For brands willing to truly differentiate and transform, diversity is key. Much like how digital transformation entails a focus on increasing technical literacy within your organization, powering up a brand’s creative potential requires the brand or business to focus on diversifying teams and embracing inclusivity-led growth. (You can read this post’s Spanish version right here)

Think about it: your talent pool designs your products, experiences and services. With more diverse talent, you’re better equipped to offer a greater variety of experiences; with a plurality of genders, races, cultures and backgrounds, a workplace becomes a breeding ground for innovative and fresh ideas. This is why a focus on diversity was critical to the rapid growth of our office in Buenos Aires, which serves as a strategic creative hub for the Americas and has recently hired its 200th Monk after four years in operation.

Able to develop and iterate on fresh ideas, brands have extracted real bottom-line value from diversity-based growth, too: those with greater gender and race diversity are 25% more likely to have better financial returns than less diverse organizations, and Google found that women-led and gender-balanced videos enjoyed 30% more views than others. These findings suggest there is a strong demand for inclusive content, but organizations that aren’t diverse and inclusive themselves will struggle to create it. So, while many organizations have a desire for growth, they shouldn’t merely view it as an expansion of the business—it’s a critical opportunity to integrate new, diverse voices into your creative process for the better.

Similarly, this vision has driven a people-focused strategy for inclusivity at Firewood Marketing, which merged with MediaMonks last year. Kamron Hack, Director of People at Firewood, wrote about her strategy: “Instead of creating employee resource groups just for the sake of having them, or implementing diversity training without knowing what type of training was needed, we invited our employees to tell us who they are by submitting poems, statements, stories, and pictures that we displayed in an open space to share with one another.”

Building Better Teams

We understand that our clients have a real desire for diversity of all types—for example, multicultural messaging. Sharing the stage with MediaMonks at a Brand Innovators summit, Nestle’s CMO Alicia Enciso mentioned how such initiatives must be top-of-mind for today’s organizations. “When you’re trying to market multicultural, you also must have a multicultural team,” she said. “Diversity needs to be a priority internally, externally and everywhere in between.”

With diversity front and center, we’ve accelerated our increase in personnel from a variety of backgrounds. At the same time, these efforts have had the added effect of improving our offerings of premium digital content–platforms, digital design, video games, VR, and much more–for clients from all types of industries around the world. In our Buenos Aires office in particular, which serves as a creative hub for the Americas, we’ve found that the quality of work has increased in lockstep with our capacity.

“We want to keep incorporating talents from different disciplines and cultures,” says Erika Irei, HR Business Partner at MediaMonks Buenos Aires. “We are focused on building a team with greater diversity, particularly on technology leadership or creativity, which is a big challenge for the industry.” In this respect, diverse teams are just better: they bring together a plurality of perspectives and experiences and are uniquely equipped to tackle a large variety of creative challenges for different markets.

From future-proofing your business to achieving a higher quality of work, diversity can truly impact your organization on many levels. And it’s not just about achieving growth or what diversity can do for the bottom line; cultivating a more inclusive workspace is simply better for teams that like to feel heard, exchange ideas and challenge themselves. For both consumers and employees, diversity is key to enhancing the overall brand experience.

For the second year in a row, MediaMonks opened its doors to hose the Global Game Jam in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Innovation, experimentation and collaboration are the three pillars that characterize this global event that was held for the 12th time in 118 countries at the same time. But it’s not a competition, as there are no winners or losers: it’s an annual meeting that fosters collaboration and teamwork between people from different fields, such as developers, illustrators, animators, game designers and audio experts, among others. (You can also find this post in Spanish right here.)

Fabricio Mouzo, Director of Operations at MediaMonks Buenos Aires, told us about this event: “Every year there is a secret topic, which is revealed on the first day of the Jam. The topic is revealed at the same local time for every location, meaning that you can’t publish anything about it until the last location, Hawaii, is told. Participants are free to interpret the topic as they please, without restrictions, and then they have 48 hours to develop a prototype.”

This year’s topic was “repairs,” while last year it was “what home means to you.” “Every year there are different diversifiers, which are optional challenges for participants. Some of them are narrative, while others are related to design. One of them was to create 20-second long games,” said Fabricio.

MediaMonks’ goal is to offer a space for Monks to flex their abilities in projects that they don’t usually work in during their day-to-day; the Amsterdam office was the original venue for MediaMonks when it entered the event three years ago, but since 2019 Buenos Aires offices has hosted the 48-hour developing spree. For example, developers have worked creating web pages or illustrators have designed banners. “A lot of them are gamers, and they loved this idea,” says Georgina Bianchi, Global Head of Talent at MediaMonks.

“Part of the idea of opening doors is to let people from other creative industries know about MediaMonks, because we cover several areas with our services: we create advertising with platforms, video games, we even launched a chicken sandwich to space,” says Bianchi. “That’s why we look for people with skills that go beyond advertising or web or traditional design, MediaMonks is much more than that.”

