Mess and Magic in Advertising — David Lubars

[MUSIC] >> Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome to the Foss podcast. One of my great joys from this show is getting to sit down and talk with the best and brightest storytellers from across a broad range of disciplines. But it's not every day that I have the opportunity to interview one of the greatest of all time. That's why I'm particularly excited about today's conversation with David Lubars, Chief Creative Officer of BBDO Worldwide. David is an advertising legend. If there's a marketing award out there, you can bet that he's won it and probably more than once. Under his leadership, BBDO has been ranked as the world's most awarded creative agency network for 14 consecutive years. One network of the year at Khan, a record setting seven times, and was named Khan Network of the Decade for 2010 to 2020. David has personally won over 600 Khan Lions, 200 one-show pencils, and seven Emmys. He was recently inducted into the one club Creative Hall of Fame and honored with the Cleo Lifetime Achievement Award, and has also been named one of the top 10 creative directors of all time by Forbes. Today, David has over 20 years of insights from BBDO to share. He's a real treasure trove of knowledge, experience, and excellence. I can't wait to discuss with him how he and his world-class agency think about the craft of storytelling, staying ahead of the curve, and what makes BBDO the best of the best. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to David Lubars. David, it is such an honor to have you on the Future of Storytelling podcast. Welcome. Thank you, great to be here. So I thought to just start, I would ask you if you consider yourself a storyteller. Well, I consider myself only a storyteller. That's the core nugget of what we do, because that's how people, through history, understand things. I think it was Jean Luke Goudard, who said, "Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form. Complex layered, teared ideas form." And we've done a lot of thinking about it. We've kind of identified four pillars. A great story has unforgettable characters, a compelling plot. It's a populist entertainment, and maybe there's some social commentary in it. Even if it's funny. So those four things, if you look back, the Bible, you know, Hemingway novels, the Godfather, have that. Do you ever have people suggest that your type of storytelling, because it has a commercial motivation to help support a brand or a company, is somehow not as legitimate as more traditional forms like film or television or novels? It's an interesting question. Somebody, they always ask, a lot of times an interview is what you do art. And I guess my answer is, I think in art, the artist asks the question and answers the question. With what we do, the client asks the question, and we answer the question, using artistic tools, but it's commercial art. It's not pure art. It's a completely different form. What is the right form for the type of storytelling you do? You've traditionally worked in advertising, right, which would have originally been 30, 60-second commercials. How do you think about form today? Yeah, you're right. It used to be television and radio and print. Now it's all kinds of things that every day there's something new, and every day something else goes away. And it's a constantly evolving, chaotic, messy world now. It makes it exciting and you know, cool to wake up and go in and see what's going on today. That wasn't happening yesterday. I first became aware of your work through the BMW films. Those were radical in their day and incredibly successful. I think I read they're actually in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience? Where did those ideas come from? How did you make that happen? It's not the normal advertising. Well, it was created out of need. The team and I were challenged with an audience who was not really watching TV. They were traveling. They had children. They were looking at other mediums. So we know that they spent a lot of time online, even in the primitive days of 2001-2002. And that's how they also looked at cars. So the idea was, why don't we go there? Let's go where they are as opposed to trying to get them where they aren't. If you're going to ask somebody to voluntarily look at something as opposed to having it imposed upon them as TV did in the day, it's got to be a whole different type of communication. One that it's a magnet that draws you voluntarily. But there was no streaming and download in those films. It was like pushing an elephant through a garden hose, but we figured out how to do it. In fact, the original idea was to have it be an hour-long single film, but that couldn't be done as far as downloading. So the idea became better because of the limitations by having chapters. And you were working with some of the best directors in the world. You know, way you were functioning like a Hollywood studio, just with a different form factor, you know, shorter. Yeah, well, David Fincher of Anonymous produced the first batch and he got all those directors. And then the second batch was Tony Scott and RSA. So you're talking, you know, the best kind of people in. And it became sort of a cool thing for directors and actors to do once a sort of caught fire. I heard you say in some of the research I was doing that you are in a service business and that there's dignity in that. And I'd love to ask you to talk more about that. I think a lot of people and particularly people who are at the level that you're at, David, with literally being one of the best in the history of what you do might resist the idea that you are in a service business or might push back at that somehow or their ego might get involved and feel like they are not working for clients, clients are working for them. I've actually heard people say things like that. But you have a tremendous humility about it and I loved that statement of there being a dignity in it. Yeah, and honor. I see us as kind of being like a fine tailor or a hotelier, you know. And there is dignity in service industry and you have to have the