The Lion of St Mark on his humbling victory lap

Time of India

a day ago

'Little ideas are like a pyramid of marbles. The big idea holds them together.'
It's what
David Lubars
, the former chief creative officer of
BBDO
, believes. His ideas, small and big, ended up building quite the career. Lubars was awarded the Lion of St Mark, the tallest award at the recently-concluded
Cannes Lions 2025
.
Lubars's work at BBDO is a roll call of pioneering campaigns. These include
Snickers
('You're Not You When You're Hungry') and the ground-breaking
BMW Films
. With over 600 Lions to his name, Lubars helped BBDO win 'Network of the Year' a record seven times and 'Network of the Decade' in 2020.
But here's the kicker: The trophies in his office make up only 60% of his haul. The rest? They were accidentally sent to a guy named Lou Bars in Kansas City, US, who uses them as meat tenderisers.
His colleagues joke that Lubars is the only person immune to ADHD medication, and that when he isn't reshaping
advertising
conventions, he's reportedly painting graffiti murals… in disguise.
The Cannes honour has cemented his place in advertising history. But his true legacy is the leaders he's mentored, the teams he's inspired and the out-of-the-box ideas he's unleashed. At his on-stage Q&A session at Cannes, he described his body of work and what goes into creating an iconic campaign. Edited excerpts:
Being back in Cannes, with a Lion of St Mark halo around your head, how does that feel?
For years, when I came here, I felt like this up-and-coming hotshot. Now I've evolved to a decomposing corpse taking a victory lap. But it's a humbling, lovely victory lap.
Why do awards matter to you, your clients and your agency?
How can you claim success unless you're noticed? I think it was [advertising great]
Bill Bernbach
who said, 'If you're not noticed, the rest is academic.'
Awards are a really good way to see what cynical judges think you are… something the public will, too.
What kind of pressure did you feel as CCO at one of the world's biggest agencies — to keep things fresh, but also give your teams the freedom to experiment and sometimes to fail?
You want to give your client a new path that hasn't been charted before. The pressure is to find it, do it and then, once you do it, pursue it. I think part of it is because I'm ADHD, so I'm always bored and I like new, interesting things.
Do some clients have this sense of wanting to chase the shiny new toy? Agencies as well? As the CCO, did you feel you had to defend your work, like Snickers, rather than run it uninterrupted?
No, but the challenge is what you just said. You have to always keep it shiny and new. It shows up with a new haircut, with a new suit, so it feels like a friend who is refreshing to see.
There's a funny story about how you got into BBDO and developed your relationship with [CEO] Andrew J Robertson over lunch. Do you want to share that episode?
I was at Fallon and Andrew had [just] come to New York. He'd been there for a couple of years and I thought we were just having lunch, but he wanted to talk about us maybe being partners. So, we met at the restaurant and Andrew was late and his phone was dead, so he used my phone and drained my battery. Then we ate and he forgot his wallet, so I had to pay. Then he goes, 'Okay, I have to use the men's.' And I go, 'You want me to do that for you, too?' (Laughs) But we had a really good chat, and here we are, 20-plus years later.
When you submitted the iconic BMW Films into the Cannes Lions festival the first time around as a campaign entry, it was rejected.
I'm still annoyed about it. We entered it in 2001 and they sent it back. The judges are like, 'Is it advertising?' And I'm like, 'That's the wrong question.' The question should be, 'What is advertising?' Because if it's going to be on this thing, it has to be different from TV. It has to draw you in, and it's the best car demo on earth, ever.
And I go, 'Let me get this: A show that's recognising out-of-the-box thinking is killing us for being so out of the box.'
The next year,
Dan Wieden
was the jury president and he called me and said, 'I'm going to do something. I think you'll think it's kind of cool. We're going to do a new award called the Titanium that I'm inventing just for this.'
There has been talk about the business now needing lots of little ideas. Do you still believe in the power of a big idea?
Yeah, I think you need a lot of little executions of [one] big idea.
What are the top lessons that you'd leave people with?
Only the truth works. It can't just be 'this is cool' or 'this is creative'. You must work with your planning team and your account team and client team to extract the magical truth that a brand has. And people can tell if you don't have it. And you need to have great work every year to have a great career. You can't just live off the fumes of one thing.
If you had to join the business today, how would you do it differently in a world dominated by AI?
Have big ideas that can be executed in a trillion ways. I think that the Snickers idea is kind of like the model and then you should have 500 other things that speak to people individually. But to me, it's like a pyramid of marbles. You're trying to keep the pyramid together and a big idea is what holds it together. Without a big idea, it splays across the floor and it's just a bunch of things just slipping and sliding.
Where does innovation lie now in marketing?
We can learn the technology, but [it's] not going to learn what we do. So, that's what you should do. Learn about technology, use it, but [remember that] technology is timely. A big idea is timeless, bigger than even advertising. [Quentin] Tarantino movies are big ideas. That's what people respond to.