Fabricio told us his vision of the place video games as advertisement have in Argentina, he says that “It’s great to take advantage of how creative and engaging video games can be, and use them for advertising. I think that some of the most interesting projects that we do at the MediaMonks games department are activations for big brands, where the games that we create are not destined for the screen, instead they try to engage people with the brand through unique interactive experiences.”

Six games were developed this year at MediaMonks Buenos Aires. All of them can be played on Global Game Jam’s official website, along with those we created in 2019.

We also spoke with Luciana Méndez, UI Developer at MediaMonks, who, together with an interdisciplinary team, created a game called Rail Raider: “This is the first time that I’m part of this event. It was so much fun, but so intense at the same time, that I would participate again this year, but no more!” Luciana says.

A common challenge that in-house agencies (IHAs) have always faced is difficulty in training and hiring the talent they need to pull off excellent creative. Unfortunately, this strain doesn’t seem to be going away. According to a survey by the ANA, 44% of US IHAs cite attracting top-tier talent as a primary creative content concern. And it’s not just about merely acquiring talent: an even bigger challenge they face lies in keeping their talent energized.

It’s no surprise, then, that so many external partnerships for IHAs revolve around two key capabilities: executing ideas in new and interesting ways, or offering access to specialized skillsets. Both are key in today’s digital landscape, which is defined as an age of hyperadoption, in which users adopt and drop new behaviors at an unprecedented rate. In addition to all of the channels that are cropping up, you don’t even know which will stick around a few years down the line.

As brands gauge the next big channels they’ll use to connect with consumers, they must adopt new digital skillsets in lockstep. But given the talent concerns mentioned above, how can IHAs keep up with these shifting user behaviors? The answer lies in new breeds of partnership that give IHAs the skills and tools they need to fulfill the brand promise in ways that not only stand out and “wow” consumers, but make sense to them.

Stand Out by Innovating Strategically

In his talk at the IHAF Conference this week, which brings together and celebrates hundreds of in-house agency professionals, Forrester analyst Jay Pattisall discussed the importance of creative differentiation. Most digital experiences look and feel the same, opening an opportunity for brands to stand out through best-in-class creative. Fitting well within the conference’s theme of “Futureproof,” Pattisall set his focus on recent shifts in the creative landscape, and where IHAs fit within it.

IHAs have thrived thanks in part to their unrivalled brand knowledge; they understand the purpose, intricacies and nuances of their brand. As Darren Abbott, SVP, Creative at Hallmark said while noting the power of IHAs to their brands: “We’re not part of Hallmark, we make it Hallmark.”

Yet executing their vision in an environment that encompasses so many emerging channels can be tough. New partnership models that aim to augment in-house teams’ understanding of technology, or that push them to think in new ways, can aid in both forecasting future opportunities and identifying the best channels available today for bringing the brand experience to life.

If you’re intrigued by some of today’s emergent technology, consider putting it through what MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar calls the “trend lens.” Discussed in his skill session at the IHAF Conference, “Extending Beyond the Horizon,” ter Haar described the trend lens as a strategy through which you can gauge the maturity of emerging tech as it rises up—or drops off from—the hype curve. It’s how we help brands arrive at solutions that best fit their capabilities and needs.

Let Your Brand Story Drive Tech Investment

The assessment specifically measures how a technology or platform meets user behavior (what consumers are doing with it) and distribution (how widely it’s adopted). VR, for example, isn’t distributed among consumers as well as AR is; this makes the former more ideal for installations and trade shows, while the latter serves as a popular way for consumers to simultaneously connect with brands and communicate with friends on mobile.

The trend lens works because it asks brands to really consider how their audience naturally behaves on a given channel. But brands must ensure that the creative idea is aligned with a clear business goal. At MediaMonks, for example, we don’t strive to sell brands on whatever the hot, novel technology of the day is. Instead, we experiment to push technology to its limit ourselves, then pay those learnings forward to help brands approach emerging tech strategically and tell their stories the best way they can.

Again, an IHA’s strength stems from its passion and knowledge of the brand. External partnerships that challenge their approach to creative and assess new opportunities granted by emerging tech are essential for futureproofing and connecting with consumers as the digital landscape continues to evolve.

There’s a great opportunity ahead for brands in Mexico and Latin America, where access to the internet is still growing: only 55% of Latin Americans had access to the internet in 2017, according to Statista. As more of their audience go online, brands are met with a golden opportunity: offer differentiated, premier digital experiences that will impress the next generation of digital users in the region.

Of course, that’s easier said than done–and brands that fail risk losing their audience to major global players who have invested years in perfecting their UX learnings. And challenges in retaining talent or having the resources available to execute creative ideas exist for brands anywhere in the world, not just Latin America. But organizations navigating this new demand for premier digital experiences can still go far by standing on the shoulders of giants–or tried-and-true veterans of digital who know their stuff and can lead on the path of success.

