We’ve got some news that will sweeten the deal for any brand that wants to elevate digital experiences: Jam3 is joining MediaMonks! Based in Toronto and servicing forward-thinking brands around the world, the highly decorated experience agency shares our maker’s mindset—and reinforces an end-to-end approach that combines cultural insights with creativity and technology to connect people to brands, to each other and to the world.

Founded in 2004 by Mark McQuillan, Pablo Vio and Adrian Belin above a Toronto garage, Jam3 started from humble beginnings—and has since grown to Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Montevideo, expanding our presence into Uruguay and bringing S4Capital to a total of 31 countries. Shared clients include Google, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix and more.

As Jam3 gained ground around the world, the team has also joined us in claiming space on the digital craft award leaderboards. They became Campaign’s US Digital Agency of the Year (Gold), adding to our recent EMEA Agency of the Year (Gold) award and other Campaign wins, and were named alongside MediaMonks in Forrester’s “10 Digital Agencies to Supercharge Your Marketing.” Finally, they join us in the FWA Club 100—an achievement shared by only 10 teams.

“The work that Jam3 and our team does is some of the most iconic digital work over the last decade,” MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar told Ad Age. “This makes it easier for our clients. Rather than putting us in competitive spaces, clients can put us into combined efforts.”

Scaling Up Innovation Together

By joining forces, Jam3 and MediaMonks blend together two teams of cross-border, multidisciplinary talent—making us better equipped to scale up innovation and best in class customer experiences (CX) around the world. With our unitary structure in place, brands will have seamless access to the world’s leading talent in creativity and technology.

In fact, this model has been key to both of our growth over the decades. Like us, Jam3 has maintained a single P&L model that embraces friction and brings together diverse disciplines, which lay the foundation for groundbreaking work that resonates on both a cultural and individual level. In that sense, you could say our teams were made for each other like peanut butter and jelly.

“When we’re talking about being unitary or one P&L, we don’t turn up to the pitch with the same T-shirt,” says Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Director at S4Capital. “We are bringing companies together as one. Clients want us executing on the creation, production, and distribution of content. MediaMonks and Jam3 are two competitors who have had great respect for one another, and it’s been interesting from my point of view to bring the two together.”

Trailblazing a Shortcut to Transform at Speed

Perhaps more urgently for brands, our unitary approach is key to unlocking transformation at speed. When faced with social distancing and the need to serve audiences at home, many brands were ill-prepared to show up within a digital-first landscape. They had long placed their faith in consultancies who burned their hours consulting rather than doing—an approach that was never sustainable and failed brands when they needed to compress years’ worth of innovation into just weeks or months.

A longtime Jam3 mantra encapsulates this thinking: “Never trust an idea from anyone who doesn’t make the end project.” By cross-pollinating learnings across a vast global network of talent, we’re better able to pinpoint the fastest path to transformation while pushing technology to its creative limits, a process that has become essential for brands as consumer behaviors continually evolve.

We achieve this by zeroing our focus on building impactful, individual experiences—a purpose Jam3 is ideally suited for, as validated in its work and accolades. “When we looked into Jam3’s future, we were seeking a superpower partner of our own who understands the value we bring to the table and allows us to really excel at what we do best, which is the CX work, this high digital work,” says Mark McQuillan, President and Founder of Jam3.

Once rivals on the digital craft leaderboards, MediaMonks and Jam3 are now better together—and soon, our clients will be, too. “S4Capital is an amazing platform with lots of relationships, and we’re already seeing opportunities with our clients,” says McQuillan.

In the past year, we’ve had the chance to partner with brands and help them show up for audiences in meaningful and creative new ways. Now, we’re carrying that momentum into 2021 by announcing a new member of the S4Capital family: Decoded Advertising, a truly integrated creative, technology and media agency that bridges the gap between meaningful storytelling, data-led optimization and commerce.

With Decoded joining S4Capital just before MediaMonks celebrates its 20th anniversary, we stand at a pivotal moment to integrate our unitary offering with new efficiency. The move accelerates our pursuit to deliver more impactful creative across the customer decision journey (CDJ)—driving brand relevance beyond advertising to evoke emotion and entertainment wherever people look.

 Maximizing the Integrated Approach

In building S4Capital, Sir Martin Sorrell set out on a bold vision to align the “holy trinity” of first-party data, content and programmatic media under one unitary structure. The benefit to this end-to-end model is data informs content, which is then distributed through programmatic media for greater effectiveness. Combine this with an integrated strategy that spans across the full CDJ—commerce, social media, OOH, virtual events and more—and brands have a content engine that fuels insight-driven, fit-for-purpose creative across the digital landscape. 

