The new Wave covers CMOs’ need for integrated digital marketing solutions. “…As C-suite demands for growth and cost effectiveness rise, some enterprise buyers are seeking integrated and orchestrated solutions to unlock value across marketing campaigns, customer experience (CX), and commerce,” writes the report’s author, Forrester Principal Analyst Jay Pattisall. The Forrester Wave(™): Global Marketing Services, Q3 2022 evaluates partners’ abilities to meet each of these needs, helping CMOs identify the one that suits them.

Measured us among our industry peers, Pattisall wrote, “Media.Monks is a good fit for CMOs wanting to push the boundaries of digital (and partnership) with end-to end creative, production, analytics, and activation services.” This is the ambition we hold ourselves to in a time of intense transformation and the cusp of a new era of virtualization, in which insight into consumer behavior are key to unlocking compelling digital experiences and broad transformation.

Hyper-accelerated adoption of consumer behaviors and seismic shifts in the privacy landscape are putting marketers under pressure to deliver differentiated creative experiences. Those who aim to meet virtualized behaviors today require a partner who puts their own skin in the game, takes bold risks and helps them gain confidence to do so—all by seamlessly integrating a suite of services and expertise that shortcut to impact.

A new era calls for a growth partner of record.

A key insight surfaced by the Wave is how the need for integrated marketing services has erupted in recent years. “A recent COMvergence report for new business in the US shows that integrated agency reviews increased fourfold from 2020 to 2021,” writes Pattisall. “And according to Forrester’s Q1 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2022, 31% of B2C CMOs at organizations with 500-plus employees intend to integrate creative and media assignments to boost marketing impact.”

While integrated services are increasingly desired by brands, we’re proud to note that we were the first to bring the unitary idea to the market. Building a foundation in digital freed us from the baggage that beleaguers the more traditional names as they adapt to a new digital era. In a 2020 article, Pattisall told Campaign, “The industry is quite literally trying to move on from the shadow of its advertising heritage to better future proof itself.”

Meanwhile, we believe our newness gives us an edge over the nine other providers evaluated in the Wave when it comes to integration. “Like all others in the category, Media.Monks pursues a strategy to pair end-to-end marketing services, although its newness and mergers/acquisitions make the goal more achievable,” writes Pattisall.

This successful combination of services allows world-leading brands (and future household names) to focus their attention on outcomes that drive growth—not getting lost in a tangle of random acts of digital strung together by a group of competing partners. By bridging together expertise across four pillars—creative content, data, digital media and technology services—we can identify the quickest path to success and iterate toward longer term, broad transformational goals.

Reinventing the model, inside and out.

 “[Media.Monks’] esoteric vision to ‘win the decade’ speaks to its company’s artistic bravado,” Pattisall writes in the report, and achieving this goal relies on growing a new generation of digital technology experts. “Media.Monks’ moxie derives from its strong culture, talent, and EX, marked by an emphasis on upskilling employees, diversity, and programs for social justice and supporting employee 'side hustles’ to stoke creativity." Our Punk.Monks initiative is an example of how we do this. By spotlighting a different member of our community every other week, the series showcases the creative endeavors, businesses, charities and passion projects helmed by our talented team.

Such initiatives demonstrate a trademark of our people: we act like owners, and this foments a shared sense of trust and responsibility in our approach to collaboration. A consultancy may give you something top dollar but not exceptional, because their primary commitment is to their own brand. But truly remarkable results come from a consultative approach that brings work to life—not only consultation and strategy, but also execution derived from a maker’s mindset.

And that also means giving brands themselves greater ownership and control—something the traditional model has withheld for too long. Whether to provide ownership of data, oversight into media optimization and control over how the budget is allocated, a significant part of our service is to help brand marketers become more self-sufficient with unconstrained access to top-tier talent who can scale their ambition to new heights.

True disruption calls for strategic risk.

While the brands and technology platforms we partner with have a verve to shake up their respective industries, we’ve found that in our own market, that same eagerness to agitate is rare. Legacy setups may guarantee success for their clients by eliminating risk, but this conservative approach fails to help brands who need to become disruptive leaders in their own right. With the recent additions of TheoremOne and Zemoga to our team, our technology services pillar continues to rapidly evolve to help brands transform to a new era.