In fact, helping unlock brands’ abilities to build these creative, digital experiences is a key goal of the MediaMonks Mexico City office. With a team native to the region and augmented by the larger, global MediaMonks network of talent, we’re uniquely positioned to respond to the greatest challenges that brands across Latin America face. “With the outstanding Mexican talent that has joined our Mexico office, we are able to create campaigns with international standards that work locally,” says Marcelo Planchart, Head of Expansion LatAm.

What’s Rafahu’s passion? Pop culture, which he tries to sneak into all of his work with a creative, unexpected spin. “I’m a geek of animation, science fiction, design, comic books, video games, illustration and art,” he says, “so I always try to put something of all that pop culture that I consume every day into my work.” Through this approach, he tries to create concepts that will resonate emotionally with audiences, while keeping the key message intact. It’s a perspective that differentiates his projects, making them a bit more unique and artful in the process–and shows how important it is for brands to provide their teams creative freedom and flexibility. 

Being creative should be fun, after all. “That part of exploring, of facing a void where there is nothing, starting to shape that idea visually and defining what is going to communicate–that is my favorite,” Rafahu says. 

Whether they face challenges in executing a creative idea or finding entirely new ways of adapting to the digital landscape, brands all over Latin America can augment their teams through strategic partnerships that fill those gaps. Guidance in digital transformation and cultivating the creative flexibility for teams to chase their passions or investigate their curiosities are just two of the ways that brands in the region can forever change the way they work. Through these processes, Latin American brands face great potential in strengthening equity and helping to differentiate from their competitors. 

Putting Innovation at the Forefront

Innovation is a key element of MediaMonks’ philosophy around the world, and at the Mexico City office that’s made clear through its dedication to digital transformation, a service that’s strengthened by our vast expertise and insight from working around the world. These efforts are spearheaded by Carlos Rivera, Consulting and Platforms Lead, who is in charge of leading the platform development operation in addition to digital transformation. 

A great example of the digital transformation guidance provided by the office is the work we’ve done with Club Premier, Mexico’s top loyalty program. From the process of building the app to supporting it over the long term, we’ve worked side by side with Club Premier to make decisions and help envision the digital future of the company. “And that dedicated, long-term relationship has a lot of value versus projects where I do the work, then I leave and I don’t see you again,” says Carlos Rivera. “We are changing that, and our Mexico City office is one of our global offices spearheading this approach, and thinking about long-term projects where we sell not only services, but value and strategy.”

Rivera’s expertise on the matter is wide-reaching, as he has traced a journey not just across the sea and back, but through the early years in ecommerce and app development to today. Having founded an ecommerce startup in Mexico selling custom-made surf suits during the industry’s infancy, Rivera had an itch to learn more about how technology could help organizations succeed. This drive prompted him to pursue a master’s degree in France, before getting his PhD in Innovation and Technological Transference in Spain. While in Madrid, Rivera founded an app-developing startup, which quickly grew to become one of the top app developers in the country.

See how we helped Coppel scale up production for back-to-school.

Rivera’s expertise on the matter is wide-reaching, as he has traced a journey not just across the sea and back, but through the early years in ecommerce and app development to today. Having founded an ecommerce startup in Mexico selling custom-made surf suits during the industry’s infancy, Rivera had an itch to learn more about how technology could help organizations succeed. This drive prompted him to pursue a master’s degree in France, before getting his PhD in Innovation and Technological Transference in Spain. While in Madrid, Rivera founded an app-developing startup, which quickly grew to become one of the top app developers in the country.

“Europe is some years ahead of LatAm in terms of innovation and digital transformation. So there is an opportunity to apply trends, strategies and processes that you can’t find yet in the region,” says Rivera. Through the expertise and insights of talent like his, MediaMonks can apply its global capabilities, while imprinting local projects with the vision and knowledge to fill the clients’ needs.“I saw the opportunity to bring the know-how I had learned in Europe to the Mexican market and apply it to local brands,” says Rivera. Leading digital transformation for brands like Club Premier has allowed him to apply his acquired knowledge to enhance the brand’s capabilities to compete and succeed in an extremely competitive market.

Offering Flexibility to be Creative

Since joining MediaMonks, Rivera found that the company has an environment that invites him to be proactive and propose ideas. “The management team is very open to test these ideas and takes away your fear of being wrong,” says Rivera. “I really liked something [MediaMonks founder and COO] Wesley ter Haar said: it’s better to make mistakes trying to do something new to improve, than to always be wrong and keep repeating the same mistakes.” This goes hand in hand with his personal philosophy: “I am not afraid of change. My life path proves it.”

Brands should likewise cultivate an environment that facilitates flexibility and a passion to experiment and learn through creative problem solving–but they’d be forgiven if they don’t have the budget or time to allow for such an approach. These limitations are only some of the reasons why IHAs in particular struggle to retain the talent they need, but brands can make up for it by augmenting their teams with specialized, experienced talent through partnerships.

Rafael Aguilar–or  “Rafahu” as he is known in the creative world–is MediaMonks Mexico’s Art Director. Attracted to the variety of talent and disciplines cultivated in the MediaMonks team, Rafahu joined the monastery in early 2019, and has already made an impact through his very particular and striking visual style.

