Over the past few years, brands have aimed to beef up their creative and production capabilities. The reasons why are clear: doing so offers them numerous opportunities to streamline the production workflow, enhance creativity with brand knowledge and retain a closer connection to consumers. They also become more versatile in the process; Forrester Research defines such brands as those which interweave “key capabilities across creative, digital marketing, and media between in-house and external agencies.”

Firewood has helped carve this path, coining the phrase “your in-house team, extended,” offering a variety of services such as creative, strategy and planning, performance media, technology and events. Firewood recently ranked #6 on Adweek’s Fastest Growing Large Agencies—and for good measure, as they’ve pioneered the embedded agency model in Silicon Valley and across the Americas and Europe. With service offerings that closely align with our own dedication to brands, we welcome Firewood into the S4 Capital family.

“Firewood’s ’embedded’ approach will allow us to build deeper and broader relationships with our clients, helping us work in a more flexible, collaborative and integrated way,” explains MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. That flexibility and sense of collaboration are key; the embedded model helps brands achieve success much more easily through direct access to specialized skillsets as needed, helping them scale up and achieve a more streamlined production process.

Attaining Greater Transparency

Among one of the greatest concerns that brands face is a need for greater transparency. Whether it’s in cost of services or ensuring they’re not victims of ad fraud, there are some trust issues brewing between brands and traditional agencies. The embedded model does away with these tensions by fully integrating its staff within the client’s infrastructure and go-to-market strategies. This gives brands a seat at the table and alleviates the pain points that they may feel by working with traditional agencies—like a cycle of rework.

This offering is just one of the ways that the S4 model aims to integrate capabilities that help brands take a more active role within the production process. Our sister company MightyHive, for example, helps brands become more self sufficient in their media planning and spend. By pairing clients with the specific capabilities they require, we remain laser focused on helping them achieve success without having to sacrifice their ownership of a project.

Cutting Cost & Time, Not Corners

Brands are also driven to boost their internal creative capacity to produce work faster, aided by a closer connection between the creative team and decision makers. With a strong sense of ownership, they uphold a high standard of what makes good creative work. Still, a key challenge many brands face is a lack of resources that allow them to meet their fullest potential, whether it be a need for all hands on deck to produce always-on content, or specialized skillsets for quick and one-off projects.

This highlights another need for new partnership models. As the time-to-market shortens and the pressure for always-on content at scale grows, brands don’t have time to waste by following the typical RFP process or in hiring and onboarding new talent. Instead, an embedded team can offer an individual who provides direction and is backed by an agency’s full creative and production abilities.

Building a Culture of Confident Experimentation

When enjoying a closer relationship with consumers and a faster time to market, brands are in a great position to rapidly experiment and optimize their creative strategy, helping them home in on creatively differentiated experiences and messaging for their audiences. But truly delivering on this potential requires they cover the full end-to-end capabilities spectrum.

But most in-house agencies begin with just a specific capability that they strive to support and grow out from there. We believe a truer sense of partnership, designed specifically around enhancing in-house skillsets. At this year’s Advertising Week New York conference, MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar shared the stage with S4 Capital’s Sir Martin Sorrell and MightyHive’s Emily Del Greco to discuss how aligning data and creative is essential to innovating through experimentation.

“With traditional work, there’s a conservatism that you can’t marry data with being creative,” ter Haar said, noting how brands can take risks with confidence when backed by partners who have their back. As the S4 model grows, it will help brands integrate forward by taking back control and retaining a sense of ownership in their creative and production, ensuring they can meet success easier than ever before.

You can learn more about Firewood and S4 Capital joining forces through numerous sources covering the merger. Watch Sir Martin Sorrell’s on-air interview on the new partnership over at CNBC; at Ad Age, you can find Firewood Co-Founder and CEO Juan Zambrano provide insight on how his client-side background inspired the agency’s unique approach. And as covered by Reuters, Sir Martin offers a couple hints behind the overall S4 strategy and what to look forward to next for brands seeking new ways of working. We can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon.

With the increasingly personalized nature and delivery of digital content, it feels like everyone is in crunch mode. According to the latest SoDA Global Digital Outlook Report, of which MediaMonks co-founder Wesley ter Haar served as editor-in-chief, 63% of client-side marketing leaders say producing and publishing targeted digital content is a major priority for their business—and so is producing that content more quickly.

While producing timely, always-on content is a critical need for organizations, a significant portion of them face challenges in meeting that output. In the 2018 Digital Trends for Creative and Design Leaders Survey, over a third of organizations working to design creative experiences internally indicated facing particular challenges in finding and retaining the right people with the right skills, while 40% cited outdated workflows as slowing their progress. These problems together make a one-two punch that makes it difficult for organizations to successfully develop the stream of targeted content they know they need, keeping it tantalizingly out of reach.

