Johann Laeschke · Berlin

Commercial leadership for creative and tech businesses.

Companies bring me in as interim or fractional MD, COO or CMO when something needs fixing or building. I’ve worked on the commercial side of creative and tech businesses for 25 years, in Germany, the UK and the US.

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Selected results

€250k loss to €5M revenue in 12 months

Koto Studio, Berlin. Profitable in the first year. The team grew from 5 to 20.

35M+ downloads, turned into a paid subscription

LABS at Spitfire Audio, London. Central to Spitfire’s $50M sale to Splice.

1M+ subscriptions at 31% conversion

The YouTube Music launch in Germany, for Google at B-Reel. Beat the category benchmark of 25%.

+200% on a global partnership P&L

B-Reel’s Google business, run across Mountain View, London and Berlin.

What I do

Interim and fractional leadership

I take the MD, COO or CMO seat for a set period, full time or on fixed days each week. That includes the P&L, the team and the structure.

Turnarounds

Offices and business units that lose money. I find out where, then rebuild the commercial engine and the cost base.

Launches and subscriptions

Naming, business model, pricing and go-to-market for new products and subscription services.

AI operations

I build working automations for resourcing, CRM, finance and project setup, and hand them over running.

Background

I started in digital marketing at EMI in 2001, then moved into product at Viacom/MTV and account leadership at AKQA. In 2008 I co-founded Gustini, an Italian-food e‑commerce business, and stayed a shareholder until the exit in 2017.

Since 2015 I’ve mostly run agency offices: B-Reel, VICE’s Virtue, Koto and, most recently, Mother in Berlin. In between I was CMO at Spitfire Audio in London.

My order of work is product and customer first, brand as the through-line, marketing on top. I work hands-on, from the P&L to the contracts.

Clients and brands

Google · Amazon · Uber Eats · NBA · Nike · BMW · Mercedes‑Benz · Volkswagen · LVMH · Richemont · Montblanc · Zalando · Henkel (Loctite and Pattex) · iShares (BlackRock) · Native Instruments

Across agency and in-house roles.

Contact

If something needs fixing or building, write to me.

hello@kontoradvisory.com
LinkedIn Berlin, Germany