While S4Capital has scaled up its content, creative and media capabilities over the years, Decoded has delivered on the integrated promise since its inception. Among Decoded’s first clients was Dollar Shave Club, a visionary DTC brand that changed the retail landscape forever. But while it’s easy to be a small disruptor, true success comes with a partner who can help you scale and grow. By aligning its data and creative practice, Decoded’s multidisciplinary team helped scale the DTC mindset and catapult Dollar Shave Club and its many other recognizable brands to great success.

While Decoded began in the advertising environment, combining with MediaMonks offers an opportunity to extend beyond that and add a fresh perspective to creative experiences of all kinds. “Since day one it’s been our goal to explore every strategic, creative and media lever at our disposal to build better brands and deliver better performance results,” says Matt Rednor, Decoded’s Founder and CEO. “In S4Capital, we’ve found a group of like-minded collaborators that immediately expand our ability to disrupt the industry with a more modern approach to creativity.”

Creative and Media Align to Deliver Performance at Speed

Decoded has grown deliberately to deliver performance across the entire customer experience. The foundation of its strategy is an understanding that creativity and media are two reciprocal forces that define advertising effectiveness. Often, a brand will rely on multiple vendors for each, but aligning both together at the outset results in stronger deliverables. For example, conceiving creative around the media plan is essential to building fit-for-format creative. 

MediaMonks has long operated at the intersection of technology and creativity, translating data and insights into culturally relevant content that moves the needle. But Decoded isn’t just data-driven; everything the team sets out to do is designed to create data that further inform design paths in a never-ending feedback loop. This flywheel of data and creative content working in tandem results in smarter, more effective creative throughout the CDJ, and showcases what brands can achieve when the holy trinity of data, content and programmatic media truly work in concert with one another. 

A New Partner Model for a New Era

Beyond offering greater relevance, a stronger end-to-end structure also breaks down the silos that inhibit a brand’s ability to pivot and overcome challenges at speed—an all-too-common scenario for brands over the past year. At MediaMonks, we take a people-first approach to marketing that we call “feeding the feeds,” in which brands drive cultural relevance by inspiring people to act and engage with brands through activations and creative content.

But succeeding in that strategy requires maintaining a wide-angle view of the customer, understanding the way they behave across different channels and touchpoints, both online and off. Brands must also feel confident in giving some of the narrative control to consumers, in which reacting to audience input at speed becomes essential to protecting the brand. In this respect, meaningful storytelling that fuels earned media and social proof for a new era demands that brands join content, data and the media plan together for maximum effectiveness. 

“The past two years have seen us increasingly working for clients across our data, creative and digital media practices,” says MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. “The expertise and experience Matt and his colleagues bring us will heighten our ability to deliver a truly unified offer.” At the start of a new year and decade, the possibilities for creative excellence are endless—and with Decoded helping guide S4’s integration we’re accelerating our unitary promise to brands around the world.

The results are in: MediaMonks, Circus and Firewood have each been placed in the annual Adweek 100: Fastest Growing feature, following each of their placement last year. Fastest Growing honors the top 100 agencies and 10 top solution providers—large and small, from all over the world—whose industry presence is on the rise. MediaMonks ranked number 57 on the list overall; MediaMonks, Circus and Firewood each placed among the top 10 large agencies.

Because the list honors international agencies spanning every category, type and size that have achieved significant growth, we’re honored to be in such good company. But we’re especially excited to stand as three individual partners that have since banded together to offer a distinct, differentiated offering that helps brands innovate and resonate with digital audiences today—and while our approach is resonating with brands, we’re just getting started.

“I’m thrilled to see that it isn’t just MediaMonks that made the Adweek 100: Fastest Growing feature, but also our amazing colleagues at Circus and Firewood,” says Wesley ter Haar, founder of MediaMonks. “The mind wanders at what happens when you put three of the fastest growing agencies into a unitary structure and single P&L—there are many great things to come, and I’m looking forward to it.”

Independently, we continue to serve brands with the signature offering that made us each great from the start—with a continued passion for the clients and work that got us added to this list in the first place. MediaMonks is a premium digital experience partner, helping brands better understand and digitally connect with their audiences and build brand love in the process. Circus is a multicultural, fully integrated digital agency that partners with its clients to develop high-impact ideas, strategies and content that wins in the attention economy. And founded on the belief that good people are good business, Firewood is a pioneer of the “embedded” model, building in-house creative, strategy and technology teams that become extensions of its clients’ teams—and amplify their power.

