Having joined the Monks in December 2019, we’ve fully initiated BizTech into our monastery, where they continue their commitment to delivering digital transformation expertise and customer experience management to brands worldwide.

The move comes at a critical moment when brands seek to deliver personalization and content at speed and scale, across channels both owned and earned—and made headlines at publications such as Yahoo Finance, Campaign and Little Black Book.

“Nowadays, everyone is making experience their business,” says Vera Cvetkovic, VP Solutions for the Americas and MediaMonks. “We’re helping them by delivering end-to-end solutions that enable those omnichannel experiences.”

“What everyone is going through is building an ecosystem to manage the whole [marketing] funnel,” Victor Knaap, CEO at MediaMonks, told Campaign. “We can add value throughout the process–from the discovery of what a platform should be to the defining and implementation for the best customer experience,” he added.

Adobe plays a crucial role in these efforts: a study described in the report “The Total Economic Impact of Adobe Experience Cloud,” cowritten by Forrester, found that organizations using Adobe Experience Manager achieved 14% year-over-year growth in new, unique visitor traffic and a 10% increase in average order value. Furthermore, marketing teams equipped Adobe Campaign, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target were able “to build campaigns in half the time it took with their legacy tools.”

An Unprecedented Partnership

Since its inception, BizTech has served brands big and small, including enterprise-level clients spanning industries that include banking, telecommunications, education, government and more. They’re the leading experts in Adobe’s online infrastructure and ecosystem, being one of the small few companies to achieve Platinum partnership. Our adept Solutions team is led by Tim Goodman (CTO Solutions at MediaMonks), who’s recognized as the most-awarded Adobe buff in the world.

With many of their clients juggling several workstreams and vendors, BizTech has gained trust by tackling the full, end-to-end experience on behalf of their clients. Specialized in Adobe Analytics, Campaign, Experience Manager and Experience Manager Run & Operate, BizTech has won an Adobe Partner of the Year award nearly every year since the award has existed.

Closing the Gap Between Creativity and Engineering

Now fully integrated with MediaMonks, the Solutions team is uniquely poised to marry together creative and engineering. “In order to bring complete solutions to clients, we must bring technology and creativity together at the outset,” says Cvetkovic. “Making that integration complete, we have a working process to implement and support creative solutions via Growth’s ongoing conversations with clients or Operations’ planning and execution of projects.”

This balance of flexibility, innovation and technical expertise enables brands to better meet their consumers with insights-driven creative delivered through personalized, omnichannel paths. “Every large enterprise has challenges with siloed data, legacy systems and joining teams,” says Michael Patishman, SVP Solutions at MediaMonks. “We help overcome them through considered efforts around system, people and process—removing the walls, connecting the dots.”

Enabling a Smoother, More Impactful Digital Transformation Process

When it comes to digital transformation, we believe in an agile, phased approach that prioritizes the most practical and impactful changes first. This approach simplifies the process and delivers faster results. Our unmatched Adobe expertise gives our clients the opportunity to quickly build experience-led solutions that drive customer obsession and impact, whether they’re just starting their digital transformation journey or want to quickly implement the newest technology.”

“It’s one thing when you are growing a business to get to the top, and another to stay there once you’ve made it,” says Cvetkovic. “We’re a leader in innovative solutions for our clients, and we go through a whole maturity model assessment to determine where they are and what they need to do next to move from one stage to another.”

This added knowledge and expertise helps us scale up our efforts to meet that growing demand of brands that seek to incite and sustain digital transformation efforts. Working with clients such as AkzoNobel, McLaren, HP and others to rapidly transform and elevate the customer experience, BizTech and MediaMonks are a natural fit—and we’re delighted to have fully integrated BizTech into the fold.

There’s more to explore in the Monk monastery.

With omnipresent technology on the horizon, are we headed toward a cyberpunk dystopia?

That was the big question MediaMonks posed to the audience at its Fast Co. Fast Track session, offering attendees food for thought to mull over with drinks. Rejecting a future in which pop-ups and banner ads vie for our attention literally everywhere we look, speakers Eric Wagliardo and Jouke Vuurmans offered a more optimistic view. By using emerging technology like VR, AR and artificial intelligence to delight audiences, Wagliardo told the audience, “we can use creativity unconstrained by the past and the laws of physics.”

