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Which is understandable since one of his ideas will potentially save millions of lives and another is attempting to reinvent public education.

This isn’t to say that Droga, the former worldwide chief creative officer wunderkind for the Publicis holding company, is averse to engaging with real, profit-hungry conglomerates. Indeed, his agency’s current client roster includes the names Coca-Cola, Microsoft, MTV, and Adidas. It’s just that his sexiest, most renowned branding feats to date have been in the name of—gasp—good.

I first read about Tap Project in the pages of Esquire magazine in 2006. Esquire had profiled Droga5 for its annual “Best and Brightest” issue, presumably (initially) because it had been impressed by the online video phenomenon the agency had created with “Still Free,” a seemingly amateur film that showed Air Force One being tagged with graffiti on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. Several million views and countless news features later, it was revealed that the video was a fake, made by Droga5 for the clothing entrepreneur Marc Ecko. Esquire’s editor in chief, David Granger, then challenged Droga to come up with something entirely new that demonstrated what some might call his delusional mission of leveraging brands to create moments that can shape our culture.

Droga didn’t come back with a piece of film or an ad. He came back with a vision: create a brand out of something that everyone needs but is free. Tap water. Then, for one day a year, get every restaurant and bar in the world to sell it for $1 and give 100 percent of the profits to UNICEF. Why UNICEF? Because more than a billion people around the world do not have access to clean water. Because thousands of children die each day from diseases generated by tainted drinking water. And because UNICEF has been fighting this problem for decades.

According to Stevan Miller, director of corporate partnerships for UNICEF, whom I saw in Cannes, “In thirty seconds he [Droga] presented an idea that was brilliant. Within an hour I pitched it to our chief marketing officer, saying UNICEF had to do it.”

Within months, two ads announcing the project ran for free in Esquire. In March 2007, hundreds of New York City restaurants participated in Tap Project, raising more than $5 million for UNICEF. Others helped raise money and awareness. Celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker and Rachael Ray came on board. Donna Karan designed clothing and glass for sale in her stores.

For World Water Day in 2008, Droga took Tap Project national, doing a most un-advertising-like thing: sharing the opportunity with many of the best agencies in the country. More celebrities donated time. Major corporations donated money and media space. More than a thousand restaurants in forty-nine states participated. According to UNICEF, because of Tap Project, within eighteen months more than ten million children would have access to one more day of clean water.

In Cannes in June 2008, I watched Miller and Droga launch plans to a packed audience at the Palais des Festivals for Tap Project 2009, which will roll out in more than a hundred first-world cities around the planet. Their goal: reduce the number of people without access to water by half (one billion) by 2015.

“This single idea,” Miller said, “will literally save millions of lives.”

I Met with Droga at Droga5’s Lower Manhattan loft space several months before his presentation in Cannes. Droga’s assistant, Mindy Liu, who has a gorgeous tattoo on one clavicle that reads, “There is a dark and troubled side of life,” and, on the other, “There is a bright and sunny side of life,” led me into his corner office, which was decidedly sunny. It’s a typical downtown ad-guy office in a typical downtown ad-guy space. Exposed white brick. Spare and comfy. Littered with ads living and dead. Droga was friendly and energetic, especially for someone who had just gotten back from delivering a speech in Dubai titled, interestingly, “Growth at the Expense of Creativity.” I had one last