Media.Monks on Thursday became the most recent company to rebrand in an effort to raised engage its clients, dropping “Media” from its name as part of a bigger effort to streamline its offerings. The operating brand of Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital can even transition its services into two separate but synchronized marketing and technology services.
“It’s really evolution of the branding and evolution of the organization,” Sorrell told Marketing Dive.
Monks higher speaks to the present marketing landscape and the corporate’s capabilities that go far beyond traditional and digital media. About 65% of the corporate’s business is within the creation and distribution of content, 25% is around data and 10% is technical services. Including “Media” narrowed the corporate’s identity and appeal.
“We work with CMOs, CSOs and CIOs,” Sorrell said. “Going to Monks unifies it.”
S4 first established its unitary brand by merging its MediaMonks and MightyHive firms into Media.Monks in 2021. The latest name more accurately represents a world team, expertise and diverse communities, Monks CMO Kate Richling added in a press release.
The evolution of the organization, which Sorrell stressed was not a “reorganization,” seeks to focus the firm’s nine capabilities into two practices. Marketing captures media, social, studio, experience and brand performance, while Technology includes platforms, formula and data, with consultancy linking each practices.
“We think it’s really vital to simplify our offering to clients, make all the pieces we do accessible to them,” Sorrell said. “We touch the marketing, sales and IT functions, and in actual fact transcend marketing within the digital transformation work that we do.”
An AI-powered future
The Marketing and Technology practices can even be joined through using Monks.Flow, knowledgeable managed service powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that launched at CES in January. The proprietary suite unites AI specialists, tools, software and microservices into automated workflows and seeks to assist marketers reduce costs, integrate organizations, construct business intelligence and maximize impact
Monks putting Monks.Flow at the middle of its pitch to marketers is in step with an industry give attention to AI. Major ad holding firms including WPP and Publicis have built growth plans around investment in AI, with the latter looking for to turn out to be “the industry’s first AI-powered Intelligent System.” AI touches three of the 4 principles that S4 was founded on — purely digital; data-driven; faster, higher, cheaper — and Sorrell sees the technology as a competitive strength, crediting it as the rationale it recently won big in General Motors’ recent agency roster shakeup.
“What distinguishes us is a deep knowledge of the realm and a deep technological capability that’s shown by what we’re capable of do,” the manager said.
Despite the widespread adoption of AI throughout the the marketing, media and tech worlds, quite a few concerns remain around legality, data privacy, reliability, accuracy and bias, to say nothing of rising job uncertainty amongst marketers. With AI, Sorrell takes an extended view, comparing the rise of AI to the introduction of the steam engine and the digital revolution.
“With change comes pluses and minuses,” he said. “In visualization and copywriting, there can be a squeeze. In personalization at scale, there can be an explosion of opportunity.”
S4 Capital has looked to disrupt the legacy agency model but has faced its share of challenges. The company reported an 11.7% revenue drop in the primary quarter, attributing the decline to macroeconomic conditions and client caution, especially amongst technology clients. For Monks, AI — together with the rebrand and evolution of its offerings — could provide a way forward.
“Clients are demanding agility and access,” Sorrell said. “They’re searching for people understand first-party data due to the deprecation of third-party cookies and the IDFA rule changes. For those reasons, having a far more simplified organization makes huge sense.”
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