Throughout 2020, these capabilities have helped brands show up in significant ways. Together, we gave sports fans the best seat in the house (their house); we brought people together as they marched for Pride from their living rooms; we extended the world’s most innovative AR/VR conference into AR and VR; and we’ve helped scale teams up while others have pulled back—facilitating not only our own growth, but that of our client partners as well.

“All of us come from a very different non-agency mindset,” says Juan Zambrano, cofounder of Firewood. “We’ve been disruptors from the start, and our goal has always been to support our clients at scale delivering speed, quality and value across the board—particularly at a time when taking a digital-first approach has become essential.”

“Circus’ roots lie in breaking new ground with impactful ideas led by data, fed by emotion and built at scale,” says Bruno Lambertini, founder of Circus. “As we look toward the future, we look forward to further empowering brands through greater collaboration and a cohesive offering with MediaMonks and Firewood.”

We’ve grown alongside our clients through this commitment to shared success. Together, we’re offering brands a one-stop solution as a best of breed partner in the digital marketing space. The results are advanced marketing and advertising technologies, with world-class creative, strategy and production on a global scale.

We believe innovation doesn’t wait. Let’s keep moving.

Today’s brands face an incredible pressure to do more with less: there’s a need for always-on content spread across a vast number of channels to support. While this isn’t new, many traditional agencies still aren’t equipped to deliver that level of efficiency; many of them build businesses around a model based on tracking time spent rather than on success and attribution, stunting their ability to build long-term, collaborative relationships with clients.

The tailspin of the industry is well-documented. It’s the new-age, new-era advertising companies where industry action and growth is. In their “Predictions 2020: Agencies” report, Forrester Research urges that agencies finally disassemble what remains of their outmoded model and reassemble centralized structures and new capabilities strengthened by scaled data, technology and creativity.

This includes “[leveraging] in-house production capabilities, networks of creators, and dynamic creative engines to begin building the capacity to develop hundreds of assets that yield thousands of dynamically built creative iterations” and “[using] partnerships and white-labeled tech stacks to power just about every media type to enhance their scaled production capacity.” Forrester’s proposed model demonstrates that future-forward agencies have the potential to become the content engine uniquely equipped to power any channel supported by the brand.

The days of eschewing digital-first content for the traditional “big idea” are over. But don’t take it from me, take it from the largest advertiser on the planet, Mark Pritchard, Global Chief Brand Officer, P&G. “We’re breaking down the boundaries of functions, and operating in a fast-cycle, integrated, multi-skilled way, where speed matters and where every aspect of the consumer experience is created from the start.”

Don’t get Mark (or me) wrong, a (high quality) TVC can still be useful for broad reach for some audiences. It is, though, ill-equipped to achieve the relevancy required by today’s consumers, who are trained to tune out information that doesn’t immediately purport to serve them. One need only look at a widescreen TVC awkwardly cut-down into a vertically consumed, 6-second social ad to see why it doesn’t work.

What brands need to do instead is connect data and media strategy with creative ahead of moving into production. This enables a strategy for producing content that’s fit for format, fit for purpose and fit for moment. While that might sound overwhelming for brands that aren’t fluent in the nuances of different channels and how users interact on them, this approach is often cheaper and more efficient.

Efficiency isn’t just a matter of getting things done quickly. It’s about optimizing your media budgets at the same time. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. Brands that take a more strategic approach to their channel strategy and integrate it into the earliest phases of the creative process can likewise optimize their production to drive results. Fit-for-format blows traditional creative out of the water in terms of results. To quantify that: on average it’s typically above 30% – which is significant.

According to Dynamic Logic and Google, studies show on average that media placements only account for about 30% of a brand campaign’s success while the creative drives 70%. While creative freedom is important, an impactful campaign comes from testing out the channel strategy before putting the media spend behind it.

One might think that when it comes to speed, quality and value, you can only have two of the three. But new partnership models empower brands to achieve all three—precisely when close collaboration is valued by both brand and digital partner, they can both enjoy a seat at the table during strategic planning, resulting in better quality work.  For example, when both a media and agency partner join together early-on, that media plan serves as a starting point to strategize assets at scale, because your production team is equipped with knowledge needed to economically produce content for each of the formats you already know you need, rather than cut things down as an afterthought.

We’re in a new era where consumers demand a lot from today’s brands, who have a constant need to offer relevant content without cutting corners. As digital penetration continues to grow in the APAC region (with an appetite for content growing with it), it becomes all the more critical that brands select agency partners that are better equipped to pay them the care and willingness to collaborate that they need to succeed.

This post was originally published on CIO Advisor.