service DNA or you don't. You have to be on call 24/7. There's always a problem somewhere in the world if something that needs to be addressed. And that's why I like to have the kind of creative people and the kind of interesting minds here because you want to have all the colors on your palette so you can serve correctly. You know, if you only know how to do two things, those are the two things you always try to imprint upon a client and it may not be what they feel comfortable wearing. So if I think you should wear a product but you want to wear a Brooks Brothers, we'll make the best award-winning as Brooks Brothers thing ever. And that's what I mean by service. Like we're going to find a thing that makes you feel great about your company and yourself. It can be done in a way that's famous and effervescent and award-winning and magical. You just got to put in the rigor. And again, I think that's having the service gene. And that's another one of those constraints, right? That you talk about. It's the constraints of the client. It's the constraints of the needs of the person you're collaborating with. Well, and I would say again, that's what differentiates between quote unquote pure art and the art we do. The best creative people and the best agency people love tight parameters. Tight parameters and then you can bounce around within them and do something as I say, magical. You talked about appreciating having great creative people around you, great talents around you. And I would imagine that your job these days, that that's a lot of it, is being able to attract that talent and keep them happy and get their best work out of them. How do you do that? That's the most important part of probably my job. Recruiting, keeping, nurturing, growing, great talent. And the way we offer it is when you come here, you get to see how good you are. Like we try to clear the obstacles and create a pathway for you to run through and be your best self. A lot of times when I'm interviewing people, I'll say, what do you think we can offer you that you're not getting at your job today because you have a really great job. I try to only recruit people who are happy where they are instead of you know, malcontents. So what do you think we can give you? You're not going to, and then if I can answer yes to that, we really have something to talk about. And so people come in motivated that way and then again, most cases they get to be at another level here. Give me an example of something that someone would say to you that you could provide that they were missing in their previous life. - Oh, you know, I want to paint on a bigger canvas, you know, a more public canvas. We can give you that, you know, or there's a certain kind of thing I want to do that you do well that I don't have the opportunity to do here. Okay, I want to learn to be a manager and plead. Okay, so there's all kinds of reasons people want to come. And as I say, if I can say yes, they're coming in with a good understanding. - It's funny. I was thinking about preparing for this conversation and how we're about the same age, David. But our lives have had such different paths, right? You are the top of your field at BBDO, you know, one of the most awarded networks of agencies in history of your field. How many people work there around the world? - 15,000 maybe. - Right. I have 15 people that I work with. For 30 years, I've had a basically a 15 person company, so I'm so curious about the perspective from, you know, sitting at the top of the best of the biggest. What would you say are some of the challenges of size? - So the challenges is not acting big and stupid. All of the leadership around the world comes from boutique backgrounds, including me. So we understand fast, nimble, efficient, to work with a little scratch to it, getting your hands into the sludge, you know, trying not to have a layered corporate mess. And so the whole thing is I always say we're a global boutique. So we're all kind of boutique mentality, boutique type of creative, but yet with the breadth and depth and a deep bench that a good network has. So that combination is kind of rare, you know. It's a powerful bad and good. If I say, you know, seven or eight times in a week, that's what a big stupid agency would do. We're having a bad week. If I say it once or twice, we're having a good week. So people around here know what I say. They're like, oh, yeah, you know, shake that off. And let's think more nimble. - And thinking nimble to you means not the obvious or taking risks. Like, what does that really mean? I don't like risks. Who wants to take a risk, you know? I believe it's risky to not be noticed. And it's risky to be invisible or it's risky to not have your brand loved. So we try to have that happen. But those aren't risks. That's how to capitalize on the money a client is spending. And make sure really it's a value as opposed to, I don't know, right off. So it's being efficient, fast. Like, you're a patrol boat out front of the, of the giant aircraft carrier. You know, patrolling the waters and seeing what's coming and making sure everything's good. That's really what a good agency does for a client as opposed to being another aircraft carrier where they're clanging into each other. - I certainly feel, maybe I'm just projecting, but I think that's one of the things that I've so appreciated being in a small company all these years is, you know, being able to have that direct intimate relationship with the, with the client and the, and get your hands in the creative all the time. Like, yeah, well, that's our culture too. I mean, I, you'd find that very familiar. - Next year is your 20th anniversary at BBDO. That's amazing. I mean, in a, in a world that turns so quickly to have that kind of tenure and longevity, I'm wondering if you can reflect on almost 20 years at BBDO. And any sort of big lessons or takeaways you've had from that incredible run. - And actually, it's more than 20 because as a young manager, I, I did five years at BBDO West in Los Angeles. And it's because the value set, which is the belief in this type of smart effort, and magic revealing work