David Droga, a country boy who grew up about 45 minutes from the nearest store to buy a bottle of milk, used his imagination as his toy chest.
He was the fifth of six children in the mountains of Australia, at Perisher, NSW.
“I had to rely very much on my siblings, as my collaborators, my competition, my educators, my frustrators,” the Advertising Hall of Fame inductee told AdNews.
“My life was spent inheriting hand me downs and the thing with hand me downs is you’ve got to take them, reinterpret and do things with them.
“And I think that's a sort of a metaphor for my life. In advertising, you inherit briefs, which have opportunity and restrictions, and you've got to make it into something more.”
Droga, now two years in as CEO of Accenture Song, based in New York, and probably the most famous of Australia’s advertising creative exports, looks back and guesses that his competitiveness came from that childhood.
“I look back at an idyllic setting,” he says. “It's got nothing else to compare against, because now it's funny to see my kids growing up in New York City, which is about as polar opposite as you can get.”
He took his four children to the old house a couple of years ago when his mother died.
“We all went up to the lodge where we lived, all my siblings and all our kids,” he says.
“And I could just see my kids were blown away. This is Perisher in summertime, which is desolate.”
His children asked: What did you do all day?
And he told them: Every day was an adventure. We had to create our own. And being bored was kind of part of the MO.
“And so that's where you get initiative and your hustle and self reliance and independence,” he says.
“And I definitely think that that's probably baked into who I am, 100%.”
At age 10, he was sent to boarding school, Tudor House in the NSW Southern Highlands.
He describes it as a brilliant time, making lifelong friends. It was like a sleepover with best friends for a couple of years.
But he wouldn’t send his own children on a seven hour train ride to a boarding school and not see them for three months.
He didn't grow up aspiring to live in New York. For him, that wasn't real. America was just a scene from a movie.
However, his outlook on the world was influenced by his mother.
“Despite growing up in this isolated place, my mother being Danish, and to her death was a Danish citizen, was the most worldly, amazing person, and well read outwardly facing,” he says.
“She really made sure that all her children, despite living in this remote place, were curious and very connected to different cultures through art, music and books. So we had an appreciation of the world.”
When it came to moving to Singapore in 1996 to become regional creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, his mother said: Don't worry about it, I've got five other kids.
“That’s a very practical Scandinavian thing. It didn’t mean she didn't love me. She was saying, ‘He’ll come back when he wants to’.”
He does love Sydney but has no plans to be based there permanently, despite intense speculation after it leaked out that he bought a unique piece of land in beachside Tamarama.
The 1100 sqm home, occupying the entire headland black between Mackenzies Bay and Tamarama Beach, reportedly sold for $45 million.
The first place he lived out of school was Tamarama when he was 18, sleeping on the couch for six months in an apartment with two of his brothers.
“I always thought it was the best piece of land in Sydney,” he says. “When it came up, the stars were aligned, and it felt like a wonderfully irresponsible thing to do.
“I love Sydney and I've always come back. And I'm obviously coming back at Christmas with my four kids and wife. I think I'm always going to spend time here for the rest of my life.”
But he won’t be moving back full-time.
“I also have deep roots and connections into the US and not just business but my kids and relationships and friends,” he says.
“Part of the reason that I still want to keep my connection to Australia beyond myself is I really want my kids to have that relationship with Australia.
“They have Australian passports despite their very New York accents. They do love the fact that they have an Australian dad and they still eat Vegemite breakfast with their father.”
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