“There is no shortage of resources. If you look anywhere there is strength in any creative task,” he says. “Although the Mexico office may not have hundreds of employees…yet, you can get support or additional resources that you don’t have here, you can get them from any of the many offices MediaMonks has around the world, anytime.” What’s unique about his current position compared to other regional agencies is that he has the resources to fully develop the creative potential in every project he undertakes–and brands strapped for talent can just as easily tap into that pool of passionate artists and creatives.

This week saw the 4A’s CreateTech conference in New York City for a rousing exchange of ideas from creative technologists and leaders in advertising. Focused on technology’s power to provide new forms of storytelling and engagement, this year’s event was focused on the new “Innovation Imperative,” a sink-or-swim feeling faced by organizations who find themselves anxious about identifying the next big thing—or struggling to catch up to the last one.

The conference had a sense of urgency about it, but not without excitement, too. Its prevailing theme was to look past preconceived notions of what’s possible and to view challenges as new opportunities. A shortlist of concerns: What if artificial intelligence threatens my job security? How can my organization reach audiences on cutting-edge channels? How do we anticipate the fabled Next Big Thing?

Attendees didn’t have to wait very long for a solution to these questions. In her opening remarks, 4A’s President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz presented an edict in response to technology’s encroachment into the creative process: “We must all become creative technologists, at every level of the organization.” Easier said than done, perhaps, though with so many bright minds in a room together, plans of action were sure to emerge.

Eschew Fear for Fun

Our very own Sam Snider-Held, VR/AR Creative Technologist at MediaMonks NY, uses the term “techno-wizard” to describe the work that he does: “It’s like being a wizard, but instead of using magical stones and spell books, my tools are VR, AR, programming and machine learning.” In his playful talk “Becoming a Techno-Wizard,” Snider-Held expressed how a personal, creative goal can propel anyone “through learning all the hard, technical stuff” in their way. In essence, creative technologists should have fun.

For Snider-Held, that goal is “technologically-driven lucid dreaming,” or translating environments from imagination to virtual space with as little friction as possible using machine learning. This nod to imagination and play highlights how ingenuity shouldn’t be lost in working with tech. In fact, at a later CreateTech panel on artificial intelligence, event emcee Charlie Oliver and CEO of Tech2025 mused how “Something that’s missing in AI is ‘charm.’” Basically, she says, technology’s status as a black box sometimes leads to a sense of unease for creatives and marketers who don’t yet understand it.

But this anxiety about the changing tech landscape is exactly why Snider-Held suggests everyone empower themselves to leverage for their own goals. “AI isn’t going to take my job,” he says. “Instead, it’s allowing me to spend more time to make cool things rather than do detail-oriented, repetitive work.”

Become a Techno-Wizard

Snider-Held may be right that the closest thing we have to magic is technology, but how does a techno-muggle become a techno-wizard? The answer lies in committing to a constant willingness to learn and expand your (or your team’s) skillset bit-by-bit through an iterative process.

The industry tends to think of innovation and “the next big thing” as a monolith—a disrupting force that must be unlocked. But this view obscures all the little things that made it possible to arrive at the big thing. In his opening keynote at CreateTech, Dr. Kumar Mehta offered a tongue-twisting shift of perspective: “The thing behind the next big thing might be ‘the thing.’” He gave the example of how the invention of the wheel is seen as remarkable, “but what gave it value was the axle, which attached it to a movable platform.” Innovation, then, is an iterative process where one thing leads to another—the big thing is an aggregate of little things. Those who really want to lead in “innovation” must first and foremost treat it as a learning process where experimentation can eventually lead to value.

This way of thinking provides a more approachable framework for adapting to trends: start somewhere small and work up from there. Snider-Held walked the audience through his iterative process of creating a simple tool that performs complex world-building tasks in virtual reality. With just a few gestures, the tool lets you place AI-designed, animated three-dimensional assets within the space.

Just a small experiment born out of curiosity—“What if I could use machine learning to place assets in a virtual environment?”—snowballed into something bigger, resulting in a tool that could help Snider-Held and colleagues design much faster. But the experiment isn’t the only thing that transformed: so did Snider-Held. “I started off being the AR and VR guy on the team,” he told the audience, “but now I’m the AR, VR and machine learning guy.” He also mentioned how such experiments can result in ready-made prototypes that can serve as tangible solutions to new problems, showing how the techno-wizard mindset is as useful to entire organizations as it is for inspired individuals.

In summary, “Don’t wait for opportunities,” says Snider-Held, which really speaks to the over-arching theme of the event. Organizations shouldn’t wait for a big change but continually seek out new ways of doing things. Through this, both organizations and individuals can enjoy a new sense of confidence and enthusiasm to tackling the latest trend challenges.

The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short, is one of the world’s greatest celebrations of advancement in consumer technologies. Running throughout the week in Las Vegas, both the biggest players in tech and new startups alike have descended upon the conference to discuss and show off some of the biggest breakthroughs in tech throughout the past year.

