David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer, BBDO, has decided to leave advertising after 43 years.

Lubars career began as a copywriter at Leonard Monahan Saabye in Rhode Island, one of the most influential agencies of the 1980s, before moving to LA to work on the Apple account at Chiat/Day. In 1988, he returned to Leonard Monahan as a partner and the agency was renamed was subsequently renamed Leonard Monahan Lubars & Kelly. Seven years later, Lubars joined BBDO West as its chief executive officer. Five years after that he left to lead creative at Fallon in Minneapolis…

…and his rise to international fame began. In 2001, David Lubars he rewrote what an ad could be with The Hire for BMW, a series of short films released in 2001 and 2002, starring Clive Owen, with cameos by Madonna, James Brown, Don Cheadle, and Gary Oldman and directed by Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, Wong Kar-wai, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and John Frankenheimer. Advertising could be entertainment. BMW’s sales rose by 17%. The campaign won Cannes’ inaugural Titanium Lion in 2003 and went on to become part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Lubars joined BBDO in 2004 as chief creative officer…

…and began accumulating a legacy of standout work, including:

HBO’s 2007 Voyeur, created with digital agency, Big Spaceship, and director, Jake Scott This was a multimedia project that included a life-size projection on the side of a Manhattan apartment building, creating the illusion that viewers could see inside. The films also appeared online, allowing users to peek in and see the stories in each apartment on demand.

He followed this with Snickers’ You’re not you when you’re hungry, a campaign that has run continuously since it launched at the Super Bowl in 2010. The first commercial, featuring Betty White, helped the band to grow 15% in sales in the first year.

In 2015 he led BBDO creative to recreate GE’s Imagination at Work campaign, making a staid conglomerate interesting to recruit talent.

Lubars will be replaced by Chris Beresford-Hill, who joined from Ogilvy in December to become Chief Creative Officer of the Americas. Beresford-hill spent seven years as Executive Creative Director, EVP at BBDO New York from 2010 before joining TBWA\Chiat\Day for four years as CCO. He joined Ogilvy in 2021 as North America President and Chief Creative Officer.