Droga5 Global CEO and The Monkeys Co-Founder Mark Green Dies at 53

Mark Green, global CEO of Droga5 and co-founder of the Australian agency The Monkeys, died of a heart attack in New York City last Saturday. He was 53. A company statement described his death as "sudden and unexpected."

"Mark made an indelible mark on the advertising industry both in Australia and globally," the statement read. "He will be remembered not only as the visionary that he was, but for his generosity, his humor, and his empathy."

Friends knew him as "Greenie." His death cuts short a tenure that had barely begun.

What was Green building at Droga5?

Accenture Song appointed Green global CEO of Droga5 in 2024. He relocated from Australia to New York City with his family to take the post. He told ADWEEK at the time that his mandate was to globalize the agency and prove its "glory days" were not behind it.

"Truly, this is the first time Droga5 has been global," Green said.

For practitioners, that sentence carried weight. Droga5 had spent years as a celebrated New York shop with an outsized reputation and a constrained footprint. Green's appointment signaled Accenture Song's intent to turn a storied creative brand into a borderless operation, with a leader who had already run an integration at scale inside the same parent company.

From a café idea to a $63 million sale

Green co-founded The Monkeys in 2006 with Justin Drape and Scott Nowell, two colleagues he met at Saatchi & Saatchi. The three friends hatched the agency over conversations at an Australian café.

The Monkeys went on to become Australia's most-awarded agency, with a client roster that included the Sydney Opera House, Telstra, Qantas, Ikea, Airbnb and Intel.

In 2017, Accenture acquired The Monkeys for a reported $63 million and later merged it with Droga5. Green oversaw the integration as Accenture Song's president of Australia and New Zealand from 2019 to 2024. That five-year stint made him the obvious candidate when the global CEO seat opened.

He usually deflected attention toward his teams' work. In 2025, he took the spotlight anyway, entering the AdNews Australia Advertising Hall of Fame as an inductee.

"Someone once said to me that to make it in the advertising industry, you need to be smart enough to play the game, but dumb enough to think that it matters," Green wrote at the induction. "And here we are."

What happens now?

Green is survived by his wife Rachel and his two children, Ari and Gisele.

Colleagues, current and former, posted tributes on LinkedIn. "Everyone who knew Greenie is a better person for having had him in their lives," wrote Grant Patrick Flannery, who worked with Green at both The Monkeys and Droga5.

Droga5's leadership said there is "more to come" on how his legacy will be celebrated in the coming weeks. The more immediate question for the industry is succession: a global expansion strategy built around one executive now needs a new architect, and Accenture Song has not yet named one.