Remembering Our Most Amazing, Mondo MMoments of 2018

To say that 2018 has been a big year for MediaMonks—or the industry in general—is an understatement.

New platforms have emerged, the role of partners is ever-changing and we’ve even invited a true British Knight into the Monks’ order. It’s a lot to digest, but stopping there would just be putting a cap on the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we’re taking a breather to reflect on some of the biggest moments on this wild ride of a year.

Making the List

It’s not the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but Main Monks Victor Knaap and Wesley ter Haar are among good company on Ad Age’s 2018 list of Creativity All-Stars. Rubbing elbows with the likes of superstars and important social movements like March for Our Lives, we’re perhaps most excited to be recognized on the same list as Gritty, the Phildelphia Flyers’ mascot whose unapologetically unconventional manner made him into cultural internet icon. But we’re also keen to say “hi” to our new San Francisco neighbors on the list like Quip and Slack. Let’s grab lunch together sometime—we’ll go Dutch.

We Had a Little Help from Our Friends

We’ve long been a creative partner to some of the biggest names in tech, and this year we continued to strive to make the industry better through that work. This year, we tackled one of our most visible creative projects yet: celebrating Google’s 20th anniversary with a birthday Google Doodle. The lengthy doodle chronicled top queries from around the world over the past two decades in different styles. Arguably the most important and influential page online, we were proud to showcase a diverse body of work there.

But that wasn’t our only collaboration that had us starry-eyed: at the 2018 Cannes Lions festival, we worked with Ogilvy to produce two immersive experiences for Google’s new ARCore platform, which breathed new life into two old campaigns. Having had the chance to celebrate the existence of such an influential company and present our work together at the festival of creativity, we can strike a few items off our bucket list.

Busy as Bees

We’re all abuzz in welcoming MightyHive to the S4 Capital family, which grew rapidly over the course of the year. By working together and cross-pollinating our capabilities, we’re both better equipped to navigate our partners through a shifting media landscape with end-to-end solutions from start to finish. The state of advertising today is “about defining the core concept,” says ter Haar, “and then executing the very best creative in a way that’s contextual to the touch-point and channel it’s being seen on.” This means MediaMonks and MightyHive joining forces is a deal that’s sweet as honey for everyone.

Saying ¡Hola! to Mexico

We started the year on a good foot by taking a step below the border to our Mexico City office. Opening right on the lush, sun-soaked Amsterdam Ave in the heart of hip and trendy La Condesa, our current home is actually the third to house our Mexico City team, which grew faster this year than anyone anticipated. With the new-found ability to produce more authentic content for the region, we celebrated the Day of the Dead in collaboration with Mexican beer brand Victoria through a beautiful reimagining of Aztec mythology. Our short film depicted a descent to the underworld with beautiful, dreamlike choreography and was the first native-language TVC to air in Mexico. Here’s to many more firsts in the next year. ¡Vamonos!

We Walked a Mile in Others’ Shoes

We’re honored whenever we’re given the opportunity to contribute our efforts to important social issues, and we’re proud to say that this year we launched a few. One is the Uncensored Playlist, an important project that fights censorship by translating news stories into music, which is then distributed on major music streaming platforms. We made another powerful project in collaboration with Santander and Heading Home, an organization providing support for the homeless in the Greater Boston area. In Someone Else’s Shoes uses augmented reality to put viewers face-to-face with the reality of modern homelessness, in which one of every four homeless people are employed. AR is usually championed as a way to allow for fun or collaborative experiences that were never possible before; with this project, we were able to explore the technology’s potential to build empathy and understanding with a unique interactive performance.

Welcome to Our (Not So) Secret Lab

It’s every kid’s dream to reign over a lab like a mad scientist, so we made our own. Shortly after our merge with S4 Capital, we donned our lab coats and put together MediaMonks Labs, a research and development team designed to prototype and explore emerging technology before it goes mainstream. While a lot of the work is strictly hush-hush, we can share at least one cool project with you: we worked with UNICEF to develop a large-scale hologram display at the 73rd UN General Assembly. Following the story of a young girl seeking to build a brighter future, the 3D animation projected mid-air left an unforgettable mark in viewers’ minds.

We Did It, Reddit!

One of our most well-received projects this year is a digital, 3D car configurator that lets users build and customize a Genesis G70, then see their changes rendered in real-time. Having impressed one of the toughest crowds online (Reddit was highly impressed with the level of detail—who thought opening a glove compartment could bring about so much delight?), we’re proud to invite you to take this one for a spin. Once they’re finished experimenting, users can request a quote and have their configuration saved to the Genesis back-end, allowing for a simple purchase while generating leads for the dealers. It shows what happens when you marry live data, business logic and cost-efficient global production to realize a project from start to finish.

We Had Lots of Fun

With so much work to do over the year, we set aside some time to let loose and have some good, clean fun. Just in time for football season, we worked with Wieden+Kennedy to lather up a custom-built football stadium made from 3,000 liters of Old Spice foam. Broadcast live to YouTube and Twitch, our slippery Foamzone gameshow challenged contestants to overcome six wacky obstacle courses. We also trapped ghost hunters in Winchester Mystery House, the largest haunted mansion in the US, to produce a live and interactive horror film directed by acclaimed director Jason Zada and streamed over Twitter and Periscope. And just in time for the holidays, we elfed ourselves—and you can too with our new Elf Yourself selfie lens made in collaboration with Office Depot. Happy holidays!