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Taming Brand Chaos with Bespoke AI Agent Solutions

Taming Brand Chaos with Bespoke AI Agent Solutions

AI AI, AI & Emerging Technology Consulting, Digital transformation, Technology Consulting, Technology Services 4 min read
Profile picture for user Iran Reyes

Written by
Iran Reyes
VP, Global Head of Engineering, Experience

A bunch of small lens flares showing in a galaxy of stars

It’s 4:00 PM on a Thursday. Your agency partner in France needs final approval on a simple in-store digital display. The creative looks great, but they’ve used a secondary brand color as the main background, and the product shot feels a bit small.

Your gut tells you this is wrong.

So, you go to your Global Brand Hub, where you find several 100+ PDF documents full of various guidelines. You search for “colour” and find a matrix that says “Use Pantone 299C for print, #00A3E0 for digital.” The agency used #00A4E0. Is that a typo? Or a holdover from another guideline deck, “Digital-First Brand Refresh_v3_FINAL.pptx,” from last quarter?

You Slack a senior director, but they're in back-to-back meetings. You email the brand compliance alias and get an auto-reply: “We will respond within 48 business hours.” But the agency is pinging. The media slot is booked. It’s a simple, 10-second question that has blocked a time-sensitive asset.

This seemingly small frustration is actually a symptom of brand governance chaos—a massive, hidden tax on your speed, budget, and morale. Fixing this chaos requires more than just a clearer guide or a better folder structure; the real solution is to evolve from static repositories to dynamic, intelligent agents capable of delivering a single, correct answer instantly.

Agentic architectures help solve for relevant retrieval.

For the last decade, improving access to information largely meant adding a better search box to static, file-based brand hubs. However, a search box only fetches documents; it still forces the user to do the work of finding the answer within those documents. This is the critical failure point in the 4:00 PM panic scenario described above. A better solution is to move from a static repository to a system powered by orchestrated agents that retrieve data.

Unlike a search box, an agentic solution can perform tasks on behalf of the users. It can understand context, like knowing who you are (for example, a brand manager) and what you're working on (in our example above, a digital display). From there, it can reason, retrieve information across multimodal sources (PDFs, databases, websites), verify accuracy, resolve data conflicts, and compose an answer. 

It doesn't give you ten blue links to sift through; instead, it offers a single, definitive, reference-backed response. If conflicting data appears—for example, Marketing_v1.pdf says #000000 but Poster_v1.pdf says #000011—the agents use context, role and logic to determine the most accurate answer. If a clear resolution isn't possible, it flags the conflict so the user can make an informed decision: “The correct hex code for digital-first applications is #00A3E0. The #00A4E0 value is an outdated code from the Q1 refresh.” 

This shift is a powerful new driver of enterprise efficiency today. In fact, agentic assistants like this move beyond being passive tools for answering questions, evolving into Brand Intelligence Systems that retrieve accurate brand data, enforce multi-modal compliance, and generate on-brand, multi-modal content at scale.

Proving a measurable lift in efficiency for over 1,800 users. 

We recently partnered with a global technology leader facing this exact challenge. With thousands of employees and partners across the globe, they needed to provide instant, reliable and source-attributed answers to brand questions, at scale, as their MVP. We designed and deployed a bespoke, enterprise-grade AI assistant powered by orchestrated agentic workflows using a tailored Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture.

This orchestration ensures two things. First, the agents don’t hallucinate. Second, the system understands context (who you are, your role and your task) to deliver the right answer, often by combining multiple verified sources. 

The impact of our solution was immediate. Within four months of its rollout, over 1,800 unique users were interacting with the assistant per month, with engagement trending positively. More importantly, we proved we were solving the slow bleed of inefficiency. User sessions became measurably more efficient, dropping from an average of 1.64 messages to just 1.41, because they were getting the right answer, faster, on the first try.

Crafting solutions that integrate into real workflows. 