While new tech is always exciting, each year presents its own challenge in separating hyped-up optimism from reliable use cases. But this time around, it seems that some technologies have graduated past the hype curve and are settling into proven, worthwhile use cases. Here are some of our highlights from CES 2019.

Reality is shifting. Dive deeper into the promise of AR.

The Family Came Together

To kick off the conference, the faces of S4 Capital shared the stage for a panel session on the first day of the show. Sir Martin Sorrell was joined by Wesley ter Haar of MediaMonks and Peter Kim of MightyHive, bringing the whole S4 family together to discuss the ever-evolving landscape of storytelling in the digital age. The three discussed some of the biggest challenges for organizations, mainly the need for always-on creative and personalization as well as control of data required to deliver on those creative opportunities. On that latter point, Kim offered a solution.

“Fragmentation is the enemy of speed,” he said, “and we see the opportunity to unite the creative and media function in a way that hasn’t been done for decades.” It’s clear that it’s time to tear down the walls that lock away the data needed to provide a better experience to users and help brands in their media buys. And speaking to that need for personalizes data at a faster output, Sir Martin Sorrell identified the platform that will have perhaps the biggest impact in the next five years: voice.

Everything’s Getting a Voice

Just how important is voice, anyway? Take a look at the CES show floor and the answer is obvious: extremely. In the past year, Amazon has made a point to introduce its Alexa assistant to seemingly any and every device and appliance in the home. Kohler showed off its Alexa-controlled Numi toilet, which allows users to heat the seat, control lights or play ambient sounds via voice. If that signals anything, it’s that no space is off-limits.

Now Google, who has given its Google Assistant a heavy presence at this year’s show, is following Amazon’s example in unveiling its Google Assistant Connect platform. The tool enables developers to integrate the assistant into their own devices more easily, allowing for an entire home ecosystem of Assistant-enabled devices and inviting entirely new user contexts into the home.

Voice-enabled interfaces are “turning homes into the new frontier for business,” according to MediaMonks Innovation Director Geert Eichhorn. While AI has been ubiquitous in our lives for some time—controlling air traffic, recommending movies based on our view history and more—it’s this new humanization of AI that’s helping brands get their foot through users’ front doors.

AR and VR Continue to Show Promise

Voice isn’t the only hot interface at this year’s show. AR and VR also made an exciting splash—for example, HTC’s announcement of the Vive Cosmos, a virtual reality headset that promises to pair not just with PC’s but also smartphones as well, letting users take it on the go

At a panel titled “The Augmented Reality Experience,” Managing Director at MediaMonks LA Olivier Koelemij offered a few key insights and takeaways about AR for brands who want to take advantage of the tech, but don’t know where to begin. First, “Mildly branded, shareable filters like you see on Facebook and Snapchat have been really positive examples for the new types of advertising enabled by AR.” But most exciting to him were platforms like Google Playground, which enables users to create shareable AR content directly in their smartphone’s camera, opening up new types of interactions for users.

Whether your experience is the right fit for virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality depends on what you’re trying to achieve: AR selfie filters are great for letting users express themselves, though it can be a powerful tool for showing off how a product fits into users’ lives (for example, previewing how furniture looks in the home). VR, meanwhile, provides a great environment for storytelling and building empathy.

And that’s a wrap! CES never fails to disappoint, and there’s plenty to look forward to in the next year. While creative ideas like roll-up displays and flying cars take the imagination for a wild ride, the real theme of this year’s CES is the data that, when used effectively, lets organizations develop content and experiences in demand by their audience. We’re excited to watch—and continue to participate in—the industry’s evolving trajectory.

With bigger budgets and more responsibility, creatives face bigger scrutiny on the return of their campaigns—and businesses are under pressure for better, more engaging experiences. The secret to pulling it off? A clear vision of user behavior.

SoDA just released its annual Global Digital Outlook Report, made in collaboration with Forrester, surveying the shifting needs and priorities for agencies and marketers alike. SoDA – The Digital Society is a network of entrepreneurs, agencies and production companies focused on producing digital experiences that push the limits of marketing. The organization encourages knowledge-sharing and collaboration between business leaders and creatives to tackle the challenges of the industry, of which the report is a primary example.

According to this year’s report, spending is on the rise: 54% of marketing leaders plan to increase their digital spend in 2019, but they’re also a bit pickier about where that money’s going. Under pressure to meet the always-growing need for content or the tough-to-pin-down goals of leadership elsewhere in the business, businesses need collaborators who are closely aligned with the needs and behaviors of their audience, and can provide the technical expertise to build upon that in fun, interesting and buzzworthy ways.

What Does “Innovation” Really Mean Anymore?

According to MediaMonks founder and COO Wesley ter Haar, who served as Guest Editor-in-Chief of the report, innovation is more about understanding existing user behavior. This stands in opposition to the conventional idea of “innovation,” which is typically touted as investment in the newest flashy platform (blockchain, anyone?). Rather than truly innovate, many businesses seem caught up in chasing the perception of innovation.

