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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?