Strategy also plays a key role in balancing risk and reward. While unbridled risk can be problematic, we welcome a level of controlled risk to amplify creativity with intelligence. This helps generate unexpected outcomes for brands, particularly as the hyper adoption of new consumer behaviors challenge the tried-and-true strategies that marketers have leaned on in the past. Following this challenger’s mindset, creative briefs aren’t built just to resonate and perform, but to also generate new qualitative and quantitative data that open opportunities to co-create with audiences.

Success in this new era calls for reliable partnerships built on radical transparency and a shared desire to disrupt. Through cultivating a strong global culture of diverse digital experts with a high level of ownership, we’re committed to helping brands find the best solution—or invent new ones where they previously didn’t exist—to their needs. That’s the strength of a partner who can do it all, and we’re up to the challenge.

The idea of people coming together in virtual environments isn’t new, as any fan of online games will tell you. But as these worlds become more mainstream, we’re seeing a shift in the role they play in our lives, whether it’s a pivot from competition to cooperation or enabling people to push beyond limits that hold them back IRL. This is virtualization in action: a set of new audience behaviors and cultural norms resulting from 30 years of digital transformation, hyper-accelerated over the past five years. These behaviors vary from one metaverse platform to the next, meaning an understanding of its culture is crucial to success in the space. In some ways, it’s not so different from identifying which city or neighborhood is the best location for a brick-and-mortar store.

Do you need to find your way into the metaverse? Don’t despair, because we’ve mapped out some of its preeminent worlds. Discover what differentiates one from the next with the information below. With a better understanding of each space, you’ll be able to better envision your brand’s place within the metaverse—wherever that may be.

Roblox.

Despite its quick rise to fame in recent years, Roblox dates back to September 2006, and today has a monthly average user base of 190 million. Its worlds are user-created, meaning they can vary drastically in look and feel; you never know what you’re going to find there. Users have the ability to develop their own assets (models, textures, audio and more), adding to the variety on the platform. This ability to create and sample a diverse array of activities is what makes it so appealing to players. Roblox is free and multiplatform—available on PC, mobile, Xbox One and VR platforms—and its developer tools are surprisingly accessible for those without deep coding experience.

More than a game, Roblox is a creation platform that has allowed millions of amateur developers to try their hand at making games and virtual environments for the first time. Players can both create and share individual assets, build robust games or simply play. The level of creation enabled by the platform, as well as its younger-skewing audience, makes it ripe for memes. Don’t expect avatars to mirror players’ physical likeness; fanciful avatars are the norm here. One great example of a brand embracing gamified elements in Roblox is the Song Breaker Awards, presented by Logitech For Creators. The experience reinvented the awards show format to be more accessible and interactive, inviting viewers to participate in a narrative that unfolded throughout the show.

Horizon Worlds.

Meta’s foray into the metaverse is the newest virtual environment on our map—and the only one that requires a headset to enter. Since its launch in December 2021, Horizon Worlds now has 350,000 monthly active users. Like Roblox, environments in Horizon Worlds are largely user-created, meaning there’s a lot of variety in the worlds you can build or step into. The Unity-powered platform has a cartoon-like look and feel, with environments ranging from the fantastical to the ordinary, like a virtual comedy club or recording studio. Based in VR, Horizon Worlds requires an Oculus headset to enter, although its creation tools are accessible and intuitive.

Built by Meta, developer of some of the biggest social platforms on the internet, Horizon Worlds is first and foremost a space to socialize and create. While users can build competitive environments, connection among communities is key. The space also lends well to cultural moments like live sports or musical performances, which users can immerse themselves within from afar. Given the platform’s connection to Facebook—users can join with an existing Facebook account, although Meta just recently announced a unique account system—avatars and identities in Horizon Worlds are meant to reflect one’s real-world identity. This also makes safety and moderation a key consideration on the platform. Speaking of identity, a stand-out Meta’s Going Beyond: Women’s History Month event, made in collaboration with the NBA, is a stand-out experience. Throughout an interview focused on representation, viewers had a front-row seat.

Minecraft.