And true innovation is scary, because it requires risk-taking and sometimes failure. But with that comes learning opportunities, where the real value lies. “We must … remove the fear typically associated with trying and failing, and instead reward the passion to explore,” writes Josh Crick of CANVAS United in the report.

24% of business leaders say that differentiating their brand through innovation is their top strategy for growth, while 22% are focused on embracing emerging technology before their competitors. But rushing to support the hottest platform for the moment creates a sense of hype that could blow up in business’ faces. Not falling for the hype cycle behind the trend-of-the-week requires taking a deep look at how new platforms build upon native user behavior, allowing for more engaging experiences to be made. Because more agencies are likely to specialize in emerging technology like voice, AI and experiential activations in the next year, it will be important for businesses to gauge how well their prospective partners really understand the value of these platforms and have the track record to prove it.

Part of that challenge is understanding and anticipating the ways audiences on those platforms use them. This is because “Brands that start looking at consumers as co-designers and make it fast and easy for them to express themselves can expect increased engagement and loyalty,” Micha Savelsbergh of INDG writes in the report. The businesses and their partners with an intimate understanding of user behaviors are poised to put emerging platforms to best use.

How Can We Build Better Experiences without Falling for the Hype?

If you want an example of how a novel way to drive engagement fell flat, look at the trend of developing “Instagrammable” spaces and moments to drive user-generated content. When used alone, this tactic results in “a grid of identical photos with similarly structured backdrops—the only difference being the people in them.” What was once seen as sophisticated way to enhance a physical space through digital behavior has grown stale. This should give businesses a sense of urgency in building deeper engagement with their audiences.

One solution to engage more meaningfully with audiences is through marketing automation, which was listed as the top emerging technology for marketers and agencies alike, according to the SoDA Global Digital Outlook report. But despite its popularity, a lot of businesses struggle to add value to the user experience with the technology, instead using it in creepy and invasive ways, like that time when Target outed a girl’s pregnancy to her parents through a mailer. But marketing automation can enhance storytelling and experiences when put to use by creatives, who are finding themselves with a significantly bigger impact on the strategic direction of their business than before: 67% of businesses polled by the report said that creative leaders impact strategy. This shift demonstrates how the traditional divisions between departments and skillsets are breaking down.

Once viewed as something for the IT department to worry about alone, creative-focused companies are looking for ways to enhance their storytelling through data afforded by the tech. With APIs making marketing automation more accessible, says ter Haar, “a creatively-oriented company can add in what they are great at, which is understanding user behavior and adding a level of empathy to what is possible from an engineering perspective.” This means the innovative experiences of today and tomorrow will require both creativity, business acumen and some technological know-how.

Whether you’re an agency providing marketing materials in-house or a business seeking partnerships to realize your vision, it’s essential that collaborators have a clear understanding of how digital platforms—especially those surrounded by hype—have the potential to provide real value to the experiences you create. And that’s just one of several topics covered in the Global Digital Outlook report detailing agencies’ and marketers’ key insights and outlooks on future platforms and emerging technologies. With clear, transparent understanding of what all what’s at stake for everyone—including partners as well as users—businesses are better equipped to truly innovate and grow rather than simply follow the bandwagon.

Ready to innovate? Read the 2019 SoDA Global Digital Outlook Report in full.

With an ever-quickening rate of technological change and new platforms emerging just as fast, it can be tough for businesses to adapt. Rather than reinvent the wheel, legacy businesses should strive to be themselves.

When it comes to digital transformation, legacy businesses are in a uniquely tight spot: they must consider how to provide new, innovative experiences while retaining the character, image and customer relationship that have worked so well thus far. In some cases, rigid brand standards and internal reluctance to change can squander customers’ relationship with even beloved brands. So how does one invest in digital transformation without losing what made them unique and successful? 

Take stock of customers’ needs and how you can meet them.

The first step in adopting a digital strategy is to keep a customer-centric focus. How can digital platforms add value for them on top of your existing IP and products? Which of your customers’ needs are unmet given the channels that are available to you today? In addition to focusing on customer habits and needs, you should keep an eye on competition for inspiration, benchmarks and to see where possibilities lie. Are there any ways you can provide an even better experience than them?

When envisioning the experience that you want to give customers, avoid a common pitfall that befalls some brands: the dubious assumption that digital transformation solely involves a flashy site or app. In fact, digital transformation is a multifaceted process that will require you to restructure the way you do business. So rather than just invest in a new website or app experience, you’ll need a much more integrated approach to how your core message is amplified across several touchpoints, media and other messaging. This also means restructuring your team a bit. One example of changes you might implement includes marrying your marketing and IT teams to ensure a smoother user experience on the web.

Use your stature to your advantage—but don’t be afraid of change.

