Davud Karbassioun: In the court of King Davud

A quick search on shots.net for the work of BBH London brings up, as you might expect, a cornucopia of creative highlights. Links to work for Levi’s, Audi, The Guardian, Lynx and Barnardo’s means further links to directing luminaries such as Ringan Ledwidge, Rupert Sanders, Johnny Green and Daniel Kleinman, plus various outstanding creative talents at BBH. But on a huge selection of those spots sits the name Davud Karbassioun. As head of film at BBH, Karbassioun has overseen some of the most critically, commercially and creatively successful television commercials in the UK.

It could all have been so different. Like many in this industry, Karbassioun had no plans to enter advertising. He was, in fact, very nearly a civil engineer. The son of an Iranian father and a Welsh mother, Karbassioun grew up in Austria, where his father was a nuclear safety inspector for the UN. Describing himself as a typical Eurotrash kid – “where your mates were like the Security Council at the United Nations” – he developed a love for film and the moving image from watching MTV and various English language movies on VHS, which his parents gave him to help with his now-perfect English.

Uncivil engineering

After school, he had no idea what he wanted to do, so followed his father’s lead and studied civil engineering at university in the UK. “I didn’t really even know what civil engineering was,” laughs Karbassioun. “He told me it was something to do with building bridges and it sounded interesting, so I did it.” And he was good at it. After his degree he gained a Masters and was about to embark on the process of becoming chartered when the university sent him on some work placements. “I really enjoyed my time studying,” he says. “It was hard work but interesting and enjoyable, but those work placements changed my mind. The engineers I met were so miserable and felt so sorry for themselves all the time, so undervalued, there was a real bitterness. It got to me and I realised I wasn’t sure if this was the right world for me.”

Engineering’s loss was advertising’s gain and when Bruce Haines, the then chairman of Leagas Delaney and Karbassioun’s godfather, asked if he would like to work in the TV department of the agency, Karbassioun jumped at the chance. “It was after a short time there,” he explains, “that I realised I had this real passion for film, and for filmmakers, and wanted to work with amazing people like Michel Gondry, David Fincher and Spike Jonze. I just realised that this was the best job in the world.”

In 2003, after a few years at Leagas Delaney, Karbassioun joined BBH and hasn’t looked back. The passion he has for his job is obvious, but so too is his modesty. More than once he dismisses his own involvement with or contribution to a project to deflect praise onto the creatives, the director or the line producer; “I’d say [my role] is one of a curator,” he says, before adding with a laugh: “Though that makes it sound really important and it’s not. I’m just someone who kind of keeps an eye on all our film output.”

Subscribers to shots.net can read the full interview here, or in the new issue of shots magazine, issue  136, out now.