‘I don’t really feel like a legend,’ business legend David Sable tells The Drum Podcast

In over 5 a long time’ provider to the advert business, Sable has served as leader running officer at Wunderman and international leader government of Young & Rubicam (each retail outlets that experience since been subsumed beneath the VML banner). He’s additionally been a senior marketing consultant to these corporations’ father or mother crew WPP, an accessory professor on the Sy Syms School of Business and sat on forums for the likes of Unicef USA. Since 2023, he’s been vice-chairman of ‘challenger holding company’ Stagwell.

But in spite of that sparkling CV, he’s reluctant to say the ‘legend’ name. “To me, a legend is kind of old news,” he informed us on a up to date episode of The Drum Podcast. “The last thing I ever wanted to be in my life is old news”.

Still, an honor’s an honor. And whilst his paintings with Stagwell may be very a lot ongoing, Sable says that receiving the award has given a unprecedented alternative in a hectic business for mirrored image. “I swear to you, I don’t feel like a legend. I come into work every day, I talk to people, my door is open. Sometimes I even get to work on work, which I love. Do I feel like a legend? Absolutely not. I feel like an ad guy… Madison Avenue is in my blood.”

Mad Man: A non-public historical past

Looking again, it didn’t take lengthy for promoting’s Madison Avenue days to really feel like they’re firmly previously. But for Sable, the previous Mad Men set-up used to be very a lot the truth of his early days within the industry.

His advert occupation began in highschool: an internship at the type of advert company that might be laborious to seek out now, a small Madison Ave store that specialised in retail. One day, a consumer got here into the studio, their company touch used to be out and Sable’s skilled lifestyles started in earnest: “I wrote a headline, I sketched out an ad, I put it into the studio… He loved it and that began my career.”

Mad Men certainly: the ones early days have been nonetheless awash with bottomless expense accounts, unending lunches, comp tickets and unrepeatable indulgences. He describes the primary time he walked right into a Madison Avenue cope with to do promoting paintings as a second of awe: “To me, that was Mecca. I couldn’t imagine a better place to be.”

From there, Sable says, he set out on a complete adland training. “I apprenticed at every place that I could find. I apprenticed for local newspapers to learn how to paste up ads. I learned how to do radio commercials.” He even made his personal TV spots: “I would go into Channel 9 in New York – a small, independent channel – go in at two in the morning, pay a union fee of about $50 and do a one-camera shoot”.

It’s that early enjoy that landed him a coveted spot at the Y&R coaching program, within the media observe. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me because I learned the business. That was the place to learn the business. That’s where the action was. That’s where all the money was.”

The message is the message

So started a occupation that might take Sable from boutique inventive retail outlets to promoting’s largest company teams, culminating in C-suite roles at Wunderman and Y&R. He by no means dreamed of those fancy titles, he says; his upward thrust throughout the ranks all the time adopted a concept of finding out extra on the subsequent process than the former. His very best recommendation for recreating that roughly trajectory? “Just don’t do the usual. Don’t be a lemming. Just because everybody is running to do something, doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do”.

Sable calls a selected example of this lemming mentality “digibabble”: a power assumption that as a result of such a lot of the business has been digitized, now the entirety is virtual. “How many people still go to the movies? How many people still go to live events? Live events were ‘dead’; nobody was going to go to sports events because why would they? They were gonna be on Roblox!” He shakes his head. “The bullshit that has pervaded our industry: I find it hilarious. New York Times print subscriptions have gone up!”

Accepting that, for Sable, method slaughtering a sacred cow of media principle: the medium may be very a lot no longer the message. “Marshall McLuhan really did a number on us. No! People don’t care about the media! It’s about your message!”

Which businesses will historical past take into account?

Sable left his ultimate position at WPP again in 2021 and has been at Stagwell since 2023. Does he rue a sequence of mergers and consolidations that experience disappeared the storied Wunderman and Y&R names that he gave such a lot to? Not slightly – as a result of, he says, the paintings they did isn’t going anyplace. “100 years from now, Y&R and Wunderman will still be the powerful names. They’ll be the names people study when they study advertising”.

Sable’s nonetheless a shareholder in WPP and shut buddies with a lot of its senior management. He says: “I want WPP to do well – if it does well, we all do well. A rising tide is good for everybody.” But his focal point is on Stagwell. “Vice-chair is one of those great titles that means absolutely nothing. It just means that I get to do whatever anybody wants me to do. I spend my days working with people, mentoring some of our leaders, mentoring some of our young people, working with our clients. I work with almost every division we have, whether it’s finance or HR or our tech group.”

The golden age of promoting?

As fond as Sable’s recollections of promoting’s Madison Avenue glory days are, he avoids being dewy-eyed or nostalgic; in reality, he says, promoting’s true golden age could be at the moment. “I think the opportunities are amazing today, frankly, just as they were in my day.” Looking again, it’s necessary to provide the biz its dues, he says: promoting has lengthy been at the vanguard of media innovation, simply as it’s nonetheless. “We were at the forefront of magazine printing when it was just black and white, then color, then photos. We were at the forefront of cinema. We were at the forefront of radio. We were at the forefront of TV.”

“We screwed up digital in the beginning,” he recognizes, however says that error will also be lengthy at the back of us, equipped fashionable advert folks focal point on what issues: the promoting. “We have the wrong arguments… We had broadcast, we went to cable. Now we stream. I wrote about this 10 years ago when streaming first started: that, ultimately, streaming would be based on the cable model, meaning aggregated bundles. You cut the cord and you strangled yourself in the threads… Because now, how many of us pay more for streaming than we did for cable? Because it wasn’t aggregated. You pay $50 here, $100 there. All of a sudden, one day you wake up and you’re paying more than you paid for your cable bill. So now you’re starting to see the streaming bundles coming together.”

What’s previous is new once more, in different phrases. And entrepreneurs would do neatly to permit that cycle to show and concentrate on the promoting. “The problem is we confuse the technology and business models. It has been a problem forever. A business model is a business model. Marketing is marketing.”