There are plenty of off-the-shelf and decent tools already available for building a chatbot. The real challenge lies in building bespoke systems that integrate seamlessly into daily workflows, also known as complex enterprise integrations, that are also secure, reliable, highly accurate and personalized.

This is essential not just for performance, but also for compliance, data protection and user adoption. When the experience feels like a natural extension of how teams already work, that’s when transformation sticks.

However, connecting every piece of the puzzle requires a holistic approach. The development of our solution for this specific client was rooted in a single, unified team that covered everything from initial strategy and user pain point understanding to UX and design. This was made possible by engineering teams who orchestrated models to deliver secure answers at scale, all while our QA and delivery teams ensured everyone remained focused on achieving enterprise-grade outcomes.

In practice, this meant that our strategy team mapped pain points, the AI Core team built datasets and evaluation frameworks, the UX team distilled complexity into intuitive experiences, and engineering ensured scalability, resilience and security.

The hardest part? Balancing accuracy, latency and cost across deep enterprise-grade system integrations. It took many iterations over the past three years to achieve team maturity. Key project members had already worked on five similar conversational AI deployments across industries, and that collective experience was crucial. The learning curve has been steep but transformative.

A unified system built by a holistic team frees creativity.

The 4:00 PM panic is just the surface symptom of deeper inefficiencies that off-the-shelf tools can’t fix when accuracy, latency and cost all matter. 

True success comes from integrating bespoke AI systems seamlessly into the creative process—not as add-ons, but as enablers. This is what a holistic approach delivers in practice: a unified system where strategic insights, intuitive design and enterprise-grade engineering work as one. It is this system that ultimately solves the hidden tax of brand friction, giving your most valuable creative people back their time, budget and energy to focus on the work that actually moves your brand forward.

At the heart of it all is the user. We are driven every day by the goal of building next-generation AI interfaces that are not only intuitive and meaningful but also truly smart. For brands and enterprises seeking to achieve this same level of clarity and efficiency, our bespoke agentic AI architecture can be fully tailored. It adapts to your unique workflows and data environments while respecting all governance requirements, empowering your teams with intelligent systems designed precisely around your needs.

 

Discover how bespoke AI agent solutions help enterprises tame brand chaos and unlock creative efficiency. Taming Brand Chaos with Bespoke AI Agent Solutions brand models brand differentiation AI agents agentic workflow AI & Emerging Technology Consulting Technology Consulting Technology Services AI Digital transformation

Your Brand's DNA is the Ultimate AI Differentiator

Your Brand's DNA is the Ultimate AI Differentiator

AI AI, AI & Emerging Technology Consulting, Data Strategy & Advisory 4 min read
Profile picture for user Jessica Ross

Written by
Jessica Ross
VP, Data & Digital Media Consulting APAC

A vibrant, abstract depiction of a DNA strand, composed of numerous small, colorful particles. The double helix structure is visible on the left, rendered in shades of purple and blue. As it extends to the right, the DNA strand appears to dissolve into a scattered burst of individual particles, creating a dynamic, exploding effect. These particles are a mix of red, blue, green, and yellow, set against a soft, gradient background that transitions from a light purple on the left to a warm pinkish-orange.

At a glance:

Marketers can use AI to create differentiated and effective work by moving beyond generic tools and building a proprietary system trained on their own unique brand intelligence. Here’s how:

  • True AI-powered differentiation comes not from the tools themselves, but from training them on your unique historical data, audience insights, and strategic knowledge.
  • The key is to develop a custom agentic workflow—a network of specialized AI agents—that acts as a proprietary, intelligent system that understands and enforces your brand.
  • This approach transforms your marketing archive from a static resource into a dynamic, compounding advantage, creating a defensible piece of intellectual property that competitors cannot replicate.

How can we use AI without losing our brand's unique voice?