Officially launched in November 2011, Minecraft is home to 170 million monthly average users. The blocky, open-world simulation game places users within a unique, procedurally generated landscape that they can explore and manipulate to their desire. What’s really driven Minecraft’s popularity over the decade is its marketplace of downloadable content and customization tools, allowing for the design of diverse worlds and environments. While Minecraft is a paid download, its wide availability on PC, consoles and mobile make it widely accessible to audiences.  

Minecraft’s culture is focused on building. Players take enjoyment in creating environments together and sharing them with the community—or even breaking apart pre-made environments. Users are afforded complete control of virtual spaces they inhabit, allowing for a high sense of ownership and collaboration. One of our favorite Minecraft activation is the Uncensored Library, which cleverly uses the game to circumvent state censorship and offer access to articles banned around the world. Of course, we have a soft spot for the time our VP of Platforms and Products Brook Downton built our New York office in Minecraft, too.

Fortnite.

Epic Games’ wildly popular shooter, powered by the developer’s own Unreal Engine, launched in July 2017 and boasts 280 million monthly average users. Having risen to fame at the height of the “battle royale” trend in gaming, Fortnite offers a handful of different game modes that take place on an island that grows and evolves over time. It features a cartoon-like art style, similar to what you might expect from a CGI-rendered animated film. As a free-to-play, cross-platform title available on consoles, mobile and PC, Fortnite has a very low barrier of entry for players.

Fortnite is an evolving space, refreshed seasonally with new competitive modes and events featuring limited-edition skins (avatars) depicting characters and celebrities from pop culture. The promise that there’s always something new is what keeps players coming back. In late 2021, Fortnite launched Party Worlds, or social spaces where players can access minigames, concerts, movie screenings and other content. The space demonstrates the kinds of ways that metaverse worlds can uniquely bring people together in shared, persistent social spaces.

Decentraland.

Decentraland launched in February 2020 and is frequented by 330,000 users each month. There’s a big difference between Decentraland and the other platforms mentioned above: it’s a Web3-based environment built on the Ethereum blockchain. While platforms like Roblox and Horizon Worlds invite users to jump into self-contained worlds, Decentraland is a seamless, persistent landscape in which plots of land are bought, sold and redeveloped by the community—just like in the real-world real estate. Decentraland is accessible in a browser, though the need to connect a crypto wallet can be a technical barrier of entry to users.

The culture in Decentraland is more plugged into the Web3 space and skews very digitally mature. In addition to in-world games and activities, this environment is a place to flaunt what you’ve got: art galleries designed to show off NFT collections are popular, and a bustling marketplace allows users to trade ownership of unique digital outfits and objects. Duolingo expertly captured the playfulness of the space by dropping a giant statue of Duo, its infamous mascot, into Decentraland’s leisurely Terra Zero area. Holding a billboard that cycles through snarky push notifications reminding visitors to do their language lessons, the activation cleverly emulates Duo’s pesky habit of popping up right when the leisurely activities tee off.

The Sandbox.

 Our final metaverse world covered here is also one of the oldest, having launched back in May 2012. Since then, the Sandbox is enjoyed by 300,000 monthly users. Like Decentraland, it’s a Web3-based world where users can purchase land and build their own monetized environments. The platform is relatively consistent in look and feel, taking a voxel art style reminiscent of Minecraft as a nod to its 2D roots. Available on PC and mobile platforms, the Sandbox handles onboarding very easily: new users have the choice to connect a crypto wallet or a social account if they lack one.

As far as interactions go, the Sandbox offers a mix that you’ll find in other platforms. Like Roblox, users can easily construct their own games without coding experience. A play-to-earn model rewards creators and players, incentivizing play on the platform. And similar to Decentraland, a marketplace of NFTs in the form of avatars and unique parcels of land add to the opportunities for users to earn real-world value from their digital creations. One cool example we love is a collaboration between Tony Hawk and Autograph to build the biggest skatepark in the metaverse. In addition to hanging out in the space, visitors can purchase NFTs inspired by Hawk’s career.

Find your place in the metaverse.

