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January 5-8 🗓️

Monks at CES 2026: Transforming the Economics of Advertising with AI

See how our united Marketing and Technology services help CMOs, CIOs and CTOs build a future-ready foundation for growth, live at CES.

At CES 2026, we’re revealing how to integrate Monks.Flow, our agentic AI ecosystem for marketing orchestration, to deliver measurable gains today while building the foundation to transform your organization into a high-speed, high-performance creative enterprise. Learn more about what we’ll be up to across the floor and on stage:

Sessions & Demos

Connect with Monks across these events

  • AI Now Sessions

    In this 30-minute session, followed by a live Q&A, we’ll showcase AI workflows powered by Monks.Flow that drive growth today while laying the foundation for a marketing organization that’s efficient, scalable and ready for what’s next. Reserve your spot.

  • 25 Minutes of AI

    We’re taking our monthly innovation briefing from the screen to the stage! As part of the CES Foundry masterclass sessions, our experts will update you on the latest AI news and share practical ideas you can use today. Join us on Wednesday, January 7 at 3pm in the Fontainebleau, Level 4 Capri room 2! Learn more.

  • C Space Fireside Chat and Happy Hour

    Join us on Monday, January 5, from 4:00-6:00 PM, at the Aria as Sir Martin Sorrell explores AI's role in advancing creativity and crafting fundamentally human experiences. Moving beyond cost, the focus is on strategic insight and true transformation. Learn more.

  • C Space: Creativity in State of Flow

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 9-9:25 AM, at the Aria, Joshua 8 meeting room as The Drum's Diane Young, Adobe’s Hannah Elsakr, and Monks’ Wesley ter Haar explore liquid content: AI-powered stories and brand worlds that evolve in real time via audience interaction. Learn more.

  • C Space: The Modern Marketer’s Mandate: Agility, Transparency, & AI-Powered Growth

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 9:30-9:55 AM, at the Aria, Joshua 8 meeting room as brand leaders share the playbook for unlocking agility, transparency and AI growth. Learn more.

  • C Space: The Future of Fan Engagement: Role of AI in Sports and Media

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 10-10:25 AM, at the Aria, Joshua 8 meeting room to explore how AI is redefining fan engagement, transforming sports and media experiences with personalized content, immersive interactions, and smarter storytelling. Learn more.

  • C Space: AI-driven Upside: Creative Effectiveness in Media

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 10:30-10:55 AM, at the Aria, Joshua 8 meeting room as this session maps practical steps for brands to take now to capture AI-driven upside without needlessly constraining media buys. Learn more.

  • C Space: Architecting the New Media Stack for Commerce and Consumer Engagement

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 11-11:40 AM, at the Aria, Joshua 8 meeting room to learn what happens when retail data meets CTV as industry visionaries reveal how agentic AI is building the next era of connected commerce. Learn more.

  • Inside the AI-Native Enterprise

    Join us on Wednesday, January 7, from 1:00-1:30 PM, as Monks' Wesley ter Haar, Leonardo.AI's Dwayne Koh, NVIDIA's Jamie Allan, and AWS' Chris Ziemer reveal the architectural vision for the AI-native enterprise. Get the roadmap to move beyond pilot mode and unlock unprecedented efficiency. Learn more.

  • Digital Hollywood

    Jordan Cuddy returns to Digital Hollywood for a third year to discuss conversational AI and virtual engagement. Join her on Monday, January 5, at 2:00 PM. The session will take place in Aria – Joshua 8. Learn more.

  • THE SHIFT Summit

    Wesley ter Haar will take the stage at THE SHIFT Summit to discuss the definitive proof point on running agentic workflows that hold up under enterprise rigor. Join him on Wednesday, January 7, at 10:40 PM. The session will take place in Aria – Joshua 3. Learn more.

  • Monks’ CES Foundry Booth

    Join us January 7-8 within the Fountainbleau as we showcase interactive demos on Monks.Flow and LiveVision™. Attendees can explore tangible examples of our work and engage with key partners through live demonstrations.

  • Reclaiming Brand Craft in the Era of Intelligence

    Join us on Tuesday, January 6, from 4:10-4:25 PM, as Monks’ Donna Smith and Leonardo.Ai’s Dwayne Koh