Old habits die hard, but legacy businesses have one advantage over newer ones: decades of cultural relevance and consumer trust that they can draw upon when asserting themselves in a digital space. Take, for example, one of the most iconic toy brands of all time: LEGO. When children’s attention shifted from physical toys to smartphones and iPads, LEGO wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The big, bad wolf of digital media failed to huff, puff and blow the LEGO-brick house down. Instead, the Danish toymaker chose to follow the wind and invest heavily in apps, videogames and film. The digital transformation effort has proved so successful that it’s today regarded as the “Apple of toys.”

Niels B. Christiansen, LEGO CEO, mentioned in the LEGO Play Well Report 2018 that “today’s children are seamlessly merging what’s real and what’s virtual, reinventing play in ways people of my own generation could never have envisioned.” This inspired the brand to similarly blur the lines between physical and digital experiences. “We at LEGO are embracing that fluidity in play,” added LEGO CMO Julia Goldin, “and we want to have a bigger role in a child’s development” both online and off.

LEGO’s sophistication in digital platforms culminated in Nexo Knights, a toy franchise designed to hold children’s attention across an entire ecosystem of experiences and media including a TV series, a mobile app, retail VR experiences and a web game. The robust campaign introduced children to the world of the toy series—but even with the bells and whistles of a VR game and mobile app, the focus was still on the boxes of brightly colored, plastic bricks that kids could dive their fists into.

Some things simply aren’t replicated digitally, according to Sander van der Vegte, Head of Labs at MediaMonks Labs. “From the feeling of the bricks to the sound of them clicking together,” there are many physical elements to the beloved brick toy that would make it impossible to replace the physical aspect of play. The big question to consider with digital transformation is how digital can augment the experience or thing that people already love about your brand.

See how we pieced together the Nexo Knights launch brick-by-brick.

Don’t cling to legacy business models, but enhance them in a smart way.

Clinging to a legacy business model can be suicide amidst changing consumer habits. Companies that are early in the digital transformation process can prioritize tools, platforms and features that fit within their existing business model rather than try to reinvent the wheel or deny the changing tide of customer needs.

One aspect of the Nexo Knights campaign that shouldn’t be overlooked is that it invites customers to visit and explore LEGO retail stores in a couple of different ways—despite the fact that most toy sales are happening online rather than off. What sounds like a bad idea has proven fruitful for the brand. A keystone of the campaign is the Nexo Knights VR experience, which lets customers literally step into the IP’s world as soon as they walk through the doors of a LEGO store. After they became acquainted with the product, children were able to find power ups at stores that they could scan into the Nexo Knights app, enhancing their digital experience with in-store visits. With both assets, the brand leveraged digital tech to enhance brick-and-mortar retail and to encourage kids to see the products in-person. Who said retail was dead?

Digital transformation can certainly be intimidating—it forces you to take a long, hard look at the way you form relationships with customers and can even cannibalize your product. But adopting a digital strategy doesn’t have to result in an identity crisis. Sometimes the best strategy is to be yourself.

While a clear distinction between art and advertising may not always exist, consumers have a sixth sense for ads that tug at the heartstrings with one hand and their wallets with another.

What makes the difference between a campaign that delightfully intervenes rather than one that merely interrupts, and how can you begin to develop and conceptualize such a creative piece? With MediaMonks’ Water Ripples installation as an example (produced in collaboration with Stella Artois, Mother New York and Water.org), we’re diving into three main ingredients that make up an artful intervention.

And that’s really the test for elevating something to an art form—helping your audience situate themselves and your brand within a larger framework of social good, taking them outside of themselves and their everyday. While aesthetic beauty is ideal for creating a memorable campaign, it’s that self-identification with the human condition that leaves a lasting impact.

Thirsty for more? Read more about Water Ripples from FWA.

1. A Culturally Relevant Purpose

Both works of art and advertising evoke emotion in the audience, which means a particularly artistic campaign should have a clear, culturally relevant value proposition or purpose. A good place to find inspiration is to back a cause or highlight an issue that you feel aligns with your business or audience. And consumers agree: to a Sprout Social study from earlier this year, about two thirds of them think it’s important for brands to take a social stance, so don’t be shy. While it may seem risky, an experience or campaign that drives social good connects to audiences on a human level–and demonstrates your business’ desire to be socially responsible. Even if you aren’t able to solve the world’s problems, you can at least aim to unite people together or ask them to contemplate their place in society, just like any work of art or literature would.

The Water Ripples piece aimed to portray Stella Artois’ care for the clean water effort. And that’s a great cause for a brewery: beer is 90 to 95% water, after all. Through the use of 600 motor-controlled water droplets to replicate the look of rippling water, the installation beautifully depicted the “rippling effect” that the brand and installation participants made in social impact.

2. An Experience that Enhances the Environment

Whether you’re building a large-scale art installation or want to play with a digital platform in a unique way, cleverly intervening with your audience’s everyday environment can go a long way in striking an emotional or empathetic connection between themselves and your cause.

While the Water Ripples’ most outstanding feature is its visuals, its biggest effect on viewers and participants was that it provided a quiet, contemplative and meditative space—a stark contrast to the hustle-and-bustle of Grand Central Station during commuting time.

