The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity announced today that David Lubars, the longtime Chief Creative Officer of BBDO Worldwide will receive its lifetime achievement award, the Lion of St Mark, at the Festival in June.   

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Lubars has won more than 600 Lions. During his reign at the agency BBDO was named Network of the Year at Cannes Lions a record-setting seven times, leading it to win Network of the Decade in 2020. 
 
Lubars is credited with being the creative mind behind some of the most awarded work at Cannes Lions, including the ‘You're Not You When You're Hungry’ for Snickers, which won 47 Lions. That campaign was activated in over 70 countries and grew market share in 56 of the 58 markets where it ran in its first year, starting with the 2010 Super Bowl.  

Another notable piece of work, ‘HBO Voyeur’, which debuted in 2008, won two Grands Prix, five Gold, two Silver and one Bronze Lion.  

Lubars started his career in 1982 as a copywriter at Leonard Monahan Saabye before moving to Chiat\Day LA as a writer for Apple. A few years later he came back to Leonard Monahan, this time as a partner to build Leonard Monahan Lubars, before moving on to lead BBDO West as CEO and Chief Creative Officer. In 1998, he took on the top creative job at Fallon in Minneapolis, where he made some of his best-known work, including a groundbreaking series of early internet ads under the BMW Films banner. In 2004, Lubars returned to BBDO, where he remained at the helm for 20 years until announcing his retirement last year. 

“Great brands and companies are brilliant, high-quality, and deliver on their promises,”  Lubars stated. “They possess a certain kind of magic, but one not always expressed. The goal for me was to surface that magic, mine it, turn it into something tangible a client could grab onto and run with around the world. You do that by injecting effervescent creative air into the culture rather than mediocre media pollution. You surprise people, you delight people; they fall in love. It’s that simple and that challenging.”