When everyone is rushing to adopt the same AI tools with the same capabilities, how do you create work that actually stands out? Creative differentiation has long been a critical imperative for brands, which is taking on a new urgency as creative workflows become more automated—at the risk of becoming more homogenized in the process. So, the answer to the differentiation dilemma doesn't lie in mastering the same off-the-shelf tools as competitors. Instead, it lies in building a proprietary system fueled by a company's unique data, intelligence, and history.

As we move from the excitement and potential of the early hype cycle to the messy reality of implementation, many brands are finding that while generic AI tools are powerful, they can lack the brand-specific nuance required for high-stakes marketing if they aren’t trained on your brand’s unique intelligence. The initial thrill has been replaced by the practical challenge of making AI outputs not just faster, but better and—most importantly—distinct.

 

How can my brand's data create a competitive advantage in AI?

In overcoming these challenges, we must move our focus from the AI model itself to the fuel that powers it. When brands use the same public models with similar prompts, they will inevitably get similar, generic results—a race to the bottom that creates content not worth people's time.

True differentiation comes from the quality and uniqueness of your inputs. The most valuable assets your brand possesses are your own historical performance data, your nuanced audience insights, your risk tolerance, and your strategic knowledge. Altogether, these make up your brand’s DNA. More than just quantitative data, brand DNA includes the qualitative elements that are harder to measure but essential to your brand’s identity: your unique point of view, your strategic decisions about which markets to enter (and which to avoid), and your specific interpretation of complex industry regulations. These are the inputs that contain your competitive edge.

So, how do you activate this unique brand DNA, transforming this treasure trove of data from a static archive into a dynamic, intelligent engine? The path to doing so lies in building a custom, agentic workflow.

What is an agentic workflow for marketing?

A marketing-focused agentic workflow operates as a network of specialized AI agents, all trained on your specific brand ecosystem to work in concert. These agents function like a bespoke, in-house team of experts that thinks and acts like your brand, but with the capacity to operate at limitless scale.

At the heart of this system is the brand model. Training this model involves feeding the system your entire history: your visual identity system, your tone-of-voice playbooks, your compliance policies, and your competitive positioning. We enrich this with the very language from your past high-performing campaigns and the specific nuances of your regulatory landscape. The model learns not just the rules, but the spirit of the brand. This in turn delivers consistency, ensuring every piece of AI-assisted work is instantly and recognizably on-brand.

Within the agentic workflows we build for our clients, we deploy specialist agents to support the core brand model. For example, our Insights Agent surfaces relevant trends and conversations, enabling brands to move at the speed of culture and engage authentically with relevant trends. Meanwhile, Strategy Agents act as powerful accelerators for growth, helping brands identify opportunities and activate new audience segments by analyzing market data through the lens of their unique strategic goals. Insights that in the past could take one of our CPG clients 18 months to identify and activate are now reviewed and responded to in close to real time.

How does an agentic workflow become a defensible asset?

This approach transforms AI into a strategic asset that serves as a powerful engine for differentiation. While competitors rent access to generic models and compete on similar prompts, you’ve built distinct intellectual property that produces creative work no one else can.

This "brand brain" is a living system that grows smarter and more effective with every campaign it analyzes and every data point it absorbs, a virtuous cycle that turns your brand’s history into compounding advantage. In practice, this means the agents work in concert to uncover unique creative opportunities. An Insights Agent might identify a burgeoning cultural trend through the specific lens of your brand's DNA, surfacing an angle invisible to your competitors. This is passed to the Strategy Agent to propose a micro-campaign, which is then validated by the brand model to ensure it aligns perfectly with your tone. This interconnectedness is what allows you to move on distinct cultural moments with speed, relevance, and safety.

What’s even better is that insights from a successful campaign automatically inform the strategy for the next one. The nuances of your highest-performing creative become ingrained in your brand model’s DNA, making the entire system better at finding the unique intersections between what your brand stands for and what the culture is talking about, leading to increasingly differentiated work over time.

Where should we begin in building a custom AI workflow?

