How the CEO of Carat Builds Culture That Performs

The future of media leadership starts with a culture first playbook.

In this episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem, Ben Lambert reconnects with his first ever boss, Michael Law, now CEO of Carat North America, for a full circle conversation on leadership, legacy, and the evolution of modern media. With candor, warmth, and a healthy dose of Boston sports analogies, Mike shares lessons from 25 years at Carat, where culture, curiosity, and coaching sit at the core of the agency’s DNA.

They dive into:

• Why today’s media leaders need to think like comms planners and coaches
• How Carat’s culture first mindset drives innovation, growth, and retention
• What real leadership looks like in a time of industry volatility
• How to build consistent cultural impact—not just flash-in-the-pan moments

Mike’s bow tie theory — that culture sits at the center of brand and business impact — echoes Sightly’s belief that showing up in culture drives better performance across the board. And his take on missed Wimbledon brand moments? A powerful reminder that speed, authenticity, and relevance matter more than ever.

In a time of fragmentation, platform chaos, and pressure to prove ROI, this episode is a timely reminder: great media starts with people, purpose, and a plan built for what’s next.

TRANSCRIPT

Ben Lambert
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem. I'm your host, Ben Lambert, joined today by Michael Law, CEO of Carat. I am extremely excited to have Mike on today. Mike, I believe the last time we were in an interview setting was, when I was a fresh, out of college, 22 year old interviewing to work at Carat.

The first time that we ever met. So it's nice to be on this side where I get to pepper you with questions and see how stressed I can make you in the interview.

Michael Law
I guess we'll learn very quickly. If I was nice to you in that interview.

Ben Lambert
I think it worked out pretty well for both of us.

You know, I had an incredible experience with Carat working with you and, you know, got to see firsthand, what an amazing leader you are, that clearly you've continued down that path. But would love for you to share with our listeners today about your career path, how you got to where you are today. So that they can get a little bit better sense of Mike Law's career path.

Michael Law
Yeah. Well, I'll just start by saying thank you for having me. But also, one of the things I love most about Carat and this industry is the fact that, you know, so many people who worked at Carat have risen into these great positions across this industry. And, it's just nice to see people like you having great success and that the tight knit community that existed at Carat. I'm sure a lot of your close friends are likely fellow Carat employees at one point. And when we have reunions or get togethers, it's always amazing. It's also hard to remember, like where people came in and out. I sometimes think people were here two years ago, and they're like, no, I left 18 years ago.

So says how old I am. But maybe also how old they are. But, yeah, I mean, my career, I, you know, I've been here most of my time. And I feel very fortunate for that. And I'm, you know, always grateful and humbled by the fact that they let me do this job every day, and I get to do it.

I started off in investment. I was fortunate enough to kind of meet somebody who told me about this industry, and I instantly fell in love with it. Was a student of the business on the investment side, really wanting to understand how everything worked together. I started in Boston, which was great as a diehard Red Sox fan and kind of growing up in New England to spend a couple of years there to acclimate to big city life before coming to New York?

And I just had an amazing experience there, learning a lot. We were a small team, so I got a lot of exposure to different things. But I was always very curious about how things work together. And, you know, our careers have spanned a lot of change in this industry. And I think we were kind of right at the forefront of so many things changing.

So when I came to New York, I came to Carat, it was a smaller agency at the time. And I've seen it grow through acquisition and different things. But the root of who Carat is has always remained the same. I spent most of my time in that first part of that stint, running TV investment and being part of the TV buying teams.

I did take a little career moment and went to the client side, which I considered to be kind of my professional MBA. It was amazing to go and learn how clients think about things to work for, a kind of a big fortune 500 company, to see how business operates and the role of marketing and media.

And then came back to Carat where we kind of launched our, our central investment team at the time called the amplify. And bringing together digital and out of home and kind of building a total investment structure, which I think was really important because, you know, consumers are moving across channels, pretty seamlessly. And I think we needed our investment approach to, to match that.

