Martin Sorrell's S4Capital has revealed Media.Monks, a unfiifed brand for the two sides of its pure-play digital agency business, MediaMonks and MightyHive.
Sir Martin in June flagged that the two would be merged and go to market "under one brand or flag". MightyHive is the company's data and digital media consultancy, while MediaMonks is its creative digital production house.
The single brand for both creative and media agency unifies a team of nearly 6,000 digital-first experts working under a single P/L across 57 offices in 33 countries.
S4 is riding the wave of digital advertising, accelerated by the pandemic. In June it lifted organic gross profit guidance, as the global economy snaps back, to 35% growth in 2021 from 30%, up from the original forecast of 25%.
Media.Monks is the next step in delivering on its foundational promise to unify content, data, digital media and technology services.
S4Capital plc, the UK stock exchange-listed entity, will remain the financial brand.
“The traditional, analogue holding company model is over 70 years old, dating back to Marion Harper and IPG in the 1950s and cries out for disruptive change," says S4 founder Sir Martin.
"Digital has altered the landscape permanently and brands need a different type of organization to execute and show up for their customers at every moment in the journey––purely digital, with data-driven creative and content, faster, better, cheaper, and with a single P&L.
“So far, S4Capital has brought together 24 companies that have each disrupted their industry in complementary ways, buying into our mission to create a new age/new era advertising and marketing services model and disrupting the old.”
Earlier this year, the company launched its API-inspired organisational structure, designed to ignite collaboration and fuel innovation by connecting its different types of teams: countries, core, client, categories, capabilities and corporate.
The hexagon, previously representative of MightyHive, has been adapted to symbolise this structure and the six components it connects.
“The single brand was not a boardroom decision. It involved input from a broad range of teams and talent, and many of our founders,” says Media.Monks co-founder Wesley ter Haar.
"For our people, this means they’re all colleagues and can build amazing careers across the globe and keep going and growing. For our clients, it means they keep the same team and the day-to-day they love—but now have even simpler access to an amazingly deep pool of specialist talent. Consolidation is an engine to innovate and this makes it easier to help our clients show up better for theirs."
The API is reflected in the new dynamic logo mark that activates a flexible brand framework in which "media" becomes a variable.
Teams within the six operational components can personalise and express themselves within the framework using a new internal tool, Brand.Lab. The addition of the dot represents a point of connection between diverse talent with different experiences and expertise, and encourages freedom of expression through a malleable framework.
“Integrating the MightyHive hexagon into Media.Monks is a great representation of our unitary team, but even more so it reflects our operational model,” says Media.Monks co-founder Chris Martin.
“We’ve built a structure where our people have clear, ownable space, to represent themselves and the work they do, but without the traditional fights and frictions that are built into more traditional models.
"Hexagons are one of nature's ways of maximizing the properties of strength and space efficiently, and that's exactly what we're offering clients: the most efficient model to help them consolidate their efforts in content, data&digital media and technology services.”
Kenny Griffiths, Head of Data and Digital Media APAC, Media.Monks: "With Media.Monks, we’re doing something unlike anything the market has ever seen before, connecting the dots across the entire organization to operate as one single office. Both the dot and the hexagon align perfectly with who we are as a business—where we come from and where we’re headed. Our APAC team has a very strong focus on innovation, and it’s moving incredibly fast, so I can only imagine where this unitary approach will take us. We’re ready to better serve clients with the flexibility of our new brand, changing how the work gets done as we always have.”
Michel de Rijk, CEO APAC, S4Capital: “With our new joint brand, Media.Monks, we’re unifying all our pillars under the same identity. It’s how we’re bringing all our teams together, and how we’re introducing ourselves to the world as we keep challenging the industry with the entrepreneurial mindset that characterises every single one of S4Capital’s brands. Based on a unitary structure, our strategy will provide brands across all industries with the capability to adapt and deliver with speed-to-market—which is ultimately what the new era calls for. Together with the world’s most innovative and forward-thinking brands, Media.Monks will push the boundaries and transform the market through a model that grants 100% access to the best talent with flexibility and speed.”
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