In the age of AI, the most durable competitive advantage won't come from a tool you can buy, but from an internal capability you build. Activating your unique data through a custom agentic system is how you make your own intelligence scalable, turning your brand’s history into a strategic asset.

Making this operational and strategic shift is a significant undertaking, and every brand is at a different stage of its journey. That’s why we engage with our clients flexibly. For some, it begins with advisory to navigate the change. For others, we stand up managed agent services to take the burden from in-house teams. And for those ready to invest in self-service, we help execute full custom builds. Regardless of where you start, the most critical step is recognizing that your brand’s history is the most powerful dataset you own.

Unlock true brand differentiation. Learn how to build a proprietary AI system using your unique brand DNA and gain a competitive edge. Unlock true brand differentiation. Learn how to build a proprietary AI system using your unique brand DNA and gain a competitive edge. brand models brand differentiation AI agents agentic workflow AI & Emerging Technology Consulting Data Strategy & Advisory AI

(Re)Focus Advertising on Value

(Re)Focus Advertising on Value

5 min read
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Written by
Monks

(Re)Focus Advertising on Value

It’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room: during a time of instability and hardship, should brands halt their advertising and go dark? Data shows that most consumers still want to hear from brands, but their message should be focused on building value. Still, even the idea of what constitutes as an appropriate response varies day-by-day and by location, highlighting the need for brands to invest in truly understanding their audiences and how they can lend support to them at speed.

In fact, brands who continue to invest in advertising spend throughout a recession tend to benefit by experiencing revenue gains that persist beyond its passing. 44% of consumers plan to delay purchases until after the COVID-19 outbreak has ended, and brands must use this time to prepare for the inevitable need to quickly grow following significant revenue loss throughout the pandemic.

Still, brands must consider whether spending makes sense. “Traditional advertising response is spend, spend, spend,” S4Capital Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell told audiences in conversation with Ad Age. “But when companies are facing existential crises in Q2 and not sure if they have enough money to survive, it’s ridiculous.” Instead, he recommends that those in tech who planned campaigns and sponsorships for canceled sporting events “should divert that spending to doing good, purpose-driven campaigns. But those campaigns should be highly practical–equipment, vaccine development, therapy–supporting those on the frontline. It shouldn’t be self-seeking. You have to encourage clients to deploy their resources more effectively and divert money into digital because that’s more effective.”

Still how do brand ensure their focus is on providing real, authentic value to audiences in the coming months? The secret lies in redefining the role of the brand in consumers’ lives and being proactive to their shifting needs in a disruptive landscape.

Invest in Insights-Driven Creative

“In the first couple of weeks, data suggested that people didn’t want to hear from brands,” says Andre Rood, Global Advertising Director at MediaMonks. “Afterwards, you saw them slowly get into the mindset, as long as brands were being helpful.” He notes how brands’ initial response to the coronavirus from felt so repetitious, with so many brands reiterating the same message: wash your hands for 20 seconds and stay at home. They weren’t differentiating or cutting through to individuals’ specific needs at the time.

Now more than ever, customer obsession is critical to brand health.

Monk Thoughts The way you should target and personalize should be totally different now.

MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that in reacting to COVID-19, it’s more important than ever that brands invest in personalization, or they risk looking insensitive. This prompts brands to consider personalization beyond the typical categories of demographics and user preferences. Instead, they have to dig deep into the nuances of what their audiences are dealing with, and the myriad ways that the brand can help.

“The COVID curve is different everywhere, even affecting people differently who live in the same community,” ter Haar says. “For some that means looking for a cure to boredom—but that messaging is insensitive for a family of six that is homeschooling while working from home, who are too busy to be bored. It’s never been more important to actually understand who you’re talking to.”

Rood echoes this sentiment by cautioning that brands shouldn’t rely on the standard segmentation methods, which currently offer little relevance. “The way you should target individuals should be totally different now,” he says. Mood triggers, for example, can help a brand tailor the most supportive and relevant message to audiences whose experience with the pandemic can wildly differ.

