Ted Royer: The Way I See It

Ted Royer, chief creative officer at Droga5 New York, loves to talk about how lazy he is. But if he really is as lazy as he claims, it proves that the best way to succeed in advertising is to spend all day napping and watching TV, while occasionally glancing at the mantelpiece as the awards pile up.

His cache of major gongs numbers more than 100, including D&AD Pencils, Cannes Lions, Webbys and the Facebook Awards’ inaugural Grand Prix. Despite his chronic indolence, he has also managed to sit on the worldwide creative boards of both Ogilvy & Mather and Publicis Groupe as executive creative director and regional creative director.

A mainstay of Droga5 since the agency was founded in 2006, Royer has worked on such celebrated campaigns as UNICEF’s Tap Project and Bing’s Decode Jay-Z. Here, he attempts to explain to Iain Blair how any of this has been achieved, given his impressive and ongoing aversion to doing any work whatsoever

I was born in Pennsylvania, in Bryn Mawr, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1967, the summer of love.

My earliest memory is walking down the driveway of our house, all the way to the end, when I was one-and-a-half or two – when I first learned to walk, and it felt like the end of the world. I still remember thinking, ‘Oh my God! I’m so far away from the house!’ And then I fell and my hands hit the pavement and I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ It really hurt and I started crying. I guess I was used to everything being really soft before, and it was the first time I hit serious pavement or rock. Then I just wanted to be back home.

My father was a stockbroker originally, and then he bought – strangely enough – an elevator repair company in Philadelphia, and he had it until he passed away. And my mother worked with my stepfather and his company which was a food supplier business. But her real calling was training dogs, and she became a dog trainer later in life. She loved that; it was her passion, and she really regretted never really pursuing that, but she came from a generation where she was told what to do – get married, have a family, and so on.

I had a happy childhood, very, very happy. I had one brother and one sister, and it was a pretty calm, idyllic time, even though my parents got divorced, which probably fucked me up more than I realised. But I have very happy memories and I remember crying at every New Year’s Eve, probably up to the age of around 12, as I didn’t want the old year to end.

Growing up I wanted to be Superman, and when I realised that wasn’t possible, I wanted to be a comic book artist, and I drew comic books all the time, instead of doing homework. I thought that’d be the coolest job.

My nickname in college was Chewy – after Chewbacca [from Star Wars] – because I’m really hairy and a loyal friend and I could make the Chewbacca noise. I think they just added the loyal bit so I wouldn’t be too upset about the hairy bit.

I was a terrible, terrible student. I thought school was incredibly boring. I’d come home, throw my book bag down and never look at it. I’d go and listen to music, draw, watch TV. I hated homework and studying, and I got a 1.8 grade average the first 18 months. The dean called me into his office and told me I’d be kicked out if I didn’t get a 2.7 or above, and I scraped in with a 2.7 – the bare minimum. So I was pretty lousy till my junior year, and then I took political science and history classes and I got a 3.8 average. Once I was interested, I did great.

I’d always thought that advertising looked interesting. Remember the TV show Bewitched [below]? Darrin was an ad man, working on campaigns, and I was like, ‘That’s a job?’ I was fascinated by it and the whole idea of working in a job like that and coming up with all these crazy ideas. Then thirtysomething [US drama series featuring an ad agency] came on while I was in high school, and again, it seemed like a lot of fun. I’d watch it and think, ‘I can do that.’ So after college I waited tables, smoked a lot of weed, and then answered an ad for ‘receptionist’ at an ad agency. It was small – just four people – and the president said, ‘You’re not going to be a receptionist, you’ll be our business guy, working on commission.’

So I did that, making cold calls and writing letters, and whenever the creatives came in – we had none on permanent staff – I’d think, ‘They have a fun job.’ They all advised me to go to Atlanta’s famous Portfolio Center [advertising school]. And when I got there, I was white-knuckle scared. It was so intimidating and I knew it was exactly what I should throw myself into. But it was hard.

If I was not a creative and could be equally successful in another profession I’d love to be a music producer. I think it’d be so cool to work with different bands and shape their music and their evolution. I think [producer] Rick Rubin does an amazing job like that, and what he did with Johnny Cash was unbelievable. Everyone had written Cash off, but he found the magic there and resurrected his career.

I had many mentors when starting out in the industry. First of all, at Portfolio Center, Norm Grey had a lot of great advice and also helped me expect disappointment and defeat, and helped me prepare for it. Then my first job was at Leonard/Monahan, and that environment was mentor-rich – David Baldwin, Kara Goodrich – there were a lot of great people to learn from.After that I met Neil French [former Ogilvy worldwide CD] who was an incredible inspiration. I loved talking to him, and he eventually hired me for Ogilvy, and I worked for Dave Droga really early on.

Although we’re the same age, his ambition is unbelievable to be around. It’s ridiculously inspiring for me and really does make you feel anything can happen if you want it badly enough. He sees a goal and just goes for it. But here’s the rub – he’s also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’ve actually never seen him yell at anyone, and he’s this very unusual mix of being incredibly ambitious and nice. So I was very lucky to start my career with some amazingly cool people.

