Jean-Marie Dru

Born in 1947, Jean-Marie Dru, a graduate of HEC Business School, began his career in advertising in 1971. In 1984, he co-founded BDDP, which was acquired by Omnicom and merged with TBWA in 1998. He became President and CEO of TBWAWorldwide in January 2001 and was appointed to his current role of Chairman in 2008.
Jean-Marie Dru has published six books on advertising and marketing: Le Saut Créatif (Lattès, 1984), Disruption (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1996), Beyond Disruption (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2002), How Disruption Brought Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Jet Lag (powerHouse Books, 2012) and The Ways To New. 15 Paths To Disruptive Innovation, (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2015).
Jean-Marie Dru has been President of the Film Jury of the Cannes Advertising Festival twice - first in 1982 and again in 1998. He has also been the Jury President of the first-ever Cannes Creative Effectiveness Award in 2011.
Jean-Marie Dru is also the President of the French Academy of Medicine Foundation since 2013 and the President of UNICEF France since June 2015. He is also a professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies referred to as Sciences Po Paris.
In 2008, Jean-Marie Dru was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur for his long- lasting contribution to the advertising industry and to the business world. Jean- Marie Dru was officially inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in New York in April 2016.