Droga Effect

A confession by David Droga on the golden stage at Cannes: I'm guilty of giving life to these houses. A joke that hides a heavy truth: modern advertising suffers from an addiction. His addiction? The perfect case history.

I started an investigation into how the narrative of success has replaced success itself.

Agencies once created advertising campaigns. Today, it seems the final product has become the video that tells their story. The case study is no longer a tool to document the work, but has become the work itself , following a rigid and predictable formula: deep insight, noble objective, impeccable execution, miraculous results. But when did we decide that the quality of an idea was measured by its "presentability" and not its actual impact?

Strategic Investigation: Marketing in Reverse

The obsession with hindsight has spawned a parallel industry, a reverse marketing where storytelling precedes strategy. Ideas are no longer born to solve a problem, but are already conceived as how they will be presented to a jury.

Our investigation uncovered an uncomfortable truth, confirmed by external data: there is almost no correlation between awards won and the actual effectiveness of a campaign on business.

A Kantar analysis revealed that the vast majority of award-winning campaigns at Cannes have virtually no impact on the brand's business, and that their effectiveness in building long-term value has virtually halved in recent years. You win a lion, but you don't move a thing in the market. The question arises: who are we working for?

It's no longer important to do something relevant. It's important to seem relevant in the right format. With the right music. With the right editing. Thus, even creativity loses its exploratory function and becomes locked in a self-referential cycle. It is no longer at the service of people, but of juries .

The problem isn't the existence of cases. The problem is their centrality. The obsession with ex post storytelling has generated a parallel industry, where every idea is born with a thought about how it will be told, not because it exists. A backwards marketing style, where storytelling precedes strategy. We've stopped starting with the brief, and instead begin with the voiceover.

And the data confirms this disconnect.

The paradox of prefabricated empathy

One of the most disturbing paradoxes is that these cases often speak of empathy. Of listening. Of inclusion. Of purpose. But behind those words lies a perfect, surgical, defused performance. A staging that strips reality of the very thing that makes it powerful: its imperfection.

Most cases don't really tell the story of how a project came to be. They rewrite it. They purify it. They streamline its narrative to make it something juries can understand in 120 seconds. That's shorter than a TikTok reel.

Reflection: The Psychological Intuition of the Drug Effect

The paradox is that these case studies, so surgical and perfect, often speak of empathy, inclusion, and purpose, but they do so through a performance that strips reality of its imperfection and, therefore, its strength. Recalling past campaigns, one gets the feeling that they were urgent, necessary. Today, they seem to have been born old, written with the same template.

Perhaps, as I suggest in the episode, David Droga's true, brilliant insight wasn't creative, but psychological. Rereading an old interview of his in which he admitted that "creative people are selfish and insecure" and need the gratification of awards, a thought arises: did he perhaps understand before anyone else that creative people's need for approval was a larger and more loyal market than that of consumers?

The 3 Takeaways for Detoxified Creativity:

The survey highlighted three key points for breaking out of this addiction:

1. The case is a format, not an end. Use it to document, not to direct. A good idea survives even without an award-winning video.

2. The jury isn't your audience. Consumers don't look at cases, they have real experiences, without epic editing.

3. The truth is never perfect. A good campaign starts with a random intuition. Don't sanitize it to fit into a pitch.

   
   

Conclusion: The Question That Heals

There's no need to find a culprit for this "Drug+ Effect." We're all, in part, complicit in a system that confuses impact with storytelling. Detoxification, however, can begin with a simple, brutal question every creative should ask themselves:

If no one saw it, would you still do it?

To follow the entire investigation and reflections on the Drug Effect, listen to the Cherry Picking episode