Just like how the universe contains too many planets to count, the metaverse is a vast space comprising unique worlds—each with their own distinct culture. From video game worlds to Web3-native environments, each platform offers different tools for people and brands to engage with one another. Before jumping into the metaverse for the sake of it, carefully consider the audience you want to reach and how your brand can uniquely add value inside the world cultivated by its community. After making the right culture fit, you’ll have made the crucial first step in building impactful, authentic metaverse experiences.

The metaverse is a natural progression of the internet, and it reflects a cultural shift brought on by the ongoing process of virtualization. The metaverse is everywhere––a universal and connected experience that transcends geographical barriers and presents exciting opportunities for brands to show up. But, the stakes are high and the barrier to entry is steeper than ever. Advertising in the metaverse shouldn’t look like advertising at all. Brands need to strike a balance between being present and being authentic by providing utility and meaning for people through creativity and technological innovation. In short, brands must create experiences people actually want. While this isn’t a new idea, marketers will have to stretch their thinking for a new, fully-virtualized medium and a highly engaged audience quick to criticize disingenuous marketing efforts.

Want your own map of the metaverse worlds? Download it below: 

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“Sorrell sat down last week with Mumbrella at a bustling Les.Monks Cafe, Media.Monks’ headquarters at the festival in the South of France. The festival appeared to be in line with Sorrell’s vision for the future of S4Capital, citing the intersection of tech, digital, and creativity as why it may have been well-timed for the freshly merged Media.Monks at Cannes.” Sir Martin concurred in conversation with LinkedIn News at Cannes:

And with that, here’s a quick look of what I learned from the Grand Prix Lions and our Monks, who took the stage and chatted with press to make their thoughts known. And because it’s not a Media.Monks missive without either alliteration or a punny sense of humor, here are the top takeaways I Cannes’t stop thinking about since I crossed the pond back home. If a deck is more your speed, don’t miss our #MonkNews Wrap-Up.

Purposeful, human-centered creativity stole the show.

“The pandemic proved that creativity can help pull a business through a crisis,” the Cannes Lions summed up in their Official Wrap-Up Report. “The most dynamic transformations [use] creative solutions to change the fundamentals of how businesses operate and inspire industry-wide, cultural change that will have a lasting impact.”

This became clear as the wins rolled in. Against the backdrop of the war and residue of the pandemic, this year’s Grand Prix winners raised topical issues, and set out to solve problems rather than just generate awareness. Putting people, creators and communities at the heart of the creative process, the big winners focused on emotion and practical solutions, rather than tech innovation and clever use of platforms that have won in previous years. As a result, the category relevance became almost secondary–and several of the campaigns won big across multiple categories.

“Flashiness for its own sake no longer cuts it,” Sara Cosgrove, Global Director of Awards and Creativity at Media.Monks, shared at our team’s Creative Council meetup at Les.Monks Café. “But while tech may have taken a backseat this time around, that certainly doesn’t mean innovation is any less important than it ever was. As a focus on human behavior takes the wheel, a virtualized approach will help brands leverage emerging technologies to drive culture forward, build legacies and meet people’s needs in creative new ways.”

Innovation met cultural needs to truly drive impact.

While the content program was rife with metaverse and Web3 sessions, the two were largely absent from the Grand Prix winner’s lineup. On one hand, these spaces are nascent; with time to mature, they may have a bigger presence among winners next year. But, Media.Monks Chief Creative Officer Jouke Vuurmans challenged the audience at his Young Lions Session to reconsider misuse of innovative tech for its own sake: “Blinded by a shiny new thing, a nearsighted pursuit of rapid innovation can lead to a misuse of technology. With flashy acts that don’t contribute to overall brand business objectives, the fun is over before it ever even really begins. How can we be better as an industry in this next phase? Let’s do it right.”

Luciana Haguiara, Executive Creative Director, Media.Monks and Digital Craft Jury President, shared a similar sentiment with LBBOnline, recapping her thoughts after exiting the jury room. “In the last year we’ve seen a lot of work that exists as a response to Covid: a wave of virtual events, digital experiences and entertainment, living side-by-side with campaigns and content that reflect the important cultural shifts and difficult conversations.” She went on to say:

Virtualization gave shape to the transformation of digital.

