In the year that Ted Royer is turning 50, he can’t help but be contemplative. The Chief Creative Officer for Droga5’s New York office knows the significance of the milestone, yet his 20-year career in the advertising industry has seen him rise from among his peers. After all, Droga5 is the current agency du jour that has been churning out creative advertising campaigns for seemingly disparate accounts such as e-mail and marketing tool MailChimp, sausage and meat company Johnsonville, alcohol producer Hennessy, and athletics provider Under Armour.
BEWITCHED BY ADVERTISING
Born Theodore Wickwire Royer, it was while watching a popular sitcom that he became interested in advertising. While watching a rerun of the show Bewitched and seeing the character Darren write a fictional ad for Napoleon Soap, he was hooked. After graduating from the University of Richmond with a double major in History and Political Science, Royer’s first actual foray into the world of advertising was with now-defunct agency Caswell Coleman.
That eventually led him to the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, which then took him halfway around the world, working for Saatchi and Saatchi Singapore. It was in the Lion City that Royer met David Droga, and the foundation of a friendship and partnership would begin. Even as Droga headed to London to head Saatchi’s office there while Royer went to Argentina, the two would be reunited a year after Droga founded Droga5.
When I joined Droga5 I think I was the eighth or ninth person there, and now we’re approaching around 700 people in New York,” Royer says. “It’s been crazy. You know it’s funny, when we turned into 60 people, that seemed big and we had a certain culture then, and then it was 120 people and that seemed big, and we got our heads around that culture.”
“Recently, David Droga said, ‘not only have we never run an agency this big, we’ve never worked in an agency this big,’ he notes. “So the good part of that is I don’t think we’re bringing in any bad baggage or bad habits, like you would from other agencies.
Sometimes when you’ve hired someone who’s been in a certain culture for years, they bring their habits and culture over. Luckily I think we’re kinda free of that.”
GLOBETROTTING EXPERIENCE
Since his job has allowed him to live in different parts of the world, Ted can speak of the challenges as well as the excitement that getting out of one’s comfort zone can provide. “First of all, if you ever get a chance to leave your home country and work abroad, I cannot stress enough how exciting that is, how it stretches your brain, how it challenges everything you thought was the status quo or the way to do something,” he shares.
“It is incredibly exciting. And I always say, if you live abroad or live somewhere new, even if you have a bad day at work and get nothing done, when you walk outside you’re completely stimulated by a sky that looks different from where you grew up,” he relays.
“Or a language that you don’t know and you find yourself listening to it maybe as you would music. Or food that you’ve never seen before, or a culture that might seem alien to you but the more you start to figure it out, the more beautiful it becomes, and inviting it becomes. So if you get a chance to live abroad, I cannot stress enough: Please take it. It will make you a better creative and certainly a better human being.
As he ponders this part of his career, Ted turns introspective as he examines how being away from his home has shaped his own way of thinking. “Living in all those diverse places I like to think has definitely made me a better Creative, in that an idea, if it’s really great, should probably be able to work in different cultures,” he points out. “You begin to develop your mental muscles in a way that you problem-solve for a much wider audience. An idea that could work in Argentina but can also work in Thailand? Pretty cool idea. It’s based on some unshakeable human truths. I think that’s what you start to really look for: What’s a human truth that we can all share? Not ‘what’s a funny joke that people in my society would get?’ or an insight that’s only important to Australia. You start looking for real human truths. Truths like we’re all connected with our phones, or we’re all moving too fast as a society now. You can start having thoughts that cross the borders where you grew up.”
TED THE GEEK
While serving as chairman of the executive jury at ADFEST in Pattaya, Thailand, Ted also took the opportunity to share his geekdom with the gathered throng. While presenting some of Droga5’s recent work, he seamlessly transitions into a tour de force slideshow on comic book artist and legend Jack Kirby, the co-creator
of characters such as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and many, many more.
When Ted puts a spotlight on the man that comic lovers of all ages call “The King,” he credits Kirby with pushing on despite facing all kinds of adversity and cynicism when crafting his stories. “(Kirby’s) ideas were never limited. His ideas burst off the page. He was loyal, not to the companies he worked for, but to his creativity,” Ted says.
There is clear love and admiration that Ted has for the comics legend. Each image flashed of Jack Kirby art is followed by Ted gushing over the dynamic action poses and foresight that Kirby brought to the table. For all of his accolades and success, there is still a comics-loving geek at Ted Royer’s core, and it enriches the pool of insights that he draws from for every project that he undertakes.
