David ‘Nobby’ Nobay returns to lead creative at Droga5 Sydney following Steve Coll resignation
Joint Campaign Brief / AdNews Exclusive – David Nobay, creative chairman and a founding partner of Droga5 Sydney, is returning full-time to the agency and will fully oversee the agency’s creative product, following the decision of executive creative director, Steve Coll, to resign from the agency, just over a year since joining from Havas Australia.
Nobay, better known as Nobby (pictured by CB in Cannes last month), who founded the Sydney arm of Droga5 alongside current CEO/partner Sudeep Gohil eight years ago, has spent the last few years fulfilling a chairman’s role, whilst developing several creative pursuits outside agency life.
Says Nobay: “After 20 years as an executive creative director in Sydney, New York and London, I was itching to try some things outside the immediate industry. However, what Sudeep, David Droga and I also acknowledged this year is that it’s also impossible to be “half pregnant”. The business is moving and changing too quickly to not be across every part of it. You’re either 100% out, or 100% in. I chose the latter.”
Gohil, his partner and CEO of Droga5 Sydney is clearly in agreement: “Nobby and I have worked together for many years prior to Droga5. The opportunity to work with him is why I moved to Sydney originally and we have a proven track record together. Partnering up again to restructure and grow our agency under a new remit from New York and with our new partners WME/IMG seemed irresistible.
Departing ECD, Steve Coll (left), said his resignation had been a difficult decision. Says Coll: “The decision to resign wasn’t something I took lightly, especially as there are very few companies with the world-class reputation of Droga5 and clearly a lot of exciting things planned for the agency. But this felt like the right time for me to fulfill some long-standing ambitions.
“I am grateful to both Nobby and Sudeep for their support. We part ways as good friends and I have great admiration for both. I’ve learned an enormous amount from working with these two top class, talented and tenacious people, and indeed from my experience of working with everyone at Droga5, especially a first-class creative department. It’s also been wonderful tutelage learning from outstanding creative business leaders like David Droga and Nobby. I wish the Droga5 team all the very best.”
Before Droga5, Coll, who won the inaugural Cannes Effectiveness Lion with AMV BBDO in London for Walkers Crisps, had been a driving force behind the resurgence of Havas in Australia after joining the agency in 2010, with the agency winning 11 Lions under his guidance. As a result Havas Australia was named Campaign Brief’s 2013 NSW Agency of the Year.
From humble beginnings in a borrowed garage space in Paddington, the fledgling Droga5 Sydney went on to win many of Australia’s most iconic brands but of late has diversified with the majority of its business run out of Asia, from Tiger Beer across the region, to Coca-Cola assignments across the Asia-Pacific region.
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that we got a little too big, a little too quickly. Something had to give, and, for us, that was probably our creative culture, more than anything. You don’t see that when you’re in the middle of it. It’s an incremental thing. But it’s a precious thing too; hard fought for and too easily lost,” Nobay acknowledges.
In 2013, William Morris Endeavour Entertainment (WME) took a minority interest in Droga5, globally, which will have an impact in Australia going forward.
“Thanks to our partnership with WME/IMG, the potential for a new client offering is what excites us. It’s the chance to present a very tangible alternative to our clients around the space of brand, talent and social,” says Nobay.
“It is early days in our relationship with the Droga5 team locally, but with our range of events and growing client relationships we see a great deal of promise for great work between our collective teams,” adds Christopher Gilbert, MD of IMG Australia.
On the subject of the future for the office, David Droga, the company’s founder, whose New York agency was just awarded Independent Agency of the Year in Cannes and has been named US Agency of the Year six times in the last nine years, is clearly behind the shift in focus for Nobay and the future facing redirect for the agency. Says Droga (left): “Eight years ago, I chose Nobby to front my first agency outside of New York. I did that for a simple reason: I respected his creative and business talent as a world-class leader, who shared my ambitions for the company. Eight years later, that faith hasn’t shifted. But he needed to be more focused. He now recognises that. And that’s all I need to know.”
Adds Nobay: “Sudeep and I have a huge debt of gratitude for Steve. He’s a natural creative leader and, on a personal level, one of the kindest, most generous guys I’ve ever met. I will leave it for him to discuss his plans at the appropriate time. Suffice to say, his move is a chance for him to make a massive creative impact, and he leaves as a good friend who, I suspect, we may soon be collaborating with again!”
6 Comments
How come no-one is commenting on this?
No-one’s commenting, because despite it all this blog is about THE WORK, not THE TALK.
Droga Sydney need to stop talking and start doing. The spin has got boring.
Time to obey Nobay
The humble beginnings / garage space story makes me laugh.
They were bank rolled from the start.
an easy solution is to basically take 2-3 key people from D5 NYC ie: Chief Strat Officer johnny Bauer and drop them in to reboot the Sydney offering. Clearly the local team have been unable to replicate anything close to the D5 NYC magic… aren’t half the people at D5 NYC Aussies anyway?? just bring a few of them home
The people who know me will know who has posted this but I will choose to stay anonymous to remove any bias. For the record I am an ex Droga employee, from ‘the bad days’ when they were ‘too big too quick’ but financially a very successful agency.
Like them or hate them, these guys are employing local creatives, suits and planners. They may even be training a number of them.
Loathe creative focused agencies or love them, without independent agencies in our country all advertising will be the same old. There won’t be difference or diversity.
And it will be fucking boring once the accountants take over.
Without independent agencies, there will be less jobs. Some may even say there won’t be an industry. Facebook, Google and many other media agencies are doing our jobs already.
Jobs that took umpteen years of art school, English lessons, ad school and carting folios on sweaty trains all over the world. Overnight successes at least twenty years in the making.
It’s easy to pull people down, especially when they drop their guard and admit their mistakes.
But we must also remember these companies employ the people who make up our industry, an industry that has shrunk to nearly half its size from ten years ago. We should be finding the reasons to go ‘well done on doing something I never had the balls to do – start an agency that employs people’ rather than find reasons to put down their ambitions.
If anyone is reading this I hope it changes your attitude towards the industry in this country and how you comment on social media. We’re in danger of being outnumbered by number and data driven numbskulls on every side – even within our own agencies. Let’s support and get behind making our industry bigger and encourage more people to step out on their own and start their brand new thing.
At the least, it will lead to better work. At the most, it might inspire the next David Droga to join this industry instead of heading to Silicon Valley, or simply joining a bank.