The first advertisement to ever make an impression on me was the Coca-Cola Hilltop ad. I remember seeing it as a kid, and thinking it was this really great, sweet moment, and ever since that ad I’ve always had a good feeling about Coke – the world’s happy drink, that unifies us all. It’s never gone away and I’ll always have love for it.

The best piece of advertising work I’ve ever seen is Nike’s Move, directed by Jake Scott. It was perfect – so simple and pure.

My favourite piece of advertising I’ve worked on is Prudential’s Day One, where we got the financial corporation to talk to people in a very human way. I’m proud about how we were able to almost shape the company DNA. Second favourite is our Super Bowl work for Newcastle Brown Ale [If We Made It].

The most significant change that has affected the role of ad agencies, and the ad industry as a whole, since I started out, is the internet. When I began, it was print and TV. Now the whole digital revolution has completely changed the focus of what we do and how we communicate. I come from a generation that had access to nothing – you had to go to a library to search for stuff.

In the early days of my career I was probably a mixture of cockiness and deep insecurity. I felt I could probably be good at this, but our family had a lot of financial uncertainty and I carried that around all the time, expecting massive failures just around the corner.

Awards matter for some things and definitely help your career and make you feel good, but should never be seen as an end, or you’ll do work that just feels like it’s done for awards. You should do great work for the world to see, and then hope that it also gets recognised.

I’ve always wanted to do a campaign for weed, and I think people are starting to do it now.

But I would never work on cigarette ads, as both my parents were heavy smokers and died of lung cancer. That would be deeply hypocritical of me.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given is, whatever you do, be a great ally to everyone around you, and it’s like karma – it’ll come back to you. Show that your ego’s not in play and that you want everyone to shine. That advice made everything else possible for me, and I’d give it to any young person wanting to break into advertising. And also don’t stress about every little thing.

You have to be used to regularly having bad days in this industry! Among the best days was during the Newcastle Super Bowl If We Made It campaign [being in the social media] ‘war room’, live-tweeting and drinking.

What’s more important: artistic merit or success for the brand? Success for the brand, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But if brand success isn’t your first goal, you’re being pretty self-indulgent. We don’t need to prove ourselves as artists. We need to articulate a mission in a very inspiring, beautiful, moving way – and that’s the same for any form of communication – movies, songs, books.

I’m ridiculously lazy and my life’s a constant battle with it.

My enemies would probably describe me as lazy!

If I could time travel just once, knowing I could come back to the present, I’d travel to London, 1942. The Blitz is over, all the American troops are there, and everyone’s planning to take down Hitler. The energy must have been amazing.

I have two kids – aged one-and-a-half and four – and to manage a balance between work and your social or family life you have to be pretty brutal about carving out time for your family life – or work can completely swamp you and you’ll regret it. My kids are growing up so fast, and I’m very definite about leaving the office.

I’d never push them into this business. I’ll let them do whatever they want to.

How important is money? It makes problems go away. I don’t need a huge amount, but I do like problems to go away.

My biggest fear is dying young. I want to be here for my daughter’s wedding.

I last cried when my daughter was born. The nurse handed her to me and I started crying. I didn’t cry that much at the birth of my son. I guess I was more in shock.

My greatest weakness is that all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch TV. That’s my default mode.

The closest I’ve ever been to death was skydiving. I totally went into shock. I may not have pulled the ripcord.

The worst single day of my personal life by far was the day my mother passed away. Everything in my life had gone wrong leading up to that point. So that day was rock bottom. The best days were when my kids were born – just heady and crazy. But I also have to give a shout-out to the birthday party I had in Australia in 2004, which went on all day and all night – the best party and send-off anyone could have. To be honest, I was probably happiest that day than any other day of my life.

I love Aussies. I work for one, I’m married to one, and hopefully I’ll retire down there. We visit every couple of years and I love that country.

I think I’m an introvert, as being an extrovert takes a lot of effort.

My hobbies and interests outside work are drawing, sailing and scuba diving.

I have two sets of heroes. I’m in awe of people who create bodies of work that are so huge they’re almost like universes or worlds, like The Beatles. I’m a huge fan and their music is so vast you can just swim around in it. Or Jack Kirby [below] who created the whole Marvel universe in his basement, and now there are these hugely successful movies all based on his characters. My other heroes are comedians and satirists, such as Louis C. K. and Stephen Colbert, who both really challenge the way people think.

What makes me angry is when I fuck up, and I know it’s my fault. I get angry at other people, but I’m really angry at myself.

I do Google myself, like everyone else in this business. How much do I care what people think about me? I really think that to do well in advertising you need empathy, to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes in order to be able to communicate well. So this industry attracts super-empathetic people, and when you read stuff other people have written about you, it probably hurts more than in other industries.

I think Shazam is the single greatest human invention. The ability to hold your phone up and identify any piece of music is just awesome. And anaesthetic. That’s truly an amazing invention. The worst invention? Too many to mention.

My ambition is to write something of value that’ll maybe stick around for a while, and to teach. That’ll be the next phase of my career when I leave advertising. And I want to swim with whale sharks. That looks terrifying but amazing.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who created an environment that’s really fun to be in and that helped people be their best creatively.

People in advertising like to say that, at the end of the day, what really matters is the work. But I think it’s all the friendships. I’ll remember those a lot more.