You were at DAVID from 2018 to 2025, held nearly every creative role in the agency, and now you’re returning as CCOs. What did you learn during your year away that you’re bringing back, and what made you want to return?
A lot has changed. We’re different professionals in many ways, but absolutely the same at our core. We spent over a year as CCOs at Africa Creative, a giant in global advertising with a different culture from DAVID’s — one that taught and inspired us a lot in terms of ambition, business thinking, and devotion to craft. We worked with some of the country’s most valuable brands and managed some of the biggest media budgets on the continent. All of that adds to what we bring back with us.
This time away, and this powerful clash of cultures, gave us a broader set of tools to face DAVID’s challenges. We came back for the people, the philosophy, and the incredible brands we get to work with. We’re proud of what we built during our first chapter here, but we feel there’s still a lot of history to be written. Sometimes home calls you back. This was an invitation from the heart.
You’ve worked together for around 13 years as a creative team—copywriter and art director, Associate Creative Directors, Creative Directors, ECDs. Now you’re CCOs. How does your leadership dynamic change when you’re no longer a creative team but leading a creative department?
There’s a very fine line between being a leader who gives people freedom and autonomy and being a leader who simply puts everything on the team’s shoulders. We may “be” CCOs now, but we’ll never stop being a copywriter and an art director. We want the team to know we’re right there with them on the front line, never behind them.
We’re always creating, always two extra pairs of hands in the creative department. So, in a way, not much changes from our previous roles. The biggest change is paying even more attention to creating space for young talent to grow into the next generation of leaders. We only believe in leadership by example.
You’ve created campaigns that have become part of popular culture. What’ss the difference between a campaign that wins awards and one that actually enters the cultural conversation? How do you aim for both?
Making ideas that aim to become part of culture is so much more rewarding than making ideas tailor-made for festivals, so we’ve always chosen the first path. The good thing is that awards often come as a consequence.
Basically, the difference is the target. Festival ideas are entertaining to people who care about advertising. The real challenge of our business is to engage people who couldn’t care less about advertising.
You helped shape DAVID’s culture over seven years. What is the DAVID culture that you’re returning to lead, and what’s one thing about it you want to preserve and one thing you want to evolve?
It’s hard to sum up DAVID’s culture unless you’ve really lived inside it. But we’ll try: it’s an agency of unlikely arguments, weird insights, and unexpected executions. Every idea has a very clear reason behind it. And there’s always a certain lightness, even when dealing with the most difficult subjects. It’s a brand that knows not to take itself too seriously.
The challenge is making that culture last in an era when agencies have less and less control over execution. How do we keep the DAVID way alive in the creator economy, where creators are both the media and the message? How do we shape a narrative in the age of user-generated content? How do we preserve a unique style when AI is making everything look increasingly similar?
That’s the evolution we’re about to discover in our second season.
You said DAVID has always put the idea first." What does that mean in practice, and how do you protect it when the pressure to deliver business results, data, and ROI is greater than ever?
“Idea first” doesn’t mean “business second.” Putting the idea first is precisely the belief that a creative solution can deliver ROI, solve a business problem, and either be born from data or generate data itself.
DAVID doesn’t separate the “artsy” from the “dirty job,” because we believe every problem can be solved with a good idea. It’s usually harder, and honestly, there are much more practical shortcuts. But they’re certainly less fun.
You called this your second season; What’s the one thing you want to achieve in this second season that you didn’t accomplish in your first seven years?
They say Pancho Cassis, our Global CCO, always rents a big apartment with a piano in Cannes, and that the parties there are great. We came back to DAVID hoping he’ll finally invite us to stay there.
