Michael Dobson, CDO at AMS, on Culture, Innovation, and Leading With “What If?”

In this episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem, host Ben Lambert sits down with Michael Dobson, Global Chief Digital Officer at AMS, to explore his career path from retail management to leading digital strategy and innovation across ten countries and three business lines.

Michael reflects on the lessons learned from both client- and agency-side roles, his embrace of independent agencies, and the pivotal mindset shift of asking “what if?” to spark innovation. He highlights how openness to opportunities and mentorship guided his career and how thinking differently has been key to driving growth.

The conversation dives deep into:

• Culture redefined: Why true culture is built by people, not perks, and how AMS scaled employee resource groups globally to create belonging.
• Empowering voices: Why encouraging everyone—from new grads to senior leaders—to challenge processes and bring fresh ideas fuels innovation.
• Clients and outcomes: How AMS balances performance marketing with brand building, digs deeper into client briefs, and connects KPIs to long-term business outcomes.
• Navigating hype: Why staying proactive with insights and POVs helps clients cut through overhyped industry trends and make confident decisions.
• AI in practice: How new tools, including AI, are embraced when they solve real pain points and improve efficiency.

Michael also shares personal reflections on his favorite travels—Spain’s unique work culture, Greece’s food and history, and his dream of experiencing an African safari—while celebrating AMS being named a Great Place to Work.

This episode is a thoughtful exploration of leadership, culture, and innovation, with lessons on how to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

TRANSCRIPT

Ben
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem. I'm your host today, Ben Lambert, joined by Michael Dobson. Michael, how are you today?

Michael
Good, good. You know, it's a good start to Friday. So, doing well. Thanks.

Ben
Amazing. Well, we're really excited to have you on here. I'm very excited for everybody to learn more about what you're working on, your views on the industry. You and I have gotten to know each other quite a bit recently and always enjoy our conversation. So excited for other people to listen and hear all we have to say.

We'd love for you to give our listeners a little bit of a background of who you are, where you work today, and how you've gotten to this incredible role that you're sitting in today.

Michael
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. So I am the global chief digital officer for AMS, overseeing, our digital strategy and innovation, for, ten countries that we do business and for three different businesses and, really working with the leadership team and our overall day to day teams to, you know, strive for making sure that we're, you know, on the frontlines of what's happening in the space for digital media.

And, looking at how we can really strive for reinventing what it may be for our products and services and how we can, like, grow within the space to provide the best outcomes for our clients who range all across, different verticals. And all three businesses are very different too. So, it's several hats that I wear, but, overall, I'm over digital for everything that we're doing at AMS.

Ben
That's awesome. And, it's a really, really cool role to be kind of the overall digital lead and focusing on global, which is, you know, definitely something that, not everybody gets to experience in their career, but something that, you know, I know we've talked about with other guests on the podcast before, but we'd love for you to kind of explain to everybody how how you got to this point in your career, some learnings that you had from some of your past experiences that made you make this move four and a half years ago, to get into this role and and what led you here?

And maybe, you know, talk about if you had some, some great mentors along the way that helped guide you to this position?

Michael
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, man. I could go far and deep, but we'll see how we go about this. So I'm an agency guy at heart, right? A majority of my career has been on the agency side of digital media. But before that, I actually was on the client side, and I started in retail.

I actually, out of college, went into retail management, and then I went to retail, corporate and you know, I was on the buying side of that. And then I went into marketing and started managing agencies with some marketing when digital media only had paid search and SEO, and then eventually I was a client, a couple of times.

Very interesting experiences there that I do pull back and put my client hat on a lot of times on how this is looked at from a business perspective and what clients really need and why. And then I went to Digital Shop. Digital Shop was acquired by a larger agency. Full AOR shop. And then went to a few different, you know, AORs.

And I've been largely on the independent side, which has been huge for my career. I've learned a lot. Very thankful for different mentors. I've had. And I think that the biggest thing that's made me land where I am today is, always thinking about, somebody said a long time ago, think about the what if. And, and at one point when a lot of us have been in the digital space for a little while and Ben you've seen this, where it's like, well, everybody can buy social, everybody can buy programmatic, and if you have the right tools, you plug in, you can buy the same things from one agency to another. Right?

But it's like, how do you make it different? How do you make it unique? How do you look at it from a different perspective? And I had a moment in my career that was like, all right, I actually have to start thinking more innovative in order for things to change and grow, because as a business, we were looking at things from that perspective but not being challenged yet with that.