that lifts brands. It's a really nice place with great people, you know? I'm sure if you get three people in a room, there's some kind of politics, but it's a low-politik team that's for each other and that just wants to make great things. Why would you want to be at a place like that? - You once said that one should always be learning, but one should also always be unlearning. And I loved that quote, and I would like to ask you to explain what you meant by it. - I think about that every day. You want to get new things, but sometimes you get stuck in the concrete. It hardens around your ankles, and then the world leaves you behind. Because you're stuck in the old tropes and the old ways and the old in the box types of ways to execute and think. So you got to not only pick up new things, but drop other stuff. I always say my job is to stir the cement, but don't let it harden, and that's sloppy and messy, but that way it can flow the way the world needs you to. And you keep moving with it and don't get stuck behind. So that's kind of what I mean. Like to just drop the old, unusable things, and find new things. - And again, that must be an important part to your secret of success over so many years. Because the world changed a lot, but you've been able to change with it. - You know, my legendary predecessors in the industry from the 60s. I wonder if they would like the business today, because they were outrageously creative and deserved to be legends, but they understood what the horizon line was. TV print radio, you know, Sun Mountain River. It wasn't easy, but what they had to do is just put great amazing creativity into those boxes. Now the world is very confused. It's a foggy, dark mess. And you know, we did a thing, I don't know, 10 years ago or 12 years ago for this thing called Vines. That was the big winter at Kansas at your. Vines doesn't even exist anymore. So things come, they go, you got to discard, grab onto new, are you grabbing onto the right new? Or is that something that's a waste of time and you should have been looking over here? So somebody like me who's kind of A.D.D. Again, I like 20 balls in the air and being challenged and being confused and what's going on. But it takes a different type of personality to thrive in today's advertising world than it did then. On the other hand, the big idea is, as I said earlier, a timeless thing. So some of those big ideas from that day, from those days, would be great today, but just executed so differently. Well, how does this make you feel about all these new technologies and their potential to tell stories that are more impactful? Again, I'm always open to everything, but it's hard for me to say, like you're talking about AI, I don't know yet. And people shouldn't know yet. You have to see how it's going to go and how it reveals itself. Just like 40 years ago when computers came in, everybody had the same to freak out. I just say, relax. Let's let the answers reveal themselves and we'll see how it will see what happens. But again, as I say, a big idea will be important no matter what. So let's speak specifically about AI. Are you using it now? Does BBDO have different ways that it's employing AI? Yeah. It's really useful in a lot of ways. And by the way, it's a great information gatherer. The guy used to work for me wrote a book. He's a professor now. And he wrote a book about marketing and asked me to write the forward. So I wrote the forward. This is last year. And I spent an hour googling facts to back up my premise of what the forward would be. So today, it would take two minutes because I would just put the premise in an AI, I would find all the stuff that I had to Google and dig up. So that was awesome. Now as far as coming up with big ideas, it remains to be seen. Can AI understand the heart? I mean, that's really what I do. It all comes from heart. And again, will AI understand the four pillars of storytelling? Maybe. Will it do it well? I don't know. I mean, I remember when people said that creativity was the thing that would not be replaced by computers. And now it seems certainly that AI is a digital tool that is a very least augmenting creativity in a major way, if not someday, going to be able to replace it. I think we're so close to this moment of being able to have AI-generated characters, and the novels that don't end and continue to evolve and are responsive to your interests. I mean, there's just a world of new things that are just beginning to materialize through AI that solve some age-old problems. So you said a moment ago that it all comes from the heart, and that perhaps that's at the basis of a great storytelling, right? That it moves us emotionally. It reminds us of something that is organic to being human. How do you look for inspiration for your storytelling? Where do you find it? Everywhere. Look, I don't go look for it. It's just, I just feel submerged in it. And everything can be turned into some type of insight or in some type of interesting outside the box where to look at things. I mean, there's other things you can do. I was recently to another interviewer. I do different guitar tunings. because you have to reteach yourself how to do the voicings and it opens up new creative pathways in your brain because it's like a weird combination of math and intuition to play on these things, you know. So there's all kinds of things on constantly reading and you know, the usual answers, but I just find everything, even an ugly building can like turn into something. How are you feeling about advertising as an industry right now? A lot of changes taking place, competition from everywhere, for people's attention, are you still as bullish on advertising? Are you still in love with this field? Well, first of all, you have to be in love with it. And the industry, I think, is in a place of, it's, as I say, messy, messy, confused, foggy. So again, either you like there or you don't. You can have a lot of success in advertising. If you look at it as a constantly shifting change, you think you have to like that. If you're looking for parameters and lock things bolted down, not the field for