David Meet Marina Prieto

Teenage kicks: how the David ad network is growing up

We talk to co-founder Fernando Musa about how the network is evolving with age, plus how he balances his unusual dual roles as chairman at David and CEO at Ogilvy Brazil

Fernando Musa leads something of a double life. He is co-founder and chairman of the ad network David, which was “born from the legacy of David Ogilvy, the pioneer of modern advertising” and has six offices across the US, South America and Europe. But he is also CEO at Ogilvy Brazil. This seems like a lot of jobs for one man to manage, but he wears the situation surprisingly lightly.

“I love it,” he says of having both jobs. “People keep asking me why I do it but I love it. Seeing and living both sides gives me more cards to play and makes me smarter to understand different points of view…. This is a tool that gives me more references to play better, simple as that.”

And he seems able to juggle both while also having a personal life. “I still have time for my kids, otherwise it won’t work,” he continues. “Because it’s about people and if you don’t have the whole experience of being a person, you cannot do good work. So you have to have time to play.”

If you’re left feeling a bit lazy reading about this, you’re not alone. Yet there is a logic to Musa’s point about the different perspectives that his two jobs bring. While both David and Ogilvy Brazil are part of the WPP network, they have distinctly different styles.