Luciana’s comment hinted at a major theme that we’ve been following over the last couple of years: that we’ve entered the era of virtualization. Virtualization is defined by a set of new audience behaviors, cultural norms and technology paradigms resulting from 30 years of digital transformation, hyper-accelerated over the past five years. Consumers today have heightened their expectations, adopted new behaviors and ultimately demand more from the brands they engage with, each of which are covered in our recent report, “The Transformation of Digital: Virtualization & the New Era of Growth," which released just in time for this year’s festival. Designed to help brands build lasting legacies now and into the future, we amplified report takeaways throughout the week.

Our Chief Innovation Officer Henry Cowling hosted a meetup that distilled the transformation of digital for the festival audience, explaining that “after two years of hyper online behavior, consumers are craving more than traditional digital can offer: access, information and connectivity are table stakes. For a new generation, digital experience is becoming foundational to their identity––and with the advent of Web3, ownable. For many, it’s not even digital anymore. It’s just life…we’re seeing a new relationship with digital that we’re just starting to scratch the surface with.” 

And much of this year’s winning Cannes Lions work demonstrates the profound ways that post-digital transformation behavior and culture are redefining concepts of experience, community, ownership and identity, and we’ve selected some of our favorite examples in our #MonkNews Cannes Wrap-Up I mentioned above.

Creative effectiveness became top-of-mind.

“Build some preparedness for what’s next by placing small investments in your company and its learning today. It’s the new ROI: Return on Innovation,” wrote Jordan Cuddy, Chief Client Officer, Jam3, in an op-ed for Adweek. Published at the start of the festival, her point proved prescient and anticipated a growing theme as the week went on: that brands need to balance innovation and effectiveness in their strategies, especially as a likely recession comes into focus.

Of course, the metaverse was a popular topic of conversation when it came to meaningful investments in innovation. Sir Martin shared his own bullish perspective on the space, which we saw make headlines in the days following his mainstage talk with Christian Deuringer, Head of Global Brand Communication at Allianz, and John Stinchcomb, Global Chief Revenue Officer of The Wall Street Journal. Sir Martin explained: “The revenue opportunities for brands using the metaverse are currently limited. Conversations that open up about the metaverse often lead elsewhere. We have a long way to go to understand this and it will be extremely important in the long term.”

One of the ways that marketers can dip their toes into the metaverse—or simply adopt a more virtualized mindset, no matter which channels they choose to serve—is by reconsidering the role community plays in their ecosystem. Today’s consumers don’t want to simply purchase a good. They want to invest their time, talent—and yes, money—into helping shape brands and communal environments. At the Les.Monks Café, Jordan Cuddy joined Matthew Sweezey, Co-founder of the Salesforce Web3 Studio, to celebrate the studio’s launch. In the fireside chat, she noted:

A formula to win over hearts (and Lions) comes into view.

If the discourse at Cannes has made anything clear, it’s that now is the time for purpose to take center stage. The last two years have prompted brands and consumers alike to reassess their priorities and evaluate whether initiatives truly make a mark (and a difference) in the culture. And as communities finally meet in-person again, new challenges—a trough of disillusionment and a looming recession—are again substantiating the need for creativity that supports new human behaviors amidst the shifting values of modern society.

Looking ahead, virtualization will offer a path to solving these needs: helping brands better understand their audiences, where they’re at, and how we can ultimately innovate together to overcome these challenges. It’s through this collaborative approach that virtual-first brands will build meaning into every part of their business—a formula that won’t just win Lions, but also the hearts of many.

Enter the New Frontier for Business Growth

Virtualization is the transformation of digital: a set of new audience behaviors, cultural norms and technology paradigms resulting from 30 years of digital transformation, hyper-accelerated over the past five years. It follows previous eras of globalization and digital transformation. While digital transformation now focuses on the pipes and plumbing to connect digital touch points, virtualization concerns the experience layer on top of a brand’s digital investments. In the overlap of new consumer engagement and the possibilities of tech transformation, new business models are emerging to better support digital-native audiences and accelerate growth.