In addition to taking up time, the cyclical nature of the old-agency model isn’t as effective as it used to be. Rather than focus a big idea on traditional media and spoke out from that, standing out in today’s media landscape requires an always-on flow of targeted content across platforms, which altogether builds toward your creative direction. In essence, the new era requires highly relevant content that continues to deliver a consistent message—something that 59% of marketers say they have difficulty with. This requires organizations to seek out new organizational and executional methods.

Learn more ways to achieve more from less.

An emerging solution to this change is the integrated team model. In this structure, we set up organizations with a team custom-built for achieving their specific needs, whether that be access to a dedicated, decorated talent pool; locally relevant content across the globe; fresh content triggers or alleviating the brand studio’s bandwidth. “Organizations are bringing more capabilities in-house at a time where there’s an increased need for content at-scale,” says MediaMonks co-founder Wesley ter Haar. “With integrated production partnerships, we’re able to provide the resources needed to meet the demand for always-on content and relevancy to their audiences.”

An integrated team makes for a simple, scalable way to produce content on the day-to-day while allowing some space for the bigger projects or needs that crop up from time to time. With an in-house setup that collaborates with top talent across the globe, an integrated team functions as an always-on talent studio capable of delivering an unprecedented amount of flexibility and production with a rapid turnaround time not seen before.

Benefits to working with an integrated team include:

• A team of world-class talent custom-built to your organization’s needs
• Direct, immediate access to an agency’s capabilities—even those outside of your pre-defined, day-to-day operations
• A streamlined, efficient workflow with fast turnaround times
• An outside perspective capable of safeguarding your brand

Dive into the Deep End of the Talent Pool

A key benefit to the integrated team model is total access to a diverse talent pool, which encompasses both the skills you need for day-to-day operations as well as more niche talent that you might need for one-off projects or last-minute asks. We house all modern digital trades, which give us the ability to look at client needs holistically before tapping into a varied set of available skills available to accomplish them. “This process goes beyond pure production,” says Louise Martens, Executive Producer at MediaMonks LA. “We can really impact customer journeys as developers, strategists and content creators can work together in a fast and flexible manner.” Whether the team is on-site or operating elsewhere, you might think of an integrated team as stripping away the wall of an agency for unrestricted access to its toolset.

For example, we have one partner whose primary need is to create print-based materials and assets. To meet this need, we set them up with a team of dedicated designers that can easily deliver those materials in a fast turnaround time.  But when the same partner needed an animation done as a one-off project, a team of graphic designers wouldn’t do—which is why we quickly augmented the team with a set of animators who could deliver on that need with the same, rapid turnaround time expected, without the trouble of sending out an RFP to bidders or field resumes from freelancers.

Integrated teams aren’t the same as your typical production partnership, nor is it the same as simply outsourcing work to a body shop. In our integrated partnerships, we’ve seen how easy it is for teams to introduce new capabilities on top of projects after discovering some need—for example, providing copy options after noticing that in-house copy didn’t exactly fit with the visual design. “What’s unique about this kind of partnership is that it’s focused on the long-term,” says Martens. “You see this in the optimization of workflows, but it’s also a matter of deeper brand understanding, which allows us to proactively add to creative ideas.” On the organization’s side, it lets them tackle new and existing problems more flexibly.

Keep it Fresh with Relevant, Timely Content Triggers

Content triggers are the pillar of real-time marketing, ranging anywhere from planned and proactive content to reactive communication. While brands have typically kept to the planned, proactive approach (like brand events or planned campaigns), social media has driven brands to build up their in-house capabilities, as they require a fast pace of production and brand knowledge.

An approach that requires collaboration between several parties can sometimes slow production down, which is why we try to take a leaner approach to everything we do, including project-oriented tasks. Integrated teams serve as one alternative designed to eliminate bottlenecks and allow for the rapid design of timely content triggers, which is critical for how organizations must engage with consumers today.

“Brands are moving from short-term campaigns into programs and ecosystems that are built around always-on content,” says Martens. Because the team works partially in-house and is dedicated to the brand, organizations don’t have to jump through hoops to deliver on the ask. Using the same creative framework for producing assets at scale—beginning with a master template and identifying the variables in terms of content or platform fit—the integrated team model optimizes workflows to deliver relevant content triggers at unprecedented speed.

This speed is thanks in part to an always-on, global talent studio. When necessary, integrated teams can tap into talent from other offices around the world, which means work continues to get done elsewhere even after you’ve closed up shop for the day. “This interaction between an internal MediaMonks Brand Ambassador and our global support network is a powerful mechanic,” says Martens. “These Monks understand the brand experience in-depth and can thus represent its values, aesthetic and tone of voice in our wider teams.” If a team gets a brief at end of day from the partner, they can deliver up to sixteen hours of work spread across time zones to be delivered the following morning, providing quality work within timelines that were once viewed as unrealistic. Say goodbye to feeling like there aren’t enough hours in a day.

