The Variable
David Mullen
CEO & Partner
David is CEO and partner at The Variable, a four-time Ad Age Small Agency of the Year award winner and a three-time Fast Company Best Workplaces for Innovators. The Variable helps global and North American brands beat indifference by combining innovation consulting, strategy, and advertising to drive growth for today and tomorrow for clients that have included P&G, NAPA Auto Parts, Nestlé, Frigidaire, and Lowe’s Home Improvement. The agency continues to charge toward the future in its experimentation and use of new revenue models, IP-creation, pricing models and capabilities, most recently acquiring an advanced analytics, applied AI and data engineering company in May.
In addition to his work at The Variable over the last 10 years, David also is an owner and co-founder of Sunshine Beverages, the Southern-inspired pick-me-up drinks which successfully took on private equity investment a few years ago, and was an owner and co-founder of 100watt, an outsourced commercialization company that partnered with clients and individuals to discover ideas, validate and operationalize them, and launch them as wholly-realized businesses, products and services. Prior to joining The Variable in 2013, David spent his first 12 years at a handful of agencies, most recently MullenLowe.
In his spare time… wait, David has no spare time. He and his wife have four daughters ages 17, 15, 11 and 7. All their spare time is currently spent figuring out college applications on one end of the spectrum, making sure the youngest did a good job finger painting on the other end of the spectrum and trying to figure out what the two in the middle of the spectrum need at any given moment.