Ted Royer: The Power Of Laziness

Droga5 New York’s chief creative officer Ted Royer is winning the fight against his own comical indolence, using it as a benchmark against which to test whether his expanding agency’s output has the power to move even the most immovable consumer. But don’t be fooled – his prime concern is to continue to brilliantly identify brand purpose and, as he tells Sarah Shearman, make Droga5 the most influential agency of the 21st century.

Ted Royer, chief creative officer at Droga5 New York, describes himself as “comically lazy”. With a career that has taken him around the world, winning him every major industry award along the way, that statement seems a bit of a contradiction. However, Royer explains that being lazy can be an advantage – he even gives talks about it.

“My whole life, I have been fighting laziness, but I have turned it into a strength,” he says. “When we come up with ideas I look at it from the point of view of the most lazy person – would they do something or click on something?  If so, then it is a powerful idea.”

Growing up in Philadelphia, Royer watched a lot of television, which is what attracted him to advertising. After a two-year stint in new business at an agency in Richmond called Caswell Coleman, Royer switched to the creative side in 1992, studying at the Portfolio Centre in Atlanta. After graduating in 1995, he landed a job at Leonard/Monahan. The following year he moved to Saatchi Singapore where he first worked with the man who later became his boss, David Droga.

After three years in Asia, Royer moved to Buenos Aires to work as regional creative director for Ogilvy & Mather in Latin America. “It was the best time in my life so far,” recalls Royer about his life as an expat.

Taking the plunge with Dave

Working around the world means Royer has an instinct for ideas that work across borders. “You realise you can’t rely on wordplay for your ad to work in one culture rather than another, because you don’t know who is going to see your ad or in which country it will get picked up,” he says.

When Royer returned to the US in 2003, he moved to New York (“the only city in the US I feel comfortable in”) to work for Wieden+Kennedy, an agency he admires greatly, as creative director. He then joined Publicis in 2004, spending most of that year in Sydney as executive creative director at Publicis Mojo, before moving back to New York to take up the same role. There he was reunited with Droga, who then set up his own venture, Droga5.

Royer soon followed and joined Droga5 as executive creative director in 2006, making him one of the early team members, helping build the agency into what it is today. “I waited until Dave had money to pay me to jump on,” he adds.

Royer says that having a leader like Droga, who is “super-ambitious” has trickled down the agency. In the start-up days of Droga5, the team would sit around a picnic table and eat lunch together, working on The New Yorker’s caption competition. “There was a natural feeling of working with people we loved and believing in the same mission,” he says. “It is so rare in advertising to work at a place that you really are excited about and believe in.”

Agency with a sense of purpose

Droga5’s mission is to be the most influential agency of the 21st century. Given the amount of accolades, awards and Agency of the Year titles it has racked up, it is certainly on solid footing to fulfil this ambition. For Royer, the mission is about making fantastic work. “It is great to come to a place of work each day that wants nothing but the best idea to win,” he says.

However, he points out that skippable ad technology makes ads the ‘uninvited guest’. “Part of our mission is to make that time as worthwhile as can be, so that people want to seek out rather than avoid brands,” he says. “We believe a company can say something worthwhile and not just be noise in people’s heads. Of course, we don’t always succeed at that, but if you approach work with that attitude, you will do a lot better than the crap you see out there.” 

But great work does not come without graft. At Droga5, the staff work long hours and weekends. At 8pm on weekdays they serve food  (“which is like catering at a bad wedding”) and usually there will be about a quarter of the staff in the office. “We think that is so normal, that is how fucked-up this place is,” jokes Royer.

But the main ingredient for creating killer advertising is understanding a brand’s purpose, he says. “We don’t like to sell products, we like to give a brand purpose in the world.” For example, Droga5 recently launched the How Matters campaign for Chobani, the popular US yoghurt brand. The first spot, aired during this year’s Super Bowl, conveys the brand’s purpose. It is about the process that goes into making the product, which includes using high-quality natural ingredients. And in order to discover a brand’s purpose, the agency is “insistently collaborative”, getting a lot of face time with the brand’s CEO and founders.

Prudential is another company Droga5 has worked with to communicate its purpose. Royer says it is among the work he is most proud of, because of the way it changed the category of financial services. His aunt even emailed him about the Day One films – which show people on their first day of retirement – telling him he should be making work like that without realising he actually had.

Droga5’s work for Newcastle Brown Ale is another example of creative that pushes back against its category, with its witty and irreverent brand voice in social media. “I love the fact that Newcastle Brown wants to poke beer marketing in the eye, because beer marketing is so shit, and it treats most men like idiots. We like being a smarter voice.”

This description sums Royer up pretty well, too. A friendly bloke with a good sense of humour, mixed with a healthy dollop of cynicism and quite a few swear words. He likens his enthusiasm for history to [British TV series] Peep Show’s character Mark Corrigan. But Royer is really nothing like this cult comic character – who certainly wouldn’t have taken acid before going to hospital in Argentina following a snowboarding accident, as Royer once did.

Droga5 has fostered a culture that “is really generous”, says Royer. “People will help you and we’ve got each other’s backs.” Long working hours mean that hiring staff who are “smart, funny and nice” is essential, he says. “We are good at calling out dickheads and, when they do come here, they get rejected pretty quickly, like a bad body part.”

Royer admits he is nervous about the agency’s move in April to a bigger office space in the financial district of Manhattan, to accommodate its growing staff of more than 250. “We pride ourselves on being really quick to react to something and being a bit scrappy. This [current] building has that – it looks like it has been duct-taped together. In the new sleek office, I wonder if that is going to change.”

While Royer is attached to the agency’s NoHo neighbourhood, he says he does not think Droga5’s culture is necessarily grounded in New York. The agency, which also has a Sydney office, opened the doors of its first London shop last year. “We have such great, talented people over there [London], they are going to thrive,” he says.

Working for an Australian and being engaged to an Australian, Royer, who loves the country, sees himself one day living there again. “I hope to always be involved with this company in some form.” But, for now, he is enjoying life in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife, 18-month-old son and two dogs. “I love pottering around the house and I am all about the play-date these days.” Like the slogan from Droga5’s Hennessey advert, ‘The man who couldn’t slow down,’ Royer is certainly firing on all cylinders – even if he is lazy.