So, I think that's huge for where I made some moves. And I also have looked at places that I've been and have said, okay, I've done what I could do here and like the people above me, are going anywhere. So I need to be open to opportunities when recruiters have reached out to me, which I've been. I've had some hard moves, I've been at some great places but I've been more open to that, even though I'm hanging my hat where I am and have enjoyed it.

So, it's been interesting to take my journey of different areas and be able to connect it to where I've landed today and always thinking of that, “what if,” you know, we did this, what if this was different? And how can we do things to continue?

Ben
Yeah. That's great. And you know, I think finding a place, to your point of like, I have, I've done all I can do here, now what's next? I found this place where I can hang my hat, this is the right move.

For some that happens their first move and their first place, and they're able to grow. For others it takes a few different attempts. And you know, not to say that it's you know, right or wrong way, but you know, when you do find that place where you can hang your hat, and we were just talking before this about, about that of finding that place that you're excited to be at every day you're excited to grow with the company is great, which, you know, both Sightly and AMS have been named Great Places to Work this year, which is an incredible accolade, something that everybody talks about of culture, culture, culture. But knowing that you're saying you found your home here, how important is, you know, culture to the company, how you're kind of helping to bring all of your learnings from other places and that leadership and mentorship of like, hey, if you've peaked here, it's okay to look elsewhere to find that next best opportunity.

How have you kind of embodied that as a leader of AMS?

Michael
Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting, time on that because I have a little perspective that like culture before five years ago with the pandemic, which is crazy to say out loud, if when things started to change for everybody has changed dramatically. Right. So like culture I feel used to be graded on like if you provide lunches and if you have dry cleaning and you're, you know, a major ad tech company and all of those.

Ben
Like a ping pong table and a keg in the kitchen.

Michael
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All of the things that were like out selling when you were a smaller shop trying to recruit people from the same place. So that being said, really, culture always comes down to the people because we're driving the culture to everybody who sits within the walls or on screens or whatever it may be that you do from your place of work, we drive the culture and how we connect and what we build around it.

And what I mean by built around it is like a few years ago, like we didn't have ERGs really established within our culture. And it was something I actually leaned in and, you know, raised my hand to lead one of our ERGs. So, and then we built out and we have, I think close to a dozen ERGs now, that represent different parts of the organization globally, which is really great.

And it's helped. And it's been one of many things within our culture that we take pride in. And I think that the people really do come down to what you're building and who wants to lean in and build and make things different. And if you're in a culture that you don't have things that you think would be interesting or different, you know, I've always thought of it as something that people should speak up, you know, say something like, whenever you have ideas that's the greatest way of getting things actually done.

And, those who can take, you know, the bull by the horns to move things forward, we love that within our organization because we're nimble. I mean, you know, while we have multiple countries and we have a lot of people, we're still nimble and we still have to have people really to innovate and bring things alive.

So, yeah, we're really proud to be, apart of the great places to work and congrats to you guys as well for being that. And I love where we're going with our business and continue to make our culture unique and different and challenge it.

Ben
And I think what you said there is what is such a common theme with companies that are named “Great Places to Work” and culture is true. It's letting everybody have a voice, is the way I describe it, where it's just because you're entry level or CEO and up doesn't mean that you can't voice your opinion and speak the truth and think and want to be part of part of the growth.

And you talked about being at a lot of independent and smaller places, really shaping that growth and you see that a lot more. And to your point of the beer pong and the kegs and the ping pong tables and the food that usually happens at these smaller startup independent places, but I think it's really important to let everybody get their voice, because that's how you really drive results as a company. And then it connects back to the work you're doing for the clients of not being stagnant and being able to be innovative for the clients, especially in today's world where the culture, culture to clients is different than company culture.

But being able to connect culture to brands, I think, you know, is where having multiple voices and multiple people talking together and innovating leads to it because people see brands in different ways and consumers connect differently. So love for you, as we transition into culture and how it means to clients, how you're kind of connecting that story to clients and helping the kind of cross-platform work that you guys are doing and touching clients and helping bring innovative ideas to clients.

