BBDO Worldwide chief creative officer David Lubars will retire at the end of the year, the agency shared with staff on Thursday.
Chris Beresford-Hill, who rejoined BBDO in December as chief creative officer of the Americas, will step into his role. BBDO did not share plans to backfill the Americas role.
Lubars has been with BBDO for more than 20 years, first joining the agency as CEO and CCO of BBDO West in the late 1980s, before leaving and returning again for the next two decades in 2004.
He has been in the advertising industry for more than 40 years, starting his career in 1982 as a copywriter at Leonard Monahan Saabye. In his career, he’s been responsible for iconic work for clients such as AT&T, BMW, HBO, FedEx, Mattel, M&M’s, Snickers and more.
During Lubars’ tenure, BBDO won Network of the Year seven times at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and was named the first network of the decade in 2020.
He says that while he is fueled by the work he made at BBDO, being in the industry has been “like a 100-meter sprint in a marathon course.”
“My knees hurt, you know. I want to walk. And this is not a walking industry,” he adds.
Inside the fabulously frenetic mind of BBDO’s David Lubars
Despite the tendency for people to age out of advertising quickly, Lubars credits his tenure in the industry, and at BBDO more specifically, to being “kind of ADD.”
“The fact that [the industry has] been changing so much, and that every day is a new challenge, is what’s kept me so interested,” he says. “The things I think I’m most known for were the things where we had [to make] new paths to unchartered territory.”
Campaigns that exemplify this include The Hire, a series of long-form films released in the early aughts for BMW, as well as HBO’s Voyeur in the mid-2000s, an integrated multimedia campaign that positioned the network against rising competition. Lubars is also behind iconic taglines, such as Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.”
Some of his most meaningful work has been for anti-gun violence organization Sandy Hook Promise, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial in 2022.
His career has been about “trying new things to put clients in a place that surprise and delight people in a fresh way that separates [them] out into a category that becomes part of the zeitgeist,” he adds.
In addition to his 20 years at BBDO, Lubars worked at TBWAChiatDay LA as a copywriter on Apple in the ’90s, and was CCO at Fallon for six years. He has won over 600 Cannes Lions, 700 One Show pencils and seven Emmy awards, according to a press release.
Nancy Reyes leaves TBWA for Americas CEO role at BBDO
Beresford-Hill is also a BBDO boomerang, who worked under Lubars from 2010 to 2017. As he steps into the global CCO role, he says he will take with him Lubars’ “fierce reductionism” to every brief, as well as his ability to make clear and quick decisions and support creative talent.
“[He has] this uncanny ability to make things simpler, simpler, simpler, and that’s when they find their brilliance,” he says.
Lubars adds that he identified Beresford-Hill as his successor as far back as 2010, noting that he “sees the big picture.” He adds that working alongside Nancy Reyes, who was named CEO of BBDO Americas in September, means “the next Renaissance has been set up” for BBDO’s leadership.
Beresford-Hill’s focus will be first and foremost on strengthening BBDO New York through a mix of new business and work, which he says will “strengthen the whole network.”
“David talks about keeping the culture alive. The daily work is to be sure that everyone believes that their very best is what’s going to solve the problem, and that we never want to dim anyone’s light to get through a project or a meeting,” he explains.
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