Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5, argues that while technology has raised consumer expectations, many areas of life remain rooted in outdated practices. He provides examples of technologies like car alarms and paper passports that waste time and are ripe for reinvention. Essex believes digital innovation will continue optimizing how people spend their time by solving problems rather than just selling and making lives more efficient.

1. What’s Not Next:
Why The Future Won’t
Be a Waste of Time
As we head into the new year, we surge forward into a world in which
technology has raised the bar for consumer expectations – and advertiser
behavior. Today, we want instant access to everything, everywhere, and woe
betide the brand that fails to deliver. But even as efficiency becomes an
increasingly important metric, there are still areas of our lives that remain
rooted in Industrial Age antiquity. Droga5 CEO Andrew Essex looks
forward to a future in which the past stops slowing us down.
Written by Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5

2. “The cinema is little more than a fad. What audiences
really want is flesh and blood on the stage.”
Charlie Chaplin, 1916
“A rocket will never be able to
leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”
The New York Times, 1936
“Seven-inch tablets are tweeners: Too big to compete
with a smartphone and too small to compete with
the iPad. Seven-inch tablets are dead on arrival.”
Steve Jobs, 2010
redictions have a unique way of is that digital will continue to reinvent how
coming back to haunt even the best marketers do business – ideally for the better
of us. I don’t care if you’re Steve Jobs or – and that software will change the way we live.
Nostradamus, no one has an infallible It’s all just a matter of time. The question is…
crystal ball. That’s a truth worth remembering as when? Or to borrow a line from The Smiths,
we enter the season of new year proclamations, how soon is now?
especially if you’re one of the brave oracles Indeed, it seems to me that the central
from the intersection of media, technology, paradox of our time is the increasing tension
and consumer behavior. And if you’re trying to between future and past, between fast and
predict the future of advertising, well, it’s time slow, between too much and not enough. When
to admit everything we used to take as gospel an unprecedented economy of abundance rubs
is facing sweeping secular change. up against the immutable hours in a day, when
About the only thing we can all agree on demand for attention outweighs the supply

3. of available seconds, anything that maximizes and stop incentivizing futility. All they do
time is invaluable. In the future, brands will is awaken sleeping babies and shatter our
have to focus more on adding value to people’s increasingly rare moments of silence. GPS
lives, worry more about solving than selling, technology and keyless entry have already
and efficiency will increasingly become our disrupted entire industries. Can someone
most important metric. Like never before, do the same to car thieves? Bonus points
brands have the opportunity to make people’s to the first insurance company that turns
lives easier – even if it’s tangential to their this easily made contribution to society into
product. This will mean more rapid prototyping a cause marketing campaign.
and less inefficient communication.
Efficiency innovations, as the writer Clayton #DigitizePassports
M. Christensen has pointed out, save jobs,
increase productivity, release capacity, International travel now demands a tablet
and emancipate capital. and a smartphone. So why must we still carry
But all this talk of the future should remind around chapbooks better suited to nineteenth-
us that many areas of our lives are still rooted in century poets? Yes, the passport is a charming
the past. For every shimmering new thermostat memento to the physicality of travel. So was the
that screams ‘convergence,’ for every glossy horseshoe. TSA Pre and Global Entry are a step
goggle that proves we’ve finally entered a post- in the right direction, and are already changing
Minority Report paradigm, there are far too how we do things – but there’s so much more
many reminders of Industrial Age antiquity. that could be done.
That’s the rub: Digital has raised consumer
expectations to unprecedented heights. #EndAnalogueVoting
And yet so many inefficient technologies still
insist on sticking around. This should give Whether you chose Obama or Romney, chances
business leaders the confidence that change are you had little chance to vote how your
takes time, but the drive to push it forward. ballot was counted in 2012. I used a machine
Imagine what we’ll be able to do with the that pre-dated the Nixon Administration, and
time we save when coders officially render braved lines with longer waits than the actual
the past obsolete, and antiquated advertising campaign. New sites like TurboVote show how
models no longer waste our increasingly easy it could be to reinvent the system. We put
limited time. a man on the moon more than 40 years ago –
I’ll leave this speculation to the fortune- surely we can use our shiny new technology to
tellers. The purpose of this piece is to look put a man (or woman) in the White House.
in the rearview mirror, and focus on a few
actionable time-wasters and noise-makers #StopPotholes
I pray the future quickly drops. After all, what
we leave behind is the best barometer of where It’s easy to speculate without the slightest
we’re going. Herewith, my hit list of targets that understanding of asphalt mechanics, but surely
digital needs to re-invent for the better: America can’t claim to represent the twenty-first
century and still have things like the Brooklyn-
#NoMoreCarAlarms Queens Expressway. We already have fantastic
apps like StreetBump, which uses crowdsourcing
When the entirety of Western Civilization to help identify roads in need of repair.
is inured to a noise, chances are it’s no Why not think of our asphalt as media channels
longer necessary. Can we please agree that and empower Big Pharma to fix our highways?
these noxious kazoos don’t actually alarm Depression statistics would immediately shrink.
anyone? Let’s admit they don’t work anymore From there, we can focus on eradicating traffic.

4. “When demand for attention
outweighs the supply of available
seconds, anything that maximizes
time is invaluable.”
#FAALetMeLeaveItOn About the author
Anyone who’s ever set foot on an airplane dreads Andrew Essex is Co-Founder and Chief Executive
that inevitable moment when an aggressive Officer of Droga5, a global advertising agency
steward, following FAA regulations, forces you to headquartered in New York. Founded in 2006, Droga5
turn off your device, even if you’re Alec Baldwin. has been named Agency of the Year three times and
This proscription, according to New York Times is the fastest growing independent agency in America.
writer Nick Bilton, is based on unsubstantiated Before co-founding Droga5 in 2006, Essex
fears that tablets or smartphones can interfere was the founding editor-in-chief of Absolute
with the plane’s avionics, despite zero data magazine and executive editor at Details magazine.
confirming this hypothesis, which was last He has also held editorial posts at The New Yorker,
officially tested in 2006. With one in four Entertainment Weekly, Salon.com and Interview.
Americans now carrying tablets, and thousands Since Droga5’s inception, Essex has overseen
of daily flights, you can only speculate on the growth of the company’s client base to include
the cash value of all that lost productivity. Prudential, Mondelez International, PUMA, Kraft
We’d of course follow the rules if the FAA had any Foods Group, Coke Zero, Hennessy, Newcastle
actual evidence that our toys threatened safety. Brown Ale, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
But until then this annoying shutdown is Unilever, Qantas and the United Nations, among
yet another reason why air travel remains others. In addition to blue-chip clients and award-
the heavyweight champion of inefficiency. winning projects with partners including Jay-Z
and Usain Bolt, the agency is well known for
Please, someone reading this, fly us into innovative social initiatives such as UNICEF’s
the future Tap Project and The Great Schlep for the 2008
Obama campaign, both of which won Titanium Lions
at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
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