Como el evento de tecnología más grande y, posiblemente, más influyente del mundo, no podíamos dejar pasar la oportunidad de visitar el CES este año, y en esta ocasión vinimos con todo la familia, incluyendo a nuestra empresa hermana MightyHive y a nuestra empresa matriz S4Capital. Al comienzo de esta nueva década, el CES colocó a las industrias en una encrucijada, destacando los retos y las oportunidades que tienen enfrente.

El CES ha crecido tanto en los últimos años que ha dado lugar a varios eventos paralelos, incluyendo C Space: Marketing and Advertising (dedicado a tendencias disruptivas que dan forma al comportamiento de los consumidores y a los medios publicitarios) y la cumbre Brand Innovators’ Mega-Trends. MediaMonks estuvo presente en ambos eventos a lo largo de la semana, con Sir Martin Sorrell, Director Ejecutivo de S4Capital, llamando a Brand Innovators “un CES dentro de CES,” destacando su ambiente más íntimo. A continuación, veamos a fondo algunos de los insights que surgieron en ambos eventos.

El Surgimiento de la Mentalidad del Retador

Al inicio del año nuevo, Raja Rajamannar, CMO de MasterCard, dio algunos consejos en Brand Innovators: “Adáptense pronto, o corren el riesgo de quedarse atrás. Los mercadólogos deben ser siempre curiosos, tomar riesgos bien pensados y crecer con rapidez, ya que el ritmo de la tecnología y la innovación no se va reducir en el futuro cercano.”

Hablando del papel de los especialistas al imaginar la experiencia de marca infundida con tecnología, Silke Meixner (Partner, Digitial Business Strategy en IBM Global Business Services) destacó como “a medida que MediaMonks piensa cómo poner la emoción en la marca como socio, los mercadólogos también deben hacerlo,” señalando como la realidad aumentada presenta una oportunidad para lograrlo.

Ya sea ser más decidido en adoptar la mentalidad retadora, elevar la relevancia con la ayuda de nuevos modelos de socios, o construir valor en experiencias guiadas por las emociones, el CES de este año ofreció muchas oportunidades para las marcas de construir conexiones más fuertes con los consumidores a través de la tecnología. A medida que se embarcan en una nueva década, las discusiones en el CES parecen optimistas para las marcas, y no podemos esperar para ayudar a redefinir las grandes ideas y darles vida.

Es una mentalidad compartida por Kimberly Gardiner, VP y CMO de Mitsubishi, quien busca aprendizajes e inspiración fuera de su industria. En plática con Nick Fuller (SVP, Growth en MediaMonks) frente a una chimenea en la cumbre Brand Innovators, dijo “No buscamos inspiración en nuestros competidores de la industria automotriz, sino en compañías que van directo al consumidor. Queremos ser una marca que desafíe lo convencional.”

Este enfoque de desafío ha ayudado a Mitsubishi, que ha disfrutado su segundo año consecutivo como la marca automotriz asiática más rápida, a concentrarse en una audiencia dedicada. “No podemos gastar más que nuestra competencia, así que nos enfocamos en una audiencia muy específica y enfocada,” dijo Gardiner. “Queremos apuntar a personas que no son como todas los demás.”

En su propia charla junto a la chimenea con Wesley ter Haar, Fundador de MediaMonks, Sir Martin también adoptó la mentalidad disruptiva y retadora al crear una conexión entre la misión de S4Capital y el festival Burning Man. “Burning Man refleja una creatividad disyuntiva, se trata de crear algo y destruirlo cada año,” señaló.

Lograr Crecimiento y Personalización a Velocidad y Escala

Para desafiar convenciones con éxito y adaptarse al acelerado paso de la innovación tecnológica, las marcas deben tener las capacidades bien establecidas para escalar o dar giros con rapidez. Esto es de particular importancia si tomamos en cuenta el incremento de la hiperadopción del consumidor, es decir, la velocidad a la que cambian los comportamientos de los usuarios, y así desafiar aún más las métricas tradicionales de éxito.

En la sesión de storytelling the S4Capital en C Space, moderada por Marta Martínez (Directora de Plataformas de Marketing de Google), el liderazgo de S4 se reunió para discutir algunos de los principales retos y oportunidades que enfrentan las marcas al avanzar la nueva década. Louise Martens, Global Head of Embedded Production en MediaMonks, señaló cómo el aumento en la conversación social y en la adopción tecnológica ha acelerado el ritmo al que las marcas deben entregar resultados.

“En el pasado, podrías haber tenido cuatro grandes momentos en el año, pero ahora los mercadólogos tienen que entregar miles y miles de activos en diferentes formatos y canales.” ¿La solución? Nuevos modelos de sociedad que satisfagan la necesidad de las marcas de tener velocidad y escala. “Esa presión sobre las organizaciones ha generado nuevos modelos como la ubicación conjunta, el trabajo interno y la integración.”