So I spent a few years doing that and building that team, which was amazing. And I loved every second of it. And about three and a half years ago now, there is little window of opportunity to take this job at Carat and to come run an agency brand. If you told me this when I was 22, 25, 30, 35, I probably would have told you that you were crazy.

I didn't necessarily have aspirations to be a brand CEO, but I love it. I love creating the culture. I love helping the teams grow and learn. I love talking to our clients every single day. I love talking to our partners to getting to kind of see the whole whole picture of it. So while I've been at Dentsu Carat for basically 25 years, I've had many, many different roles, which is kept it fresh throughout time and worked with a lot of amazing people and mentors throughout that journey.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, that's awesome. And I, you know, again, going back to our first interview together when I was 22 and talking about, you know, where you saw yourself then versus now, and you know, the culture and I, I do agree with you. The culture of Carat has always been, you know, one of its strengths and you know, all the different relationships over the years.

But, you know, now sitting in your seat and being in your role that you've, you know, were years ago when, you know, wasn't you being the one dictating the culture, how is that something that you've been able to bring forward of what Carat maybe used to be versus now, especially as the industry and everything around the industry has changed, but still kind of keeping that those core values.

Michael Law
Yeah, I think the one thing that's important is that for all that has changed, our focus has not changed radically. The tactics have changed the data and the technology has changed. But you know, our tagline is it's today is designing for people. And when I talk about that, I talk about it not just through the lens of how we build media plans and the idea that we need to connect media and our ads and our clients with with consumers.

But it's also for our own people. Right? Like we want to design an amazing experience inside the office place. We want to build a culture of community and people coming together. And I think that's one thing that has never changed. And so I, when I came into the role, one of the first things I did was I called almost all of the former Carat ceos and just had a conversation about them, about what did they think made the brand great, what were the things that they thought we should focus on because I think there was a lot of power in the legacy of who we were as a brand, and I didn't want to lose that.

So we do focus on the humanity of it all. So, you know, whether that's in that ad experience, the planning strategy, buying analytics, all that, but also the, you know, I, I went to college, I'm sure you know, this story. I went to college to be a high school math teacher. And I just wanted to coach the baseball team.

And so I didn't do that. But, I still feel like a coach and a teacher, and I believe strongly in the idea that you need to coach the player. So we spend a lot of time, not just me, but our whole leadership team. And I hope and think that I've built a leadership team like this, that, you know, we care about everybody who works here, and we want to give them the best experience.

And we want to be empathetic to their, their, their journey, and just kind of build great careers. I always say, like, maybe I said this to you when you laugh like I'm Team Ben. Like, I want you to go have a great career and make our industry better. And all of that will lift all of us up.

So, it's a big focus of mine. And I think, again, for all the things that have changed and obviously we've been through a pandemic, that we've been through media change, you know, we still really focus on creating a great environment for our teams to do their best work and giving them all the tools that they they need to do that, and then find people who are really passionate about doing great media work and love love the business that we're in.
Because this is a great, fun business, there's a lot worse things we could do for a day job for sure.

Ben Lambert
Yeah. It's awesome. And it resonates a lot with sports fans out there where you hear a lot about, you know, new coaches or ownership's coming into sports teams and bringing back the, you know, alumni or bringing back the former players and former coaches and keeping that community there.

So, you know, knowing that, you know, we share a mutual love for Boston sports. And you know the Red Sox. Do you pay attention to how those organizations and those leaderships and that does, as you know, coming wanting to be a sports coach, a baseball coach, you know, how much do you pay attention to, like, what Alex Cora is doing with with especially as the Red Sox currently have a very young team?

Do you pay attention to to that while you're watching the Red Sox on a daily basis, or is it strictly fandom for you?

Michael Law
Well, it's certainly fandom. Always. I would say I do pay attention to that. I pay a lot of attention to how athletes like, build their own training regimen, how they use coaches, how they use the teams around them.