The theme of the talk anticipates a near-future in which wearables or ubiquitous AR will revolutionize the way we interact with media and technology, just like how the iPhone ushered in the era of smartphones. As these technologies become more consumer-friendly, brands might be biting their nails wondering if they’re ready for the new digital landscape. Are you?

The focus of your VR or AR experience doesn’t have to be grand to be impressive.

One of the more compelling details from the talk was about a humble plank of wood used in the Jack Ryan Experience, a 60,000 square-foot activation that pulled together some of the most cutting-edge VR technology to provide a 4D, immersive experience. Through a VR headset, the plank transformed into a startling chasm for participants to cross in virtual reality. That such a basic material in reality could become an intimidating environment to traverse demonstrates the power to create compelling experiences from just a simple object. With so many elements and gorgeous tech to compete with, who would expect a plank of wood to steal the show?

VR can be tricky, though: without a proper “hero device” like the iPod or iPhone to put the tech in almost everyone’s pockets, VR experiences must often be tethered to a specific environment for participants to don a headset and enter your world. This can be a big investment in terms of reserving a space as well as providing a rig to host the experience, though it’s well worth it if you’re hosted within a venue that allows you to reach your audience in a meaningful way. For some brands, a simpler solution might be to create an AR experience that participants may enjoy via nearly any mobile device.

Another benefit to AR is that it can enable a charming connection with objects or pre-existing campaigns that wasn’t possible before. One of the demos featured at the Fast Track event invited attendees to scan an ad for Kiwi shoe polish featuring a Van Gogh self-portrait, which prompted the artist to leap from the poster, ready to try on several pairs of shoes with the user.

The AR app was a remix of an award-winning Ogilvy campaign that “completed” various famous portraits by adding views of the subjects’ shoes. Partnering with Ogilvy and Google, MediaMonks was able to bring the Van Gogh portrait to life by stepping into the real world and responding to different shoe styles with animations and props. The experience of helping the famous artist try on shoes is humorous and helps the user relate to an esoteric character they certainly recognize, but may not have previously understood.

AR and VR are more consumer-friendly each day, offering several ways for you to reach them with ease.

 A large-scale project with emerging tech can be intimidating. While it can be difficult to identify where to begin planning bigger projects, there are several levels of engagement to design for in VR and AR, allowing brands who want to dive into emerging tech to start small and provide increasingly immersive experiences from there. One way to provide an engaging experience is to focus on one simple, primary mode of interaction. For example, the Kiwi case demoed at the Fast Track event required only a poster and a mobile device to render the character on the screen, along with some options for interacting with that character. This simple template could be useful for brands new to the emerging tech space, who also want to provide engaging, emotional experiences.

Seeing is believing.

And just like how the app brings the print ad featuring Van Gogh to life, you can use your app to remix existing assets from current or past campaigns, thereby boosting their ROI—not bad for a budget-strapped brand who wants to dive in on AR.

If a business has a little bit of extra room in their budget, they can elevate the same experience detailed above by staging it in an appealing way. While the primary mode of interaction might be to bring a character, object or other experience into the real world via AR, offering a set for participants to play with the experience can further immerse them. In the case of the Kiwi app, MediaMonks constructed a tiny room at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity decorated to look like a city street you might find in a Van Gogh portrait, allowing participants to step into the artist’s world (without the need for a VR rig and other expensive tech).

If one theme is clear across the Innovation Festival, it’s that the quickening pace of new media and platforms are challenging brands to think outside the box in providing new, experiences to enchant and inform their audiences. We were happy to allow guests into the hallowed chambers of the MediaMonks monastery to impart a secret or two about our process. But can the students surpass the master? We look forward to seeing what you create!

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

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

Making the List

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

We Had a Little Help from Our Friends

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

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

Busy as Bees

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

Saying ¡Hola! to Mexico

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

We Walked a Mile in Others’ Shoes

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

Welcome to Our (Not So) Secret Lab

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

We Did It, Reddit!

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

We Had Lots of Fun

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