Y a medida que las plataformas digitales se saturan cada vez más, la propiedad y la implementación de datos se vuelve clave para el éxito. “Para ganar, las marcas deben voltear a su ecosistema: medirlo, hacerle pruebas y enviar esos datos de vuelta hacia la creatividad,” dice Martens.

Al señalar que la personalización es una apuesta importante en 2020, Pete Kim, CEO de MightyHive, también mencionó la batalla por los datos ‘first-party’ e integrarlos de forma más cercana con la estrategia creativa de la marca. “Espero ver crecimiento continuo a medida que forjamos los procesos del futuro, poniendo el mensaje correcto y la creatividad adecuada frente a la persona indicada a escala.”

Reconociendo el Valor en la Tecnología Emergente

El piso de la sala de exposiciones en el CES ofrece una buena cantidad de aciertos y errores, lo que presenta a las marcas un recordatorio para asegurar que su inversión en tecnologías nuevas y emergentes otorgue un valor real, tanto para los negocios como para los consumidores. Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director d MediaMonks LA, participó en un panel como parte del tema Hollywood Digital en CES que buscaba destacar el valor que una de esas tecnologías, la realidad aumentada, puede ofrecer a las marcas. Títulado “La Experiencia de Realidad Aumentada/Mixta,” el panel incluyó a expertos de la industria como Magic Leap, Microsoft, IBM Global Business Services y más.

Uno de los retos clave para la realidad mixta que destacó el grupo, tal vez de manera contra intuitiva, es su acelerada madurez. Mientras que los saltos tecnológicos han facilitado el diseño y la implementación de experiencias digitales impresionantes, por ejemplo la adición de Depth API a ARCore, también elevan el listón de cómo se ve una experiencia verdaderamente de ayuda y valor agregado. Para marcas con una menor madurez digital, el panel destacó el papel que pueden jugar las alianzas para centrarse en ese factor de valor y transformar las ideas en realidad.

“Hay muchas formas de definir el valor,” dice Koelemij. Habló sobre el Dark Knight Dive, una experiencia de 4D VR que permite a los usuarios “volar” a través de una ciudad Gótica virtual mientras están suspendidos en un túnel de viento de paracaidismo, como un gran ejemplo de lo que pueden lograr las marcas al aventurarse con la realidad extendida. “Con este proyecto, pudimos conectar a AT&T con la IP de Batman que habían adquirido poco tiempo antes, y la prensa estaba fascinada. Los mercadólogos deben pensar sobre cómo medir y definir el éxito.”

As the world’s largest and arguably most influential tech trade show, you know we wouldn’t pass up the chance to visit CES this year—and this time we brought the whole family along, including our programmatic sister company MightyHive and parent company S4Capital. At the dawn of a new decade, this year’s CES placed industries at a crossroads, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that stand before them.

CES has become so big in recent years that it’s also sparked its fair share of side events, including C Space: Marketing and Advertising (devoted to disruptive trends that shape consumer behavior and advertising media) and the Brand Innovators’ Mega-Trends summit. MediaMonks had a presence at both events throughout the week, with S4Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell calling Brand Innovators “a CES within CES,” noting its more intimate feel. Below, let’s dive into some of the insights that surfaced across these events.

The Rise of the Challenger Mindset

At the start of the new year, MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar gave Brand Innovators some choice advice: “Adapt quickly, or you risk being left behind. Marketers need to stay constantly curious, take thoughtful risks and scale fast, as the pace of technology and innovation will not slow down anytime soon.”

Speaking of marketers’ role in envisioning the tech-infused brand experience, Silke Meixner (Partner, Digital Business Strategy at IBM Global Business Services) noted how “As MediaMonks thinks about putting emotion into the brand as a partner, marketers need to, too,” mentioning how AR presents an opportunity to achieve that.

Whether being more purposeful in adopting a challenger mindset, raising relevance with the aid of new partner models, or building value in emotion-driven experiences, this year’s CES offered ample opportunities for brands to build stronger connections with consumers through tech. As they embark on a new decade, the discussions at CES look optimistic for brands—and we can’t wait to help refine their big ideas and bring them to life.

It’s a mentality shared by Mitsubishi’s VP and CMO Kimberly Gardiner, who looks outside of her industry for learnings and inspiration. In conversation with Nick Fuller (SVP, Growth at MediaMonks) in a fireside chat at the Brand Innovators summit, she said, “We don’t look at auto competitors for inspiration—we look at DTC companies. We want to be a brand that challenges convention.”