you, what is advertising really? A great brand has an inherent magic that people will respond to and feel love for. If you reveal it, so to me that's advertising. Revealing the magic and the beauty of a brand or product. And by the way, the only thing that works advertising is the truth. Somebody sent me some ad from the '40s, where it says, "Stay slim and happy and it's signed off amphetamine." So, okay, so that was not the truth. And so when brands have a great truth and you reveal it, that's advertising. Joseph Campbell, in his famous heroes' journey, talks about the role of the mentor, that the hero is off on this adventure, and there's a mentor that helps them along the way. I experience from a lot of the companies that we get to deal with, that they think that they are, they and their product, they and their company are the hero of the stories that they want to tell. And they don't realize that actually their customer is their hero. And if they're lucky that their product or service is the magical gift, they play the role maybe more of the mentor in helping the customer on their journey. Do you agree with that? I totally agree with that. The customer is the hero. And the product and brand help enhance the heroness. So really companies, when they're at their best, are enabling their customers to be successful, to be more themselves, to be happier, to overcome and defeat the obstacle and come back to a transformed world in self. Well, I mean, using a lot of hyperbole there, but isn't that what any product does? It makes it better for you. But it's about you. Our customers understand where they come to BBD up. So they believe in creativity as an economic multiplier. They understand, I think they all understand that the customer is, comes first. So that's not to say everything we do is easy, because deciding what the right creativity is, is where all the discussions and the back and forth go. But I think all our clients see their customers as the hero. Yeah. David, you get, at this point I imagine, the opportunity to speak in front of young, up-and-coming talent, or you're out there recruiting them for that matter. What is something that you share? How do you inspire the next generation? Because when you hit on a big idea, that's simple and true, and magical, and doesn't need any more explanation than just a few words. And then that little few words can turn into 15 years of amazing work around the world. There's no feeling like it. It's very special. So the opportunity to be part of something like that is I think attractive to people. And do you have to constantly remind your own team to find that simple truth, to sort of pair back? Because I've heard you say that a few times, that it's sort of at the core of the best work, is that there's this big idea that's, when you hear it, it's a lightning bolt, or a light that goes off, and how do you encourage people, or how do you direct people to pair down and find the simple big idea? Well, we don't have to encourage them, because that's what they come here to do. It's really about doing it. And again, a lot of this is gut and taste. And there should be no shame in saying it. There's no shortcuts here. It's like a naked crawl over broken glass to find it and get it. And when you do, like the hairs, and you just know it, that's what you live for when you work in this industry. Have you ever been wrong with your gut on that? Of course, yeah. Luckily, more right than wrong. I remember when I was a kid, and I came to work on Apple. I'm giving away my age. They were introduced in the Mac. And the insight was, and it didn't need any other explanation, the computer for the rest of us. It didn't need any more explanation. So that wasn't even on, I think it was maybe on a few of the ads, but that was the insight of everything. So I realized, wow. And again, it goes on and on. And more things come out of it. It just has a life of its own almost. So that was, to me, always the goal. I could point to Snickers. You're not you and you're hungry. It doesn't need explanation. That's a 13-year-old campaign now. And it's a universal insight. I think it's in 83 countries around the world now, where everybody acts like a jerk when they're hungry. They're not themselves. They're cranky. They're a diva. They're this, they're that. And no matter what culture, no matter what language, no matter what part of the world, that's true. So Snickers is packed with peanuts, sort you out when you're really hungry. It's a great one. My dad used to carry Snickers with him all the time. Just waiting time to do that. That's funny. You say that. Yeah. What's next for you? I don't think what's next for me is some type of like, oh, now we've changed the industry to this. It's to stay ahead of the industry and keep consistently being great. The people I admire like in music are the ones who every year or every decade after decade constantly come in with, as opposed to living off the fumes of some hit from 2013. So what's next for us is to consistently be fresh and new. Given the track record you've had over these last many years, I have no doubt you will continue to do that. Thank you. This was great. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Charlie Melcher, and this has been the Future of Storytelling podcast. Thanks for listening. Our community brings together top talent from advertising, technology, entertainment, marketing, immersive media, and every industry where storytelling is key. If you'd like to become part of it, please consider subscribing to this show. You can also sign up for our free monthly newsletter, Fost and Fought, and learn more about our annual membership, the Fost Explorers Club, by going to fost.org. This month we're also conducting a community survey to learn more about you, our Fost family, and how to serve you better. Please visit the link in this episode's description to make your voice heard. We'd really appreciate it. The Fost podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our friends and production partners, Charts and Leisure. And I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe. Stay strong and story on.