3. Audience Agency

Every good campaign should have a call to action, but an artistic one should offer a call to contribution—and that contribution should prompt participants to feel as though they’ve made a significant impact or connection with other people in the world (and hopefully your brand, too). How do you allow participants to immerse themselves in the cause by providing an experience?

To answer this question, the team behind the Water Ripples installation accounted for several tiers of participation, including those who answered the call to contribution as well as those who were simply passing by. Participants who made a financial contribution by purchasing a limited-edition Stella Artois chalice were able to make the water ripple, symbolically signifying the impact of their participation—and providing delight to those viewing from afar with the beautiful show.

Helping your audience place themselves within the grand scheme of the human experience doesn’t have to be that lofty—sometimes it’s as simple as designing a specific place for photo-ops and Instagram-worthy moments.

Returning from any conference or festival presents a bit of a honeymoon situation: having absorbed insights and ideas, your brain is firing on all cylinders for ways to implement them into your organization or workflow. It’s important to carry that momentum while it’s fresh in your mind, so use this time to reflect on opportunities and raise them with leadership.

If you’re not sure where to begin, consider wise words from MediaMonks founder Wesley ter Haar, who presented his “Top Techtonic Trends” talk at the Brand Innovators Summit at SXSW. In the talk, ter Haar asks a crucial question: “Will we be relevant in X?” It’s something MediaMonks asks itself each day, and every department or team within an organization should likewise reflect on how they can maintain relevancy during a time where means of interaction are always in flux.

Often, this boils down to how one can provide a greater customer experience with the technology available. “When you talk about how you deliver exceptional experience, those are the companies that will win,” SAP’s CMO Alicia Tillman offered in a fireside chat at the event. But that’s easier said than done; how can brands actually execute better experiences?

At the “Behind the Brand: Johnson & Johnson” panel, moderated by MediaMonks Head of Growth Joe Olsen and hosted at SXSW’s Brand Innovators Summit, key players within one of the world’s biggest home and pharmaceutical brands gave their insights on how to drive innovation internally to meet the growing needs and expectations of consumers.

“When you think of innovation with CPG, it’s usually about what’s on the shelf: the physical good,” Sarah Debolt, Manager at Johnson & Johnson’s Marketing Accelerator, told the panel audience. “What my team is trying to encourage—and where the market is going—is thinking about the digital products and services that surround the tangible products that you’re using.” According to Debolt, organizations have to look beyond the products they offer and instead focus on adding value to customers’ lives and how they engage with the brand.

Innovation is About Value, Not Perception

Consumers can tell whether a brand is innovating or merely seeking the perception of innovation. Whether out of concern for budget or brand reputation, leadership aren’t likely to sign off on innovation for innovation’s sake. “People in the industry feel like there’s a first-mover’s advantage to these technologies,” said Mike Summers, Brand Manager and Digital Strategist at Listerine. “’Let me get there first.’ But there’s really not an advantage unless you have a reason to be there.” The attitude that Summers hints at is why many organizations stumble awkwardly into the emerging tech space, like when Kodak hopped on the blockchain bandwagon before falling right off of it.

These missteps lend to leadership’s skepticism of innovation’s value. So how do you break through that? By thinking like the C-suite and identifying innovation’s clear business value. The best way to ensure your initiative is on the right path is to invite key stakeholders from across the organization to the planning table, then working together to seek out opportunities for emerging technology to meet those needs.

For example, a request to better invest in data for stronger customer targeting first requires an understanding of what data is needed and why. The key is to identify pain points first, then apply the best tech solutions that solve them. That’s something that challenger brands have understood for a while. At a challenger brands fireside chat session, Sr. Director of Consumer Marketing at Invisalign Kamal Bhandal noted that “Believe it or not, we position ourselves as a technology company, and data fuels so much of our business.”

Make a Case by Speaking Leadership’s Language

If you’ve selected the best technology to solve a specific business need, you’ll have a much easier time explaining its value to decision makers in your organization. Matthew Fantazier, Senior Brand Manager and Digital Strategist of Johnson’s Baby, explained how this business-first focus helps sell digital innovation within Johnson & Johnson. “We don’t have a chatbot strategy or an AI strategy,” he told the audience. “We have business strategies. If there’s something cool that Sarah and her team are working on and I have this problem I need to solve, my job is to find a way to integrate that, to make it meaningful and impactful.”

That last point about developing meaningful solutions is the most important; by highlighting the impact any given tech will have on improving the customer experience, you can better speak to its value across different levels of the organization. It’s all about looping the conversation back to the value for the customer value. As ter Haar said in his talk, “Mix empathy with engineering for the future. It’s not just about the data, but how the data is being used.”

Innovating isn’t easy—if it were, there wouldn’t be so much urgency surrounding it. But that urgency shouldn’t come from rushing to lead with “the next big thing.” Instead, set your focus on discovering ways that emerging technology can enhance the relationship your brand has with new and existing customers. By maintaining this focus in your innovation initiatives, you’ll have no problem framing it in a way that promotes a clear value to leadership and stakeholders throughout the organization.