This challenger approach has helped Mitsubishi—which enjoyed its second year in a row as the fastest Asian-owned auto brand—zero in on a dedicated audience. “We can’t outspend our competition, so we focus on a narrow, focused audience,” Gardiner said. “We want to target people that aren’t like everyone else.”

In his own fireside chat shared with MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar, Sir Martin also embraced the disruptive, challenger mindset by building a connection between S4Capital’s mission and Burning Man. “Burning Man reflects creative disruption—it’s about creating something and destroying it every year,” he said.

Achieving Growth and Personalization at Speed and Scale

For brands to successfully challenge conventions and adapt to the quickening pace of technological innovation, they must have the capabilities in place to scale up or pivot with speed. This is especially important given the rise of consumer hyperadoption, or the speed at which consumer behaviors shift, and further challenges traditional metrics of success.

At the S4Capital Storytelling Session at C Space, moderated by Marta Martinez (Director of Google Marketing Platforms), S4 leadership met to discuss some of the reigning challenges and opportunities that brands face while moving into the new decade. Louise Martens, Global Head of Embedded Production at MediaMonks, mentioned how the uptick in social conversation and tech adoption has quickened the pace at which brands must deliver.

“In the past, you may have had four big moments in the year, but now marketers have to turn around thousands of thousands of assets across formats and channels.” The solution? New partner models that satiate brands’ need for speed and scale: “That pressure on organizations has sparked new models like co-location, in housing and embedding.”

And as digital platforms become increasingly saturated, ownership and implementation of data become critical to success. “To win, brands must look at their ecosystem: measure it, test it and feed that data back inside to the creative,” says Martens.

Noting that personalization is table stakes in 2020, MightyHive CEO Pete Kim also mentioned the battle for first-party data and integrating it more closely with a brand’s creative strategy. “I hope to see continued progress as we forge the processes of the future—putting the right message and the right creative in front of the right person at scale.”

Recognizing Value in Emerging Tech

The showroom floor at CES offers its fair share of hits and misses, which presents brands with a sober reminder to ensure their investment in new and emerging tech provides real value, both to the business and consumers alike. Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director of MediaMonks LA, participated in a panel as part of the Digital Hollywood track at CES that sought to highlight the value that one such technology—augmented reality—can offer to brands. Titled “The Augmented/Mixed Reality Experience,” the panel included industry experts such as Magic Leap, Microsoft, IBM Global Business Services and more.

One of the key challenges to mixed reality that the group highlighted, perhaps counter-intuitively, is its fast-growing maturity. While tech leaps have made it easier to design and implement impressive digital experiences—take Depth API’s addition to ARCore, for example—they also raise the bar on what a truly assistive, value-added experience looks like. For brands at a lower digital maturity, the panel highlighted the role that partnerships can play in homing in on that value factor and bringing ideas into reality.

“There are many ways to define value,” says Koelemij. He discussed the Dark Knight Dive, a 4D VR experience that lets users “fly” through a virtual Gotham City while suspended in a skydiving wind tunnel, as a best-in-class example of what brands can achieve when going big on extended reality. “With this project, we were able to connect AT&T with the Batman IP that they’d recently acquired, and the press was all over it. Marketers must think about how they measure and define success.”

The decade is drawing quickly to a close, and it’s been a wild ride. From new technologies to new members of our family (we welcomed BizTech, IMA, Firewood Marketing and WhiteBalance this year), 2019 presented us with a lot of thrilling changes—and some exciting opportunities as we enter a new era. Looking back, we polled managing directors from our offices around the world for their favorite trends and technologies that have emerged in the past year—and what they’re looking forward to next.

Extended Reality Gets Real

Interest in mixed and extended reality (the combination of real and virtual objects or environments, like augmented or virtual reality, enabled by mobile or wearable devices) has been growing. At the same time, mixed reality has made strides in maturity over the past year, like Google’s efforts in making virtual objects feel truly anchored to the environment with occlusion, in which virtual objects are responsive to their surrounding environment—for example, disappearing behind real-world objects.

For Martin Verdult, Managing Director at MediaMonks London, extended reality is among the innovations he’s become most excited about going into 2020, and not just for the entertainment potential: “Virtual and augmented reality will become increasingly prevalent for training and simulation, as well as offering new ways to interact with customers.” For example, our Spacebuzz virtual reality experience gives children a unique look at the earth and environment they may typically take for granted, using the power of immersive tech to leave an indelible mark.

As the technology that powers extended reality matures, so will its potential use cases. But when a technology is still evolving significantly in short time, it can be difficult for brands to translate their ideas or goals into clear, value-added extended reality experiences. “We have introduced creative sprints for our core clients to get these ideas in a free flow,” says Verdult.

