David Sable
Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer
Wunderman
“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the current.”
Those are the words of British author, journalist Malcolm Muggeridge many years ago, and they’ve become a mantra for David Sable. David’s advertising career spans more than 30 years and he’s been swimming against the current for most of it. His profound commitment to innovative customer-centric advertising continues to power his journey. In college, David was a copywriter and designed ads for a local newspaper; and he realized early how readers responded to better copy that was targeted, but out of the ordinary. As his career progressed, he joined Young & Rubicam and Wells Rich Greene where he own distinctive brand evolved, which thankfully bore no resemblance to the Mad Men approach who came before him.
Later, David co-founded award-winning Israeli agency Mimsar-Arielly and during his time at PR giant Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe he quickly became a trusted counselor to big name clients like Colgate-Palmolive, Digital Equipment Corporation and Coca-Cola. All the while this customer-centric fish never swam with the tide. When he rejoined Y&R in 1990 to lead the United States Postal Service account, his service approach helped direct a new messaging platform and other assets (including its logo), which are still in use today. An early digital entrepreneur, David co-founded Genesis Direct, a firm instrumental in establishing a direct-to-fan Internet presence for the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, National Football League and the National Basketball Association.
At Wunderman, David is vice chairman, responsible for managing the agency’s global marketing services network—among the largest in the world. He’s on the leading edge of technology working with many internal start-ups around the world. In 2009, David began a three-year term as Director at Large of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and was a founding member of its Digital Advisory Board. He also served as Lions Direct jury president at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. A frequent speaker, David’s views are regularly featured in Advertising Age, ADWEEK, Campaign, Horizont, NEO and his own blog: Weekly Ramble gets thousands of hits each week.
David is married to Debbie—a cookie entrepreneur; he has two daughters, a son-in-law and Henry and Teddy, his treasured grandsons.