I always find it interesting when you watch a tennis match at the end, they always tank their team, right? Like all the people that surround them. I think what's been interesting about Cora, this year on the Red Sox is he has said since the Devers trade, and even around that with some injuries that he did, he did have a difference.

And he had to go back to some basics, he had to rethink about what the goals of the team were going to be for the year, and how he was going to kind of get these guys all working together. And they had to make some big decisions about bringing on in our world. They would be hiring somebody from the outside.

But they, you know, they brought some people up that maybe they weren't quite ready to or they, they, you know, but it forced them to say, well, what are we building this team for the back half of the year for the future? And I think also for coaches like balancing external and internal. Right. They got a lot.

Not to say they get much more pressure than we do. We don't have any. You know, I don't know if AD age is quite as aggressive as the Boston Globe when it comes to managing our success, but, or critiquing our success and failures. But, but yeah, I think just how you handle that, how you build a long term mission while dealing with the day to day challenges.

And I think that's all about being very consistent in what we say, being very open and honest about what we say, and being very transparent. And having a strong point of view. I think we, you know, our role as a media agency and, for our clients, is to really understand what's happening in the industry and help them find what those new opportunities are, listening to the collective and then applying that to their business.

So, yeah, I do. I pay a lot of attention to athletes, coaches. But I think you can learn from other business leaders. I think you can learn, I really love reading about baby seals and how they operate their teams, and all of that. So, yeah, I think you have to be a student of leadership as much as you need to be a student of the industry.

And, it is one thing that I love. I do love working with teams and leading teams and all that. So, I think a good balance of my love for media. Plus I love for for teams.

Ben Lambert
That's awesome. And then how much within that obviously are you helping to support? I mean, you talked about when people have left Carat to go on to, you know, different things, not necessarily better, but bigger, bigger opportunities for what they're looking for.

How are you helping to support people in the education of growing because, you know, you talked about it. You have that thirst for knowledge of wanting to learn about every piece of media in the industry and then obviously other industries and business. You know, how do you help with, you know, the younger employees to help empower them to continue their education, where a lot of times people like myself included, when I entered the workforce, I was like, man, I'm done with school now.

So now it's time to work. And, you know, we realized that it was you had to learn your job in the trade and everything about it to grow. And that school was just a means to the opportunity.

Michael Law
Yeah. It's almost like the school stuff didn't click in for, like, ten years later, you're like, oh, wait, now I understand the foundational principles that I -

Ben Lambert
Yes.

Michael Law
I learned, but the first couple years. Right. You're learning vernacular. You're learning tools and systems and things you've never heard of before. I think for me, there's probably two things. One is exposure, right. Just try to give people as much exposure to as many things as possible and, and talk about why that's important and why it's relevant, be it you do have to think about, you know, what's my subject matter expertise.

What am I going to be known for? What am I good at? But then how does that help other people and how do I help them? So how do all those things balance out? So I think exposure is one. And then I think hard it's probably a little bit of an offshoot of that. But is, is experience.

And we really encourage our teams and our leaders to move people around. Right. Like, don't just be I worked on one account on one expertise because that is, you know, it will get you somewhere. Yeah. I'm sure you can have a very nice career, but if you want to really grow and learn, I think the more accounts you can work on, the more industries you can have exposure to, the more parts of the business.

So, you know, when people come into the, into Carat or into other places. But my advice to them is always to, you know, pay attention to what's happening around you. And after a couple years, you might say, yeah, I, I really like what I'm doing, but I love what Ben does. Hey, Ben, can you help me out?

Explore that. So it's why I never kind of like, you know, I don't love people to leave. Obviously. I want people to work at Carat forever. Just like me. Because I love them in the sense of family and community. But, I love that our community is really big. And I think there's an interesting part of that, too, is that there's ebbs and flows of that, like there's probably times that you and I didn't talk for two years, but if you called on any given day, I'd pick up the phone and do my best to help you, and you would do the same for me.

