What you need to know:

• Droga5 Global CEO Mark Green dismissed conjecture about Accenture Song's slow start in the Australian market to build a new breed media buying and planning unit: "We're moving very quickly, the team is doing a brilliant job and it will be a success," per Green. 
• New business and operational announcements are imminent although he would not comment on the current Optus media contract in review.
• Green said Australia's media, marketing, and tech sectors are more "clubby" compared to the US, attributing it to market size. "It's a very clubby industry in Australia. It doesn't feel like that in the US at all."
• On Droga5's global plans, Green said the company now has over 1,000 employees, "the biggest it's ever been," with offices across South America, Japan, US, UK, and Europe. Growth plans include Southeast Asia, Middle East, and China.

Mark Green was the architect of Accenture Song’s plans to shake-up the Australian media market and build a full media operation in Australia, poaching three top executives from IPG’s Initiative, which is now part of a merger process with rival holdco Omnicom.

Almost to the day 12 months ago, Mi3 broke the story that Initiative’s leadership team of Mel Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter had been poached by Green to build a media agency different to the current models in market operated by big global agency network holdcos like WPP, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom, IPG and Havas. 

But a year on from the announcement, very little has been publicly announced, leaving the Australian media and agency sector to speculate all manner of scenarios, including a widely held view that Accenture Song moved too slow on an acquisition of Atomic 212, which was acquired by Publicis Groupe for circa $40m before Christmas.

The idea of a local market acquisition was to couple the infrastructure and back-end systems and capabilities required for a media buying and planning outfit with the pitch and strategy-savvy credentials of Fein, Geer and Colter.

Timing issue

Green brushed off the conjecture, countering that Accenture Song’s three media agency execs did not start until September and accounting for the annual slowdown over summer, it had only been four months since operations had started.

“We're moving very quickly, the team is doing a brilliant job and it will be a success,” Green told Mi3 during a flying visit to Australia late last month.

“It was quite a bomb when the announcement was made and Mi3 broke the story. There's a lot of eyes on it. We understand the pressure – I guess the ambition with what we set out to achieve. It's been a minute – the four months that they've been here – you take out the January slowdown in Australia, it's probably three. From what I can see from my week here, they'll be making some big moves very soon.”

Asked if that might include Optus and it’s media buying contract, currently in review, Green said: “I can't talk about clients specifically – as you know, someone would kill me in the office in Barangaroo. But I just want to remind everyone … we always put forward a good show in new business and we're confident that we will make some headway over the next month or so.”

Green did not rule out more acquisitions but signalled Accenture Song’s tech credentials would see it build out a different model in operations and delivery.

AI and club class

Green’s boss and Accenture Song’s global CEO, David Droga, flagged some clues during his own whistle-stop visit to Australia for a fireside session at the AFR’s Business Summit earlier this month when he said autonomous AI agents and synthetic – essentially lookalike customers and audiences built from modelling – were among the highest-priority developments he was watching.

In an interview after his fireside, Droga acknowledged synthetic profiles would play a key role the firm’s media ambitions. 

Green inferred Accenture Song was going it alone: "Accenture is a technology company, its skill is in building platforms and software and capability around different solutions for business. I have no doubt that what we're going to build is compelling and capable of working in a new and significant way."

More broadly on his observations about the US market – he’s now based in Droga5’s New York headquarters – versus Australia, Green said Australia’s media, marketing and tech sectors were more “clubby”, mostly due to its market size. 

"It's a very clubby industry in Australia. It doesn't feel like that in the US at all. The industry and how it comes together isn't as prevalent in the US. There's there's the institutions, but they cover so many people and such a dispersed geography that it just doesn't have that closeness that the Australian community has. We’re obsessed with proving ourselves in every way in Australia, or maybe it's a case of we might be forgotten. We're so far from the rest of the world. So I think we take ourselves quite seriously.”

Feel the width

On his first six months in the global role at Droga5, Green said the business was now upwards of 1,000 people – “the biggest it’s ever been” – with a recent acquisition in Brazil putting it on the map now with offices in South America, Japan, US, UK and the US. Fast expansion is slated for South East Asia, Middle East and China with the ambition to bring creative thinking to technology and customer experience. 

“I've spent quite a bit of time in the Middle East, we're working on quite a few different clients in that in that area and we've spoken about Southeast Asia and China at different points in time For now, I think the focus is on getting every office up to the same level of quality, and then I think we'd go from there. But there is already client demand pulling us into new markets. We're working with a whole bunch of different clients in Southeast Asia, China and the Middle East already. Ultimately we're going to have to come up with a longer term solution."

A global AI strategy for Droga5 in creative and production is still early, Green said.

“I want to standardise that across all the offices – AI and production. It's part of the future. There's big bets that Accenture is making on AI. Droga5 will also have to make some investments in capability there, which are fairly nascent."