Michael
Yeah, yeah, totally agree with everything you're hitting on there and to build on what you were saying is, when we have new employees come in, I think it's like a huge opportunity that I always try to have a conversation with them on, like, hey, don't be afraid to, challenge what you see here. Just because we're doing it this way, it doesn't mean that it's always the most efficient or right way. And I love it when it's people who are experienced from other places that can bring great best practices. But I really love it when it's somebody straight out of college that's like, hey, what if this was done different? Or, you know, somebody recently, it was like, I thought we could try to use AI for this part of what was a pain point of their job. And I'm like, love it. That's amazing. That's what we want to hear and know and be able to see more brought to the table. But so I just wanted to hit on that point. As we talk about change and like bringing different things.

Ben
And, I'm proud of us because we made it. You know what? Almost ten minutes before the word AI came in! No, that's pretty good.

Michael
Yeah, absolutely. But to the topic of like, with clients in the crossover there, we have a lot of ways that we look at our business and we work with clients direct, we work with agencies, via clients, as well and then we also have some of our own products that we have in market that we take direct to clients or, and, or agencies.

So we see things from a different lens. I feel because we crossover quite a bit and we work really heavily with partners like yourselves, so I think that the connection point there is ultimately always looking at obviously like what goals we're trying to achieve and trying to find the right solutions and making sure that we're always keeping our focus on that and making sure that we're looking at the best way of driving, like the efficiency of what we need to achieve, with the highest standard of quality as well.

And I think a lot of that comes down to like educating everybody across the organization on what our goals are and what we want from, best practice and standards, you know, standpoint. Because you have to have a way of working that actually thrives for success for all parties involved. And everybody has to understand what that really means and how you kind of live up to that for your clients and the outputs of what you're looking for.

Ben
Yeah. I think that's awesome. And, you know, I think the other piece to that is understanding how knowing that you've had some client background and then how you guys do work both client direct and agency, all in one and kind of helping everybody perform and drive the best outcomes, you know, how are you working with the clients and the agency and your partners to be able to kind of have that balance of performance media versus building brand and the channel breakdown and thinking through that kind of bigger strategy.

You know, I think we see brands a lot of times focus so heavily on performance, performance, performance and then maybe forget about brand and then vice versa, only focusing on brand and then have no way to connect the dots. So how are you guys working on kind of connecting that story and figuring out that balance?

Michael
Yeah, the biggest thing is identifying exactly what you're describing of like, if a client is saying that they're going after a specific type of performance understanding, is that performance that the marketing and advertising leads that you're working with, is that the business outcome as well, or what is that business outcome? Because it may be a touch point of driving some performance in some degree, but what does that actual funnel look like?

Or the consumer journey that we're going to actually impact look like? So for instance, I try to stress with our teams that even though we may be responsible for a KPI that's brand awareness or that may be like mid journey for the consumer, can we track all the way to the end, or can we pull data back end to show full performance?

Because it could be three months later that we're actually, so. Well, what does that actually mean for like, our bottom line sales, even though you were just asked to get leads or drive site traffic or whatever it may be, our certain CPMs were your focus. So we try to always make sure that we're capturing that to tell the full story and also leveraging different opportunities with partners like yourselves where we can implement brand lift studies to be able to inform the creative when we have a brand that's not been in market before or they are putting new content in market and be able to give them early learnings on what that looks like. So we always try to really dig at the brief and go a step further on, like, okay, we understand this piece of it, but let's go two steps deeper of really, what does this mean? And, and make sure that we're trying to stay ahead of that and give even more to bring back to our clients.

Ben
Yeah, that's awesome. I think it shows how much you guys care and how much detail and effort goes into supporting all of the clients that you have. What would you say is like, something that, either clients bring to you all the time based on trades or the hot topics in the industry that you're constantly having to either debunk or be like, hey, we're already doing that. “This is a little overhyped. It's not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be.” What would you say are kind of some of those big overhyped, over talked about trends currently in the industry that you guys are helping to navigate, right now?

Michael
Oh, man, I feel like that's a little bit of a roller coaster, right? One day it's about platforms being banned and then another, it's what's going on with the data and retail media or what you know, so I think I'm not going to answer it as direct, but I think one of the great things that we do as an organization is we pull insights from different teams, and we have, marketplace meetings where we actually aggregate all of those insights every couple of weeks. We write them up and we push them out to our clients and our partners in different ways. So we have several teams that do that and I think that the great thing is, it's not just hitting on “what's happening in the space” that's the hot topics to your point, but it's also giving our perspective on what it means potentially for their business.