The integrated team model is a reaction to the unique challenges facing the advertising industry today. Organizations no longer have to put their brands in the hands of an outside agency to deliver on the ever-increasing demand for relevant content. With dedicated, open access to a diverse pool of talent, they become better prepared to meet industry challenges while retaining complete ownership of their work. “Our experiences have shown us that MediaMonks is used as a lever for the brand to further build their own studio or spend more time on the work that matters most,” says Martens. “Brands are taking back control.”

Localization is a key challenge for any brand targeting several geographic markets, whether they be multinational or domestic. The way you’ll talk to a New Yorker about pizza, after all, might resonate differently with an audience in Italy. This gets at the heart of what good localization really is: it’s not just a matter of translation, but of paying special care to include the smaller details and nuances that appeal to a specific market.

Pulling off this level of transcreation can be tough due to the sheer volume of assets needed per market, the knowledge required about what markets respond to, and complex processes that hamper brands’ abilities to push this content out efficiently. For organizations struggling with any of these challenges, an integrated production partnership can help optimize transcreation workflows and implement local to infuse campaigns with a high level of local relevance around the globe.

An integrated production partnership is a team custom-built for your brand and its specific needs. Rather than brief an agency on a project, an integrated partnership focuses on the long-term and can scale up or down according to your need, whether it be through growth in consistent, daily responsibilities or sudden one-off projects. Working partially in-house, an integrated team provides access to a varied talent base across the globe, making the model a practical solution for brands seeking to provide local relevancy to always-on content.

Streamline Production for Growth

Inefficient transcreation isn’t just a matter of audience reach; it can impede growth as well. For example, one of our integrated partners is a digital brand that’s experienced very rapid growth through the acquisition of local businesses. With every new acquisition and market came a new need for assets, burying their in-house studio with an ever-increasing workload. An integrated partnership enabled the brand to offload lower complexity tasks and speed up the production process to match the rate of growth.

For some brands, a social media presence or their chosen industry might require an ever-quickening pace of asset production. This challenge rises exponentially for those catering to different local markets. An entertainment brand, for example, must react to current events across markets with speed, understanding how a given story’s relevance might differ among those markets. Because integrated partnerships thrive on long-term relationships and provide organizations with teams that are dedicated to their brands, they can streamline the production process by enabling daily deliverables rather than use a project-oriented approach. When brands feel increased pressure to develop always-on content ecosystems targeting different markets and cultures, an integrated partnership with access to a global talent base is ideal for offering the right message at the right time.

Improve Consistency Across Markets with New Creative Frameworks

Offloading tasks is simple enough, though the true potential of an integrated partnership is to optimize workflows across levels of the production process. A common challenge for large, global organizations is that they juggle several vendors per market, which can complicate the production process or threaten quality and consistency.

Through the guidance or talent resources provided by an integrated partnership, brands can provide local markets with autonomy to tailor messaging without having to worry about inconsistent style or messaging. While it might seem as though such a partnership is inviting yet another outside vendor into the process, this model is developed for the long term around a sense of shared responsibility. Custom-built and engrained within your organization’s culture, integrated partnerships have deep knowledge of a brand and can therefore serve as a safeguard.

Let’s consider another partner as an example. Its US team controlled asset production in other markets including Asia, which resulted in messaging that wasn’t necessarily relevant to them. This prompted local markets to work with their own vendors to develop assets with more cultural relevance. While they succeeded in that effort, the new materials lacked consistency. As the adage says, “too many cooks spoil the broth.” In this case, inviting several voices and vendors in the mix resulted in an inconsistent brand experience.

Our solution was to find a way to give room for freedom and autonomy to local markets while still allowing for a centralized work stream. At MediaMonks, we’re well-experienced in producing assets at scale through a unique creative framework that allows for several variations with little rework or added cost. We adapted this process for our partner by producing a series of master templates which would ensure a consistent visual style, while also being easy for local markets to adapt. This approach maintained flexibility while also quickening the time to market. “What sets this process apart is that transcreation is kept at front-of-mind and engrained into the process rather than being treated as an afterthought,” says Louise Martens, Executive Producer at MediaMonks LA.

A Talent Studio That Knows Your Brand—And Your Local Audience

Finally, our integrated partnerships provide brands with access to an always-on, global talent studio that can easily place a brand in any market. When a brand sees an opportunity in a new market, we can tap into a local talent pool with an awareness of what resonates there. “This flexibility in matching organizations to the larger MediaMonks network whenever needed is one of the key capabilities of integrated partnerships,” says Martens, “and is especially helpful for organizations that know no borders.”

Whether your organization is eyeing opportunities in new markets, is dealing with an unmanageable workload or simply needs to ensure a greater level of consistency across markets, an integrated partnership makes for a versatile, scalable model designed to fit those needs. Once in place, your team is equipped to adapt to new opportunities and challenges that can help your organization work faster and more efficiently, resulting in better ways to meet the needs of your audience no matter where they call home.

Learn more ways to achieve more from less.