Test New Production Solutions at Speed

The speed at which the COVID-19 situation can change also poses a challenge to brands focused on keeping connected with their audiences throughout the full scope of the pandemic. For example, a brand might be set to launch a campaign, only to find that it’s suddenly no longer relevant. In addition to offering a dynamic campaign as mentioned above, brands must employ rigorous testing to understand how people are responding to creative week by week.

Screen Shot 2019-07-31 at 3.23.38 PM

Our awareness campaign for Gladskin was optimized per channel and format based on weekly reportage.

“Due to the fact that this is moving so quickly into unknown areas, brands must be able to galvanize and shift content immediately,” says Patrick Kirby, Digital Strategist at MediaMonks, noting that becoming more agile is essential to success.

Ways to do this include repurposing archival material for legacy brands who have it, turning to quick and versatile animation as a production alternative or encouraging UGC and influencer content to build community engagement. Each of these approaches enable brands to reallocate budgets or refresh existing content, but more importantly, they can do so at speed.

Redefine the Brand’s Role

More than simply continuing to advertise to consumers with conversion-based content, now is a good time for brands to truly focus on building brand value and becoming more purposeful. For example, while brands should tread lightly in approaching the current moment with humor, there is value in using creative to lift spirits and boost morale.

 

Monk Thoughts What’s important isn’t just the product, but the full story around it.

There’s a lot of talk too about how manufacturers have done substantial good by shifting operations to produce much-needed masks, hand sanitizer, ventilators and more. This approach isn’t practical for many—for example, smaller or mid-sized brands. But there are still opportunities to get creative in how you leverage your channels and platforms, like HP and Folding@Home’s initiative that encourages users to donate a fraction of their computing power to aid in the research toward a COVID-19 cure.

Such approaches are rooted in customer obsession, in which brands pool together resources to listen to the customer and deliver upon those needs. Willemijn Jongbloed, Digital Strategist at MediaMonks, notes how Nike was able to adapt well to offer value to consumers under quarantine thanks to its customer obsession strategy. MediaMonks has partnered with the athletic brand and Wieden+Kennedy to host a weekly series of livestreamed workouts that get people active and moving despite staying at home.

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“When Nike moved into events, that was a bold move at the time, but now you can clearly see the many sides of the brand. In a time when people have largely stopped buying clothes, they have created the ability to move into online events, and thus can instantly serve their audience in a different way.” What makes the experience powerful isn’t just the product itself, she says, “but the full story around it—including all benefits, use cases, mindset and emotional connection that will set a company up for success.”

That drives home an important point for brands as they seek to engage with and support consumers over the next few months. Wielding brand voice in a global pandemic isn’t a matter of simply keeping your name out there or driving conversions; it’s also about building trust, becoming more purposeful and experimenting with more agile ways of working. As brands hone these skills now, they’ll emerge from the other end of the pandemic stronger than before, and their audiences will come to appreciate those efforts.

"Spend, spend, spend" doesn't make sense for everyone–but some brands can take this time to invest in effective, purpose-driven ways to assist consumers. (Re)Focus Advertising on Value Now is the time for brands to invest in assisting audiences in truly purposeful, effective ways.
Digital advertising social advertising advertising strategy media strategy pandemic coronavirus insights driven creative data driven creative brand value brand differentiation

3 Ways for FMCG Brands to Differentiate Themselves

3 Ways for FMCG Brands to Differentiate Themselves

3 min read
Profile picture for user mediamonks

Written by
Monks

3 Ways for FMCG Brands to Differentiate Themselves

It’s tough for an organization to stand out in a crowd, but brand differentiation can be especially challenging for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). How does such a brand differentiate itself if consumers feel there’s little variation between what it and competitors offer?

