Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [112]
The Esquire connection led to another opportunity for Droga. In the spring of 2007, a fellow “Best and Brightest” alum, the Harvard economist Dr. Roland Fryer, and the New York City Department of Education chancellor, Joel Klein, were seeking ideas from advertising agencies to help reinvent public education. Esquire recommended Droga, and after an extensive review Droga’s idea rose to the top.
Droga’s idea, still very much a work in progress, is called the Million, and its goal is nothing less than to reinvent public education.
Motioning for me to join him at his desk, Droga spun his monitor around and showed me, click by click, case-history-style, the latest on the Million.
The mission: turn academic achievement into a brand; make it desirable, tangible, and rewarding.
The insight: the most powerful way to reach students is to connect with them the same way as they connect with one another.
The solution: the world’s first communication device (with an assist from Verizon and Samsung) designed specifically for students.
While other programs around the country have experimented with cash as a student incentive, Droga’s recommendation was to use what many people above the age of seventeen consider the bane of humanity—the cell phone. The goal of the Million is to give a cell phone to every one of New York City’s million public school students. Why? Droga’s answer was to click play and allow a short film that was still being tweaked to demonstrate the ideal version of the process. Kids would use the phone, which would be disabled during class hours, to access learning applications and information regarding assignments, research, and school calendars. Kids who scored well on tests, met attendance requirements, and demonstrated improvement in classroom participation would be rewarded with additional free airtime and a number of incentives provided by commercial partners (an aspect of the plan that has many raising a concerned eyebrow).
To date, technically, the Million is more like the Twenty-five Hundred. It was launched in 2008 at three schools in Brooklyn, with more to come in 2009. But already, according to the Department of Education, there have been improved results in many key categories. According to Fryer, “We’ve started to get calls from Mexico, Chicago, and Houston inquiring about how they can have the Million in their schools.”
I asked Droga about the topic of his speech in Dubai and his plans for growing Droga5, which recently opened an office in Australia. “I don’t want to simply be the clever boutique. I want it to grow on a large scale, but of course not at the expense of creativity.”
The agency has done a lot of great work for paying clients. But still. As industry critics are quick to point out, its most celebrated campaigns are for not-for-profits, and the third (the aforementioned Ecko “Still Free” video), while a critical success, is still a one-hit YouTube wonder. In addition, its highly publicized and much criticized online youth-shopping/entertainment experiment, Honeyshed, hasn’t exactly set the retail world on fire. And despite Droga5’s doing projects for large companies, a blue-chip, agency-of-record anchor brand is still lacking on its roster. Plus, downtown office space (not to mention the salaries of some forty eclectic disciples) doesn’t come cheap, either. As we spoke, I wondered how long of a leash Publicis might give its well-publicized yet modestly successful experiment.
Yet as Droga reiterated his beliefs that brand ideas “can have massive influence and impact and create things that aren’t disposable, that will be around in fifty to a hundred years,” and as he