Droga5 London has promoted multi-award-winning Shelley Smoler from group creative director to executive creative director.
Smoler will lead the creative department, oversee pitches, and work across all of the agency’s clients, with a specific focus on Amazon. She will also help lead the agency’s approach to its mentorship and diversity programs. She reports into Droga5 London’s chief creative officer David Kolbusz.
Smoler has recently been nominated for an Emmy for her work on Droga5’s Super Bowl commercial “Before Alexa.” At Droga5, she has led Amazon Alexa globally, Amazon Prime in the U.S. and Amazon Prime Video in Europe and the U.K. She was also part of the team that created “Metatronia” for Uniqlo, a performance piece created in collaboration with Solange Knowles and displayed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Smoler has won over 50 awards, including a D&AD Black Pencil and a Cannes Lions Grand Prix, for her campaign for The Zimbabwean newspaper in South Africa that took on Robert Mugabe’s regime by using the country’s almost worthless bank notes to make billboard ads.
The campaign, created by Smoler and her team while she worked at South African agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris/Johannesburg, made history. As well as winning the industry’s most prestigious awards, also including two Grand Clios and the ADC’s first-ever Black Cube, the posters are part of the permanent collection in both the British Museum and the Design Museum.
Smoler first joined Droga5 in 2017 as creative director and was promoted a year later to group creative director. Prior to Droga5, she was a creative director at BBH and worked across the agency’s full client roster, including the Guardian, Audi, Google, Heineken, KFC and Mentos. BBH hired Smoler in 2015 from TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris/Johannesburg where she was creative group head.
Smoler said, “I am lucky enough to be working alongside the nicest, most talented and creatively ambitious group of people on the planet. I’m looking forward to continuing to help grow and shape the creative department and be inspired by them in equal measure.”
Kolbusz shared, “To describe Shelley as “essential as food or drink” would undervalue her contribution and undersell how joyful an experience it is to work with her. She is brilliant, strategic, methodical, thorough, kind, and perhaps most essentially – she has impeccable taste. The agency will be stronger for her leadership.”
