Al Moseley Opens Up About Taking the Helm at 180 Amsterdam

When 180 Amsterdam CCO Al Moseley discovered that his agency’s managing partner and president, Kevin Dundas, was jumping ship to Droga5, he had two choices. Panic or take up the reins himself. As a lifelong creative person, the idea of taking responsibility for the nitty-gritty of running a business was an intimidating prospect. 18 months later, though, and Al’s perspective has – if you’ll pardon the pun – done a complete 180. 

“I actually thought there would be some secret to it that I wouldn’t understand, I had almost an illogical fear of ding it. What I realised was that it was completely unfounded. The business of running a business and the business of creativity are completely intertwined,” he said.

Speaking at Spikes Asia at the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore, Al took to the stage to share his view that more agencies should put creative people in business leadership roles. Traditionally MD and CEO roles in advertising agencies tend to be filled by those who have come up via account management and traditional business routes, but according to Al the skills and experience built up as a creative and creative director put him in a better position for running the company than he originally thought – and allowed him to make ideas the heart of the business.

“When I took over, I rang people I knew, CEOs and people like that and they laughed at me! ‘You’re going to running a company? They must be mad’. Maybe a little madness helps. Having a creative person at the helm changed the focus of the business. It wasn’t just about the bottom line. We knew the bottom line was important but getting our creative product right and delivering business results to clients was the most important thing,” he said.

Al confesses that the beginning of his ‘business leadership’ journey saw him turn to dubious self-help books and Internet gurus in search of the elusive ‘secret’ before realising that he already had the skills he needed after all. These days he believes that the specifics of business and leadership should be demystified for all creatives, but he also reckons that the younger generation don’t see quite the same division between creativity and business anyway. 

“The younger part of our creative actually gets it because they’ve grown up with a world of technology and they’ve seen the growth of the entrepreneur over the last 15 years. It’s changed the way creatives think. They’ve seen that creativity drives business,” he says. “Actually the ones most switched on are young. Their heroes aren’t just people in advertising, they’re people who run tech companies as well.”

Taking inspiration from the likes of Gabe Newell, the billionaire behind games development company and online distribution network Valve, Moseley has also introduced a flatter, less hierarchical structure to the agency. It’s an approach that not only brings creatives closer to the business but also encourages account management to prioritise powerful ideas over client appeasement.

“Everyone takes that responsibility on,” he says. “When we hire people our policy is to hire people who really understand creativity and creative works and who also understand how creativity can help develop business. That means they can talk to clients and help them understand the power of our product. Often I think account management is driven by strength of relationship rather than the power of creativity in the world of business.”

So far, says Al, the traditional model has prevented creative people really getting involved in the running of the business at a meaningful or practical level, perhaps stemming from the industry’s paradoxical mistrust of creative people. “There are awesome exceptions, John Boiler at 72andSunny for example. But I think the business has be slow to respond because the people who run the business are often not the creative leads. Creative leads are shipped in and shipped out.” 

Since taking over as President, Al has given the agency a structural overhaul – by removing as many unnecessary and unwieldy structures as possible. This philosophy also extends to the agency’s approach to production.

“I decided to change things and take project management, production, studio, broadcast production and make it one department, almost half of the agency. It’s worked really well. We’ve got a really good head of production, Susan Cook, who can understand almost any type of build of problem. We’ve started training up project managers to go on film shoots, so everybody is cross-fertilizing. People are learning new digital skills, learning from each other,” he says.

For the next few days, Al is going to be out and about at Spikes listening and learning.  “I actually wanted to come here to talk to people, to find out what their agencies are like, what they speak to clients about, how they work, what they feel is getting in the way of them creating great work,” he says, proving that insatiable curiosity is one of the many reasons that creative people make such great business leaders.