So I think you have to build community in this industry. Nobody knows everything. This industry has gone through immense change. It. If you think that you know everything about everything, you're you're it's impossible. So my job as a leader, I always say I want to be the, the, the least smart person in the room and the only smart thing I did was I brought all the right people that I knew who to bring to help answer those questions.

And if that takes ten people, eight people, six people, great. Whatever it takes. But, you have to give people that exposure and you have to move people around so that they kind of see, see different things. And it's one of the best things about agency life is that you get to work on a lot of clients, you get to work with a lot of media partners, you get to work with a lot of platforms and data providers.

You never know where your day's going to take you. So, it's one of the things I love about this, this business and this, this part of the business.

Ben Lambert
Yeah. I think that's awesome with the ability to learn and have different opinions. A lot of times people think different opinions isn’t valuable, but it really is extremely valuable to have somebody that has a different opinion or a different thought process on something that even if you do know about it, but just hearing somebody else's perspective is really valuable, especially, both of us, but you guys are especially in, you know, the face of your clients and being able to have different thoughts and different people thinking what's best for the client, knowing what what they know, and especially now is, culture is becoming so much more ingrained.

We talked about culture of Carat but the world's culture and how brands are connecting to, everyday culture that having different people on the teams that, you know, yes, it's good to have people that have been on the account for years to know, ins and outs, but also having people switching accounts be like, oh, this is what we did on this account, and we can bring this to this account.

And this is how they looked at culture versus this. So curious kind of how as culture is becoming more and more prevalent with, with the brand conversations and I've seen you speak, you know a lot of about this recently, how you guys are really starting to bring that culture element and the different people that you have on the teams and their thoughts of culture into connecting with the brands.

Michael Law
Yeah, well, I love this Segway, obviously, and I appreciate that you've been paying attention to what Carat's been doing. I will, I just wanted to just go back to one thing you said, which, you know, that idea of, you know, bringing people to the table and respecting other's opinions. I think it was one of the biggest things I learned when I, when I went to the client side, was all of a sudden everybody at the table was treated equally and everybody there was an expert, and you had to rely on that.

And I think I tried to bring that back to the agency of, you know, that there can be a mentality in some places that I have to be the smartest person here. I have to talk the loudest. I have to talk the most in order to succeed. And I don't believe that that's true. I think that those people often won't succeed because they're too narrow minded.

So I think that was a big learning for me at the middle point in my career. And I think as you grow up in the industry, as your job continues to grow, it is a hard muscle to let go of to say, I'm going to trust somebody else to do this. But if you taught them right, if you trained them right, if you told them to be open and honest and all that, they'll become great leaders, too.

And then you're building this army of people who can go do this with you and together with you. So I just wanted to reflect on that for one second. But, when it comes to culture, obviously, I will talk very passionately about it as a business. But we believe, really strongly, that culture's ability to move business is tremendously powerful.

The brands that are winning today are building culture, are hitting on trends, are being part of what's happening in media. And I think, you know, when you talk about the pressure of, do I spend a dollar on brand or do I spend a dollar on driving a sale? I think culture kind of sits right in the middle.

We've been using this analogy for lots of things lately, but it's kind of like the bow tie, right? Like right in the middle culture is long term brand building and in real time, like the brands that are showing up at these really popular moments and kind of building something around that are winning because it's a really cluttered environment for a lot of categories.

So how do you stick out? Well you show up in the right place with great messaging and great themes, and take advantage of the biggest things that are happening in sports and entertainment? I'll give an example. And it's not one of our brands. And I don't know that they may have done something, but there was a moment at Wimbledon last week where the night of the on going video is saying it was the most Wimbledon of all things that could happen, that the umpire had to stop the match because people were popping their champagne corks in the middle of points.