Among Verdult’s favorite examples of augmented reality projects MediaMonks has worked on this year is Unilever’s Little Brush Big Brush, which uses whimsical, virtual animal masks to teach children proper brushing habits and turn a chore into playtime. Similarly, extended reality can bring products to life in an engaging way—or if used in a customer’s research phase, it can help customers interact with a product with minimal (or no) dedicated retail shelf space.

Part of the Little Brush Big Brush’s charm is that it extends beyond simply AR, connecting to a web cartoon series and a Facebook Messenger chatbot to reward kids with stickers at key milestones. “Value comes from connecting an IP to a brand through a deeply engaging hyper reality experience,” says Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director at MediaMonks LA. “One that only a well-executed integrated production can offer, combining digital and physical in new and extraordinary ways.”

AI/Machine Learning Grows Up

One can’t reflect on past innovations and look to the future without mentioning artificial intelligence and machine learning. From programmatic delivery to enabling entirely new creative experiences—like matured extended reality powered by computer vision—to connecting cohesive experiences across the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence “will change our interaction with technology in ways we can’t imagine yet,” says Sander van der Vegte, Head of MediaMonks Labs, our research and development team that continually experiments with innovation.

The most creatively inspiring uses of AI are the ones that will help us understand the world and our fellow humans. In collaboration with Charité, for example, we programmed a 3D printer to exhibit common symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and its effect on motor skills. The result is a series of surreal art-objects that make real patients’ experiences tangible for the general population.

Social Content and Activations Build Impact

Ask Sicco Wegerif (Managing Director at MediaMonks Amsterdam) what struck him this year, and he’ll tell you it’s the elevation of social content in purchasing—for example, how Instagram made influencer posts shoppable early this year. Wegerif notes that about a quarter of consumers have made a purchase on social media, signaling new opportunities for brands to build connections with consumers.

“Looking at this from an integrated and smart production perspective, we can help brands create so many assets and storylines that tap into this trend, especially when combining this with data so we can be super personal and relevant.” When social media is prioritized early in the creative and planning process, it can enable more meaningful experiences.

For example, our “People are the Places” activation for Aeromexico used Facebook content to transform the way users discover destinations around the world. Instead of researching and booking a city, users get to learn about people around the world—then purchase a ticket to where they call home. The social content enriches the experience and builds emotion into the experience. “It’s in essence a very simple thought that can change the whole CX,” says Wegerif.

Social Activations and Digital Experiences Weave Together

Speaking of social media, it can become a powerful tool to build relevance and connection with experiential. Jason Prohaska, Managing Director at MediaMonks NY, says: “Experience and social work hand-in-hand as part of the digital plan for many brands, and are no longer below the priority line.” With live experiential—which elevates the role of the online audience to interact, take part in and build buzz around experiences—brands can achieve greater strategic impact in how they build connection with their consumers.

But doing so successfully requires a confluence of data, influencers, experiential storytelling and production. The future of this looks good to Prohaska. “We expect 2020 to deliver several use case scenarios at scale for brand identity that may set benchmarks for personalization, automation, customer journey optimization, efficacy, performance and engagement.”

Koelemij looks forward to stronger investment in digital and consumer understanding as brands begin to integrate experiences even further going into 2020. “With most good work, success and performance can now be better attributed to digital as we get more advanced in understanding what success looks like,” he says, “especially in how we can measure it across blended activations.”

And that’s exactly how we’d like to spend 2020: helping brands achieve their goals with data-backed, insights-driven creative across the customer decision journey. Through added capabilities thanks to companies like WhiteBalance, Firewood, BizTech and IMA joining the S4Capital family in 2019, we achieve this by greatly prioritizing and enhancing key elements of the marketing mix for daring brands—and as we reflect on the past year, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

In today’s landscape where personalization and relevance are critical, marketers are increasingly asked to understand both the creative and technical sides of the equation when it comes to delivering digital experiences to customers. S4Capital, a new-era model offering end-to-end advertising services to brands and organizations around the world, bridges that gap: “Data is at the center of what we do,” Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Chairman of S4Capital, told IBC365 in a recent interview. “People that claim data destroys creativity or hinders it are talking nonsense. Good data and good insights inform creativity and makes it more effective.”

Achieving this requires close collaboration between MediaMonks, whose forte lies in creativity and enabling efficient production at scale, and MightyHive, who provides consulting and services in the areas of media operations and training, data strategy, and analytics. Emily Del Greco, President of the Americas at MightyHive, puts it succinctly: “MediaMonks is about taking the risk, and MightyHive comes quickly with feedback [backed by data.]”

