Like so many advertising agencies, Droga5 received its highest accolades (so far) for doing community work. But even by award-winning standards, the ideas behind the Million and Tap projects are ambitious. Interactive, fun, and delivering a powerful social message, they help the disadvantaged while inspiring others. Both won Cannes Titanium Awards.

The Tap project for UNICEF originally encouraged New York restaurant-goers to donate one dollar for every glass of tap water they ordered, with the money raised going to providing clean water to the impoverished. The project has since gone global and raised $1 million to date.

Meanwhile, the Million project, developed in partnership with Roland Fryer from Harvard University’s Education Innovation Lab, rewards under-achieving New York students with mobile phone credits – call minutes, texts and music downloads – if they perform well. During school hours, the mobiles operate as mini computers, while after school they revert to their usual function.

“Social entrepreneurship is core to what we do,” says CEO Andrew Essex. Clearly, there are financial rewards in the wake of accolades, but Essex says it’s not the motivating factor. “We don’t want the entirety of our creative and strategic firepower used in the service of selling commodities,” he says. As founder David Droga declared on a recent visit, “the backbone of Droga5 is still the capital side, but it can still do good at the same time.”