Even big businesses face difficulty in setting themselves apart from competition, whether it be differentiating their sub-brands or edging out the recent rise in smaller, tech-savvy direct-to-consumer businesses. But at its heart, brand differentiation is matter of understanding and listening to your audience’s needs, then tailoring your messaging to meet them. By devising a content strategy that speaks directly to your audience’s concerns, your brand better positions itself to attract and hold onto their attention—and, hopefully, forge a lasting connection with them. Here are three simple strategies FMCG brands have used to successfully distinguished themselves.

Back Hub & Hygiene Content with User Research

One of the most effective ways to begin developing a content strategy is to support hero, hub and hygiene content. Hero content is the centerpiece which you use to cast a wide net and attract a high volume of visitors—think TVCs, for example. Hub and hygiene content, though, are increasingly important as brands face a need for always-on content across digital channels to qualify new leads or maintain relevance in audiences’ minds. To ensure hub and hygiene content are relevant to your consumers, begin by researching the types of information they’re seeking and is most important to them.

Get Personal with Influencers

Collaborating with influencers is another great way for brands to differentiate themselves, particularly by supporting a specific community—or even a handful of communities for targeted, yet broadened, appeal. When Unilever wanted to celebrate its love for fine fabrics with its Skip detergent, they knew the best people to join in the festivities would be fashion influencers and their fans.

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In collaboration with +Castro and Google Zoo, we built the Skip Smart Mirror: a high-tech mirror installed at a high-end retailer that measured users’ excitement as they tried on new outfits. If an outfit generated enough excitement for the wearer, she could take it home with her, which culminated in a fun event documented by those invited to attend and try it out. Specifically, Skip invited fashion bloggers to try out the mirror—and various outfits—then share that experience to their communities. The resulting content is akin to the trend of “haul” videos or reviews through which influencers have built up their audiences’ trust.

And that’s an important thing to note; any experience built for influencer collaboration should fit well with the existing content that they produce, helping the brand to strike a more authentic relationship with the audience. Truly understanding your target audience and responding with the types of content and behaviors they’re reactive to can lend an air of relatability to your brand.

Build Trust and Identification through Representation

One of the most significant ways that brands can differentiate themselves is through diversifying their marketing to be more inclusive. But before diving into this method of differentiation, it’s important to realize that aiming to become more inclusive and diverse shouldn’t be treated as a one-time ploy to get in customers’ good graces. Rather, it should be an opportunity for your brand to make a make a true cultural commitment to better represent your audience.

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Johnson-&-Johnson-Amsterdam_59_Lifestyle_09_0203_com2

One brand that’s pulled out all the stops for a diverse campaign is Johnson & Johnson. Relaunching their Johnson’s Baby brand, the company needed deliverables that featured a diverse range of families belonging to all nationalities within the 15 markets supported by the brand. This is no simple task—how can one represent their audience accurately without falling short?—so Johnson & Johnson needed a production partner who could optimize the process and deliver on their need using a single budget. The result was a library of over 2,000 deliverables tailor-made for different channels, which could be mixed and matched across markets. The assets’ versatility ensured longstanding value to the brand beyond just helping its consumers relate.

While brand differentiation might seem like a significant challenge for FMCG manufacturers, improvements in technology have provided the space for any brand to intimately connect with a consumer base. From using social listening to better tailor their content to real user concerns, supporting communities or more accurately representing market demographics, there are several ways that brands can relate to their target groups.

Standing out is a challenge for any brand, but it’s especially tough for those in the FMCG business, of which price is often the key differentiator. From devising a content strategy backed by research to connecting with audiences through influencers and representation, here are a handful of brand differentiation examples. 3 Ways for FMCG Brands to Differentiate Themselves Standing out is tough—doubly so if you’re in the FMCG business. These 3 strategies are ideal for helping FMCG brands forge deeper connections with audiences and set themselves apart.
brand differentiation brand differentiation strategies differentiation strategy brand differentiation examples

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