So, if there are certain things happening in the world from a political standpoint or from a brand standpoint or, concerns around like, viewability or whatever it may be, what does that actually mean potentially for our clients? And sometimes the topic is large enough that we have to do separate POVs that we're putting out and give them actual options to consider.
And that's where I think that we always try to stay proactive, but as we know, things are just so digitally driven now that it's like, okay, this happened overnight and we have to put together something like today, to be able to provide clients the best, weight of exactly like what's happening within the space and what their potential options may need to be considered.

So, it's interesting, with everything in the tariff space right now, which has been a hot topic for a while now. We have a lot that we've given for considerations of, like, if you needed to do this, this is plan A, B and C to consider, which is what clients really are looking for, right. They're looking for direction that if I need to make a decision tomorrow, I can talk to my leadership to say we have a plan for it and this is what it would be. And that's what we're always trying to make sure that we're providing the best.

Ben
And I'd imagine with, with everything going on in the world today, you guys, especially as the global company, is keeping you quite busy with those POVs and probably full time jobs for several.

Michael
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben
Awesome. Well, I have one more question for you. It's a little off topic, but knowing what you and I have talked a lot, I feel like we've met a lot outside of our home of New York. It's really a two part question. One, where is your favorite place that you've ever traveled to?

Whether it be in the US or outside of the US. And then where is a place that is on your list of places that you want to get to? Whether it be for work or for pleasure?

Michael
All right. For work. My favorite place that I've been to, I would say, would be Spain. I love going to our Madrid office. The people again are just like, all of our people are amazing, just for the record. But the culture of the people there and the way that they work is just so unique, like how you take lunches and how the day rolls.

But I also just love the experiences that I get when I do go out with the team there and it feels very unique and I just love it. The vibe of it is just right up my alley. So, if I was more fluent in Spanish, maybe I would spend more time there, but I'm not.

Ben
Are you working on that?

Michael
It was, I would say within the year, I've had a little bit of work on it, but it's not been. Yeah, it's not that great. Don’t test me right now.

Ben
I won’t, trust me, I am the last person to be able to. I can barely speak English. At times I feel so, let alone trying to learn a second language. I'm the person that I’ll go to a foreign country and I'll learn the, you know, hellos and thank you’s, and they just all laugh at me for how horribly, you know, American my accent is for other languages, but they at least appreciate the effort. But it's not something, I know, like there's a certain right brain, left brain that people have the language and music skills, but not me, not me.

Michael
Yeah, yeah. I totally hear you. I'm in that boat, too. From a personal standpoint on the best place I've been and desire to go to, I love Greece. I've been to the major areas I would think of in Greece, even going to Athens and experiencing, like the food culture there was amazing.

I would love to explore more of Greece that's less known to get a little more of that, you know, organic feel and not tourist driven. So I would say that that's probably where I want to explore more, for sure. But I've always wanted to go to Africa and do a safari experience. So I would say that that's definitely on the bucket list and hopefully near future.

So I'm curious, though, to throw back to you, like, where is your favorite place and where do you desire.

Ben
The fact that we didn't prepare this and you just teed that up so perfectly because five weeks from today, I will be going on an African safari in South Africa.

Michael
That's amazing!

Ben
So I will report back to you on everything we do, the do's and don'ts, of that. So that's been about a year and a half planned for my wife and I, it's her 40th birthday trip. So very excited for that. That's been, you know, a big one. Honestly, I haven't done a ton. So I would say, like, everything you said, Spain, Greece, all places that are on the list, of places, places to get to, Australia is on the list.

But, you know, it's a hike to get to. So I think it's one that has to take some real planning. But, Yeah, I mean, I, I love we did Rome a couple of years ago and that was incredible to just see the history and wildness there that you're talking about from a Greece standpoint and being able to be part of that is, is really cool.

So yeah, I think any and all I'm definitely open to. My wife's more of the adventurous traveler and pushing me, whereas, I can just stay at home and be happy. So, she pushes me to travel a little bit more.

Michael
Good for her. Good for you guys! That’s a big trip. You’ll have an amazing time for sure.

Ben
Yeah, we're excited. Well, Michael, this has been a pleasure as always to hang out. Thank you so much for joining Breaking Through the Mayhem. And, look forward to more of your trips and more of your success, over at AMS and continuing to grow that culture that we talked so highly about.

Michael
Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I definitely enjoyed it!