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Over the past 20 years, Steven Moy has worked his way through a handful of advertising’s biggest holding companies. Moy, who is leaving his post as Barbarian CEO, wanted to have a much smaller remit in his new gig as CEO of L&C, a small independent creative shop founded by Rolando Cordova and Gian Carlo Lanfranco.
He takes on leading the 15-person unit that sold a minority stake to Serviceplan and shares an office with Pereira O’Dell. L&C has a small creative studio in South America and counts AB InBev, Diageo, Dole, GE and Opendoor as clients.
Moy’s path through the industry—he started as a software engineer before working his way through Publicis Sapient, Isobar and R/GA in tech-centric roles—has given him a hankering to build something from the ground up. The Serviceplan backing gives him a support system that will supply data and tech to enable his vision of intersecting creativity and technology in a way that will help clients make every interaction with consumers a potential point of purchase.
“You can buy technology. You can buy a data platform. Creativity, you either have it or you don’t have it,” Moy told ADWEEK, adding that when he saw Cordova and Lanfranco’s work, it made him want to spend less time managing processes and spreadsheets and “really want to go back in the trenches working with the two co-founders to do some really brilliant work.”
ADWEEK asked Moy for his perspective on what readers can learn from his career, his new agency and the industry.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Career advice
You worked closely with Bob Greenberg, who built R/GA into one of the strongest agencies of 2010s (Moy served as CTO from 2017-2019). What’s one lesson from working with him that still consistently influences your decision making?
Moy: Bob told me, “Steven, I’m always building a 90% company. You’re never done.” Meaning there’s room to innovate and pivot yourself. He told me that the advertising industry is going through deconstruction because consultancies were buying creative agencies and the traditional model had to change. I’m constantly asking, “What’s next, what’s new, how can I bring value to the customer?” Everything we do must be meaningful and with a purpose.
Building an agency
You’re walking into a small shop, with a larger backing from Serviceplan. How will this setup enable you to scale this agency?
Serviceplan is independent, so they don’t have to report to Wall Street and can make decisions with a longer and more strategic view. When I was with the other holding companies, they constantly have to report back to stakeholders and Wall Street about performance. With Serviceplan, I have access to media and global production capabilities that can help L&C grow and add more value to a client. The right combination of creativity, technology and data, and how you leverage media, is how you drive more growth. Not a lot of holding companies can say that because when you get too big, you cannot move as fast.
Views on the industry
You’ve spoken frequently about how any interaction with the consumer is now a potential purchasing opportunity. What’s a real-life example of how you’ve seen that play out?
Any touch point should be an opportunity for building relationships, creating brand awareness and more importantly an opportunity for commercial interaction. At my previous agency, Fenty Beauty’s challenge during the pandemic was to sell a perfume, but no one had ever smelled the perfume. The brand already had 20 million Instagram followers. We used the ghost kitchen idea to make a ghost store in New York, then Milan and Paris. We used the Instagram following to create a scavenger hunt for a secret location to learn more about the fragrance. We also had branded content from Rihanna herself talking about the fragrance.
A Forrester report last year was very direct in predicting that digital shops in particular are going to struggle this year. Given your background at Barbarian and R/GA, which was called out in that Forrester report, what’s the path forward for any digital shop that might be struggling right now?
There’s a couple components. One is speed is a competitive advantage. Technological innovation is really driving our culture. A lot of digital shops need to be more nimble and move faster for our clients. When I was at RGA, we couldn’t innovate on a smaller budget. You should always be able to innovate at any budget level because everything is different now and technology actually can help, especially generative AI. It can help your imagination and help clients understand that ideas should not have limits.