Virtualization Is Launching New, Lasting Legacies

The traditional customer acquisition model is over saturated and highly competitive, yet virtualization is a white space that provides room for early movers to outcompete. At the same time, it’s essential we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past as new ethical standards take hold. Through innovative ways of creating community, meaning, and value, virtualization is a new canvas to engage in culture upon which brands can mint their legacies, fuel longevity and define a new era.

Begin Your Virtualization Journey Now

We’re already partnering with the world’s most valued brands to drive incredible growth through virtualization, and we can help you do the same. Connect with us to explore the emerging consumer behaviors of the virtualized era, the influences that shape them, and how you can learn from them to better connect with your audiences.

In this frenzy, it’s easy to feel like one’s lagging behind in comparison to the big tech companies dominating the scene. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the metaverse it’s that no one company can build it, as it relies on the joint development of millions of people and communities under one interoperable ecosystem. And so, the fundamental questions remain: What is the metaverse? How can my brand enter it? Should I enter it?

Mike Proulx, VP and Research Director at Forrester, joined our SVP Web3, Metaverse & Innovation Strategy Catherine D. Henry and Chief Innovation Officer Henry Cowling in an episode of Meet Me in the Metaverse to discuss these questions and more. Sharing insights from his recently-launched report “Ready Player Brand: Marketing In The Metaverse,” published on May 25, 2022, by Forrester Research, Proulx discusses with our team why the metaverse is still finding its feet and what success looks like in this space.

Creating Value is a Two-Way Street

In the last few months, there’s been no lack of investments and experiments around the metaverse—but we’ve only just scratched the surface of what it may grow to be. Today, the biggest challenge is bridging the gap between marketer intent and user behavior, a disconnect whose solution relies on consumer value—and time. As Proulx explains in the episode, maturation is “predicated on the accessibility of devices, making them less intrusive, demonstrating to the everyday consumer the value that they get from immersive media.”  

As marketers, it’s our job to follow people’s interests and find them where they are. But so is creating experiences they can extract value from, especially in a space that’s still in its infancy. When it comes to the metaverse, it’s about showing people why these experiences are meaningful and why they would want to join. “If you can’t create reasons for people to come back, then it will be a flash in the pan at best,” says Cowling. “The smarter brands will be investing in and fostering community over the long term.”

In other words, fostering community calls for a long-term commitment, which is why delineating one’s goals is a critical first step in every metaverse venture. According to Proulx, “The first question all brands need to ask themselves is: what is my business objective? If it’s because everyone is doing it, that’s not a good enough objective.” Rather, making necessary strategic investments today will help you succeed in the metaverse as it matures, because the best way to learn is by doing. Start by gaining an understanding of how your target audience is experiencing XR and how it can be optimized and scaled over time.

Good Metaverse Investments Start with a Purpose

Once you’ve decided to venture into the metaverse, creating value for your consumers also hinges on what aspects you’re factoring in when choosing the right space to interact with them. As Catherine D. Henry explains, it may be tempting to pick the most popular platforms with the highest numbers of active users, but that alone does not equal good results. “Look at what communities are doing, who they are, before commuting to a platform-first strategy.”

The culture and rituals on each platform should hint at whether that’s a good match for your brand. Once you’ve found the right space, it all comes down to experimenting with an open mind and being ready to apply one’s learnings along the way. “I think a near-term opportunity that brands have to activate in this space is simply to create moments of surprise and delight in the customer journey,” says Cowling. “If you consider every digital touchpoint in the customer journey, the metaverse is a new canvas that brands can go in and imagine new experiences, new ways of creating loyalty, and ultimately conversion.”

That said, the main ROI brands can get from tapping into the metaverse today are the learnings that come with it. “I’m all for, and support and encourage, brands to test and learn right now because I don’t want them to become flat-footed as this technology and these opportunities develop,” concludes Proulx. “Don’t let yourself fall behind, but temper your expectations and temper your investments right now.”

Now is the time to test and learn. While there’s still a long way to go until the metaverse delivers on its full promise, brands can start getting acquainted with the community behaviors that will shape the future of digital and learn how to express their brand identity in ways that feel relevant and authentic. Tune in to the latest episode of Meet Me in the Metaverse to explore key considerations as you begin to build a metaverse strategy that suits your unique business objectives.