And I'm like, how did the champagne brand not, like, jump in there and take advantage of that? Now that's not culture. That's like a trend. That's a moment. But over time, all those things combined start to build some culture and maybe the culture of the brand is that we show up in these moments. So we just and we've got the data right, like we've built this entire cultural HQ tool that shows that when brands move in culture, their business moves along with it.

So we've put the rigor behind the science and the math of that. Not just that, the heart of it. We've worked with media owners to take advantage of those cultural moments to, to build culture with our creative partners. So, yeah, we think that along with attention, engagement are like two ways that brands can really win to that.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, it's awesome and obviously Sightly and our Brand Mentality platform 100% agree with you that, you know, to that Wimbledon example, it's the speed of being able to act that quickly. And brands today we see brands that either don't participate and miss the opportunity come in late or they come in unauthentically. And so having all of that together is super important.

But yeah, culture is the key today because it is cluttered. There's so many different ways for people to consume content for people, how they consume it, when they consume it, why they're consuming it, and then how many other of their competitors are showing up and, culture is super important and speed is really valuable. But also knowing your brand just the way Carat knows their brands, you know, knowing who your audience is, is, is super important.

So it's really exciting to see, as we talked about the evolution of the industry, to your point, it stayed the same in a lot of ways. It's just evolved in the way that it's done and for the best. I love your bow tie example too, because I'm sitting here thinking about that being like, you talk this way, you got to talk back this way.

But I can't tie a bow tie for my life. I don't know if you can do that.

Michael Law
Me neither. Maybe a media bow tie, but not actual.

Ben Lambert
Yes, exactly.

Michael Law
I do think that the example I gave like that, that's not new, right. Like brands responding in real time and that's very socially driven I think what you guys have seen with your platform and others is that you can start to see these trends emerge, too.

And I think what we're trying to also talk about is that it's not just the social team, it's not just the strategy team, but culture isn't one part of the experience. It kind of underpins everywhere. So everybody should be thinking about what's the moment that I can drive culturally relevant, our culture building platform. And I think for brands too, it's about consistency of that.

You can't just show up once and expect that, oh, I broke the internet. Boom. I'm gone. Like, you want to be the one who's there time and time again, building some culture around even even that, that moment. So, yeah, I don't want it to get siloed to social listening. You see something, you respond because some brands are really good at that.

But I do think that you can start to build broader cultural impact. And, and then what we've wanted to say is there's some science behind that that says when you stick out in these moments and when you do it consistently, it will actually allow you to stick out at the time of purchase as well. Lower down the funnel in those commerce moments, and when at the cash register, too.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, I think the consistency is huge there. I'm curious to see obviously every brand you guys work with is different, but do you guys ever see a lot of pushback on a lot of things where people are like, nah, like culture, we're not a culture brand. Like, that's not that's not for us. You know, and when, to your point, every brand can do it. It's just how they do it.

Michael Law
Yeah. I don't think there's pushback. I think that what we have to be mindful of and respectful of is that every culture means something different to every brand. Diana, our chief media officer who helped build a lot of this culture of work. Like, she'll talk about that a lot, like it's not omnipresent.

It's not equal. Every brand has a different kind of culture, plays a different role. And I think, you know, we're fortunate enough to have clients that span the spectrum. And even single clients and packaged goods that, you know, have two very different audiences at different, different ends. So I think you have to be mindful of, like, what is that brand's purpose and platform and how do you play off of that?

How do you bring that platform to life in cultural moments versus trying to push every cultural moment on every single brand? So there's some art and science that goes into it. But no, we, I think most brands will nod their head to, yeah. We understand. I think where the pressure comes honestly Ben and I'm sure you've you feel this a lot and hear other people talk about it is it driving sales like that sounds great.

But my CFO said I need to deliver 200 basis point improvement next quarter. And what we want to prove is that yes, it well, and like that short term ism of just straight to the bottom performance driven channels. Eventually a brand will kind of win over. And if there's eight people who all sell the same thing, the brand that's going to differentiate is likely differentiating further up the chain and getting driving higher consideration action and recall before they get to that decision making moment.

