To Market” Agency Name Change. Droga5 Remains Droga5.
A New Look For A Naming Evolution
David Droga, the CEO and creative chairman of that which just yesterday was known as Accenture Interactive and is now Accenture Song, knows a thing or two about keeping brands relevant. He’s been doing it for decades.
So, imagine that in Act II Scene II of Romeo and Juliet, young Juliet turns to him instead of Romeo and asked, “what’s in a name...?” I’m no Shakespeare, but I think it’s likely Droga would have replied to her with something along the lines of, “a lot, really.”
Accenture Song is the end result of an iterative process that took seven months, and marks the beginning of what Droga and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet see as the company’s next chapter. Through this naming “evolution,” as they call it, the company unites under one umbrella over 40 agencies acquired over the past decade, and replaces “Interactive,” a word they feel has become “a little generic.”
Working with a stealth team from Accenture’s Marketing + Communications organization and Droga5, and a brief to come up with something “simple, memorable, impactful, optimistic—something our people feel they can contribute to,” why did the company choose Song as its new suffix?
Because it was simple and surprising and, as Droga says, because “song is the most enduring and relevant form of communication and connection globally. It doesn’t have one dimension. A song can be inspiring to one person or anthemic to millions. It’s an evergreen and optimistic word.”
By embracing human and creative qualities over technical ones, Droga believes the new name reflects not just change, but what he calls “the alchemy that comes out of bringing these fiercely proud, independent agencies together to build something even more substantial.” A song, in being both deeply personal and highly communal, has the power to both endure and evolve. “We created a name [our people] can give personality and dimension to, that can be given more context and meaning by different people, globally,” he says. “Everyone can get their own fingerprints on it, and I want to run an entity that people feel they can bring themselves to.”
This implicit humanity is essential to Droga, whose tenure at the helm of Accenture Song—recognized just yesterday by AdAge as the world’s largest digital agency, one projecting to reach $14 billion in revenue by the end of fiscal year 2022 (August 31), up 12% from last year—comes at a time when stakeholders all but insist that companies be and act more human. For Droga who, like this author, considers irrelevancy the single biggest threat facing every brand and business the question is, why now?
Well, relevancy of course, and because now that he’s running an agency whose capabilities and work “solving problems for every chair in the C-suite” have evolved internally, it was time to communicate and reflect those changes externally. And a name change, whether an agency’s, Dunkin’s, Meta’s, or Metta World Peace’s, for that matter, is about signaling that something’s new, different, other than it has been.
For Droga, this was certainly the case and as he and his small team conceived, considered and evaluated hundreds of names to spark the “alchemy” referenced earlier, they kept two things in mind: “What’s it mean internally for and about our people and capabilities, and then, what it means for what clients want—is it better for them?”
It’s easy to see this evolution serving as an internal rallying cry, a moment of re/unification around a name that, as he puts it, makes “you immediately think of things that matter to you.” In other words, things that are relevant—personally, culturally, collectively.
Admittedly though, it’s a bit harder to picture a client seeing this news and thinking, “hot damn, this name change works better for us.” Regardless, whether you love it, like it or don’t—Accenture Song is making, and landing, a point. And like every brand and business fighting to maintain relevancy amidst choice and, yes, change, that counts for a lot. Perhaps especially when the name previously attached to their emails no longer reflected the future-facing, problem-solving-at-the-“speed-of-life” business they consider themselves to be.
Interestingly, the one agency Accenture acquired not taking on the new name is Droga5—the one founded by the person who led the charge for the name’s evolution. When I asked why Droga5 will keep its brand, he said it was because it’s “a really defined global agency.” In other words, it’s relevant. Still, Droga makes clear that “such is my faith in Accenture Song it’s not off the table for Droga5 to become part of it” at some point. Who knows?
Because that’s the thing about the future—it’s unpredictable. (Go ahead, you can quote me.) But whether it’s because or in spite of this unpredictability, Droga is effusively confident in Accenture Song’s evolved abilities to help clients stay relevant and face the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes one songster sang of. And while a rose might smell just as sweet if it were called “interactive,” for a company that across disciplines, services, channels and markets hopes to write more of the songs that businesses sing, its new name seems not just lyrical but logical.