We sat down with Myles Younger, Senior Director of Marketing at MightyHive, to discuss one of the biggest challenges that brands face when it comes to measuring performance and developing insights-driven content: privacy. From GDPR to the new California Consumer Privacy Act, privacy is going to become more challenging through 2020. For brands that struggle to look beyond the walled gardens of partner and platform data to gain a fuller view of their customers, Younger offers some advice: consider investing in a data clean room, which enables partners to develop new insights without compromising their audiences’ privacy. Younger walks us through what data clean rooms are, what you might consider before setting one up and more.

How would you explain data clean rooms?

Myles Younger: My analogy for how I would explain it is: imagine you have two data owners, ColorCo and FoodCo. ColorCo has data on its audience, including everyone’s favorite color. FoodCo has a similar audience to ColorCo, and knows their favorite food. ColorCo would like to know what the overlap is between their audiences, maybe identifying what the most popular combinations are in favorite color versus food—but neither wants to reveal to the other any personally identifiable information that could compromise the value of their data or the privacy of their audience.

A data clean room allows them to bring their data together in a neutral environment to figure out where the overlap is, meaning they might find that 300 people in their audience favor yellow and hotdogs—but neither ColorCo nor FoodCo know who those 300 people are, they just get the overlaps. That’s the special thing: you build new insights while protecting individual privacy.

Speaking of privacy, that’s a major concern for brands and their audiences. How do data clean rooms ensure brands still get a high quality of insights?

MY: Traditional methods of understanding the user are beginning to erode and brands are embracing first-party data that gives them a truer sense of who their audience is and what they need. What’s important to remember about data clean rooms is that they offer you access to insights gained from the first-party data of others.

As cookie-driven campaign measurement continues to become less reliable, brands are going to have to start looking elsewhere for insights on creative performance, reach and frequency, and attribution. Because data clean rooms generate insights from first-party data, they should be towards the top of every marketer’s list to at least become familiar with, if not start tinkering with.

At MediaMonks, we often discuss with clients the importance of delivering a total brand experience, applying insights and user data across a customer decision journey that extends beyond a single platform. Could data clean rooms aid in this process?

MY: Absolutely! Data clean rooms could aid in delivering the total brand experience in more meaningful ways than we’ve ever seen before. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it’s justified.

Up until now, digital ad targeting, personalization, measurement and optimization have been based on what you might call the “total cookie experience.” Cookies and ad tech tracking IDs form a big universe, but it’s an isolated place. Even before things like GDPR and Safari ITP, it was very difficult to connect millions of ephemeral (and often fraudulent) browser cookies and third-party tracking IDs back to genuine business data (customers, products, transactions, loyalty and preference data, stores, apps, strategic partner data, etc). Given that clean rooms run on first-party databases and not cookies, brands gain the opportunity to tap into the totality of CX data sets when making analyses or optimizations. For marketers who have been used to making fuzzy inferences from nebulous, siloed cookie pools, I think working from actual business data is going to seem like a revelation.

What else would excite brands about data clean rooms?

MY: Data clean rooms are a big win for measuring performance and ROI. Let’s say you’re a CPG brand, meaning you’re likely selling your product through distributors and retailers. Traditionally, you might have to wait months for reportage on transaction data. But we have a CPG client who uses data clean rooms to interrogate or query a retailer’s POS data in almost real time.

Given the rapid access to insights that data clean rooms offer, what are some other ways that working with one would change my day-to-day as a marketer or strategist?

MY: There really is a promise for far more rapid access to data. Previously, many marketers’ approaches were cookie-driven, which adds latency and degrades fidelity of the data. Data clean rooms let you act on a more instantaneous basis.

And while data clean rooms inhibit ownership or direct access to others’ data, it really can bring you closer to it. That might sound counter-intuitive, but data clean rooms prompt you to shift your perspective a bit. We always ask our clients: what do you want, the data or the insights? You probably want the latter, and while data clean rooms might keep you an arm’s length from the data itself, they bring you closer to the insights.

How easy is it to partner with another brand or company to join data in a clean room? Do you think data clean rooms will usher in greater collaboration as brands discover overlaps between their audiences?

MY: This is clearly an area for early adopters right now, but MightyHive is seeing early success and we’re onboarding advertisers into clean rooms left and right. The momentum is clearly there.

A smart place to start with respect to inter-brand collaboration is with existing strategic brand partnerships. For example: whenever consumers travel, they’re inundated with sophisticated partner marketing programs across airlines, booking sites, hotels, loyalty programs and credit cards. These brand and audience partnerships already exist, and clean rooms are probably going to come into play more and more as a means to share audiences, CX touchpoints, measurement data and insights.

Get your hands dirty with data clean rooms.