Accenture Song shuffles again as it tries to gain momentum in London

Accenture Song is shuffling the deckchairs again, bringing Accenture Song, the agency (formerly Karmarama), under Droga5 in the UK, creating an agency of around 170 people. Bill Scott remains as D5 CEO.

Accenture song seems to have suffered from what we might call befuddled branding (hardly unknown in the agency world) keeping founder David Droga’s agency as a standalone brand with its other tech-based businesses trading as Accenture Song and, in some cases, offering ad creative – as D5 does.

Recently there’s been a further Aussie-fication of D5 (David Droga is probably Australia’s best-known ad export) with Mark Green, from The Monkeys (now rebranded as Droga5) as global CEO. He says: “We have set a fairly ambitious plan around doubling the business over the next three years. The vision for Droga5 globally is to be the most influential creative company in the world, and to double down on creative ambition, which is something that has always been at the heart of Droga5 since its inception.

“We want to continue that legacy, but also reinvent it in a new way for the future. It’s about getting on the front foot, probably answering some of the challenges that we’ve had historically, but kind of looking at the future with the idea of growth and reinvigorated creative leadership.” Tara Green from D5 in Australia is the new CCO in London.

Underlying all this is the question: has Song been a success? According to some measures it surely is. Ad Age recently computed the top ten ad groups by revenue and Song came in at two with an estimated revenue of $19bn, behind WPP and ahead of Publicis. Two more consultancies also figure in the top ten: Deloitte and IBM. How much of this is ad-related and how much what consultants also do (mostly tech), we know not.

The big consultancies themselves, once seen as the moneybags of the agency scene, are navigating unexpectedly choppy waters. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is taking the axe to them too. Some of the biggies, reportedly including Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton and IBM, have offered to cut costs to US government bodies by $15bn – suggesting they were operating on terms we might describe as generous. The UK government too is trying to reduce consultancy bills; it’s become a habit of public service managers to hire consultants when the going gets sticky – probably to mind their own backs.

In such a marketplace companies like Accenture may be looking for more bang for their bucks from their expensive ad purchases – it bought D5 from talent agency WME for $475m back in 2019. In such a context combining Accenture Song/Karmarama and D5 in the UK looks a pretty obvious thing to do. And it still isn’t a very big agency.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet made a rather odd announcement on its recent Q2 earnings call, saying Song had won a big telecoms media account (a departure as it hasn’t previously handled media business) although she wouldn’t say who it was. So it may be that Song looking at extra sources of revenue, maybe the “principal-based” media buying that’s all the rage among the traditional ad holding companies. Tricky for a consultancy but consultants have a way of talking their way around these things.

So is Accenture Song/Droga5 a success? Separating the two brands into, in effect, a holding company with lots of tech business and an agency group looks sensible, if that’s what they’re gingerly doing. Maybe that was Annette King’s job before she stepped down for health reasons. Most people are used to WPP owning Ogilvy and Publicis Saatchi & Saatchi after all.

Either way, D5’s increasingly Antipodean new management needs to get London moving.