So that's why the balance and why we spend so much time kind of building this out is we wanted to help our client CMOs answer that question to their CFOs and CEOs. Here's why you should give me money for brands because it can drive performance. And it will prove out over time and it will actually help drive incrementality.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, that's huge. I mean, it's the again, back to things change. Things stay the same as it was all when it was just linear TV. It was a lot simpler on measurement. And now as it's grown there's a lot more. And it has to be proven out and not just, you know, what are the ratings of the show and how many people watched it.

It's what is the actual impact and being able to prove that impact. So that's really cool.

Michael Law
And I think to that point that all these channels need to act in unison, like, you know, we, you know, it's easy to say, oh, we went from TV to video, we went from radio to audio, all those things. But there are so many nuances.

And I think one of the hardest jobs in the industry right now is to be a comms planner and to be a planning professional, because how do you value an impression on YouTube an impression on the NBA finals, an influencer impression, a podcast impression on audio, a podcast impression on YouTube? Like how do you equalize all that? But it is so critical that one person can think through that end to end consumer journey and kind of try to validate each piece of that.

So I think you're going to see comms planners become really critical to the success of brand building over time, because somebody has to come back, bring media and creative working harder together. Put the data and science behind it. Since we're on a sports tangent on this podcast, I referred to my analogy as in high school when you had that annoying little point guard who would just be at your ankles all the time, like just trying to swat away.

But that's what I want a comms planner to be like in it all the time. Like, no, no, no. And oftentimes they were the best players on the team. And you, when they're on your team, you love them. But on the other team you're like, oh, just get away from me. But that's what I want to coms planner to be like somebody who's in it every single day and can can kind of run the game from beginning to end.

And I think that's going to become really important over these next couple of years.

Ben Lambert
I love that, and that was going to be my last question was what's your prediction for the future? And you took it. So I'm going to finish with one last question. On the sports tangent, what's your prediction for as we get close to the all star break here.

Red Sox back half, are they a playoff team or are they buyers or are they sellers. What's your prediction?

Michael Law
I never wanted to be sellers because I, you know, I just always want them to be in it. I obviously they've had a good few games that are out here. So the nucleus is there. You know, I do.

I think it'd be a longshot to say they're going to win. Although anytime they went three games in a row, we all start buying our World Series tickets like they're back. I think you’ll, I think you're going to see a little bit of sell to just kind of think what, where what are the white spots that white spaces we need to fill in for next year.

So a light sell. But there's a couple of people I really hope they don't get rid of. And, because the nucleus is really strong.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, it's definitely, you know, I think there's a lot of excitement going into the season and what the future was going to bring. And we're seeing it before our eyes. And so it's build for the future without, you know, ruining the short term I think is.

So hopefully what we see and, you know.

Michael Law
Very similar to what Carrat and what this industry is doing. Right. Like we're just trying to figure out like what are the white spaces that we need to fill in. What are we building off of? It's not a reset. It's not a complete rebuild moment. Like we're just kind of constantly like getting ourselves better.

But hey, for your, for your second home up in Maine, a lot of excitement with your guy Cooper flag last night. I think he's the real deal.

Ben Lambert
You know, there's quite a lot of love for the Cooper flag in the state and a lot of people that became Duke Blue Devil fans. Yeah. And so I'm sure some Mavs fans now.

So yeah, he's he's pretty, pretty exciting, exciting player for the future of the League. Yeah.

Michael Law
Well, Ben. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I’m glad we got to do this.

Ben Lambert
I mean Mike this was incredible. And definitely a cool moment. To flip the script for me from my first job interview to to get into the industry and to be able to, talk with you and, and share all of your wisdom with everybody. So, Mike, I really appreciate the time.

Michael Law
Yeah. You too. Ben. Have a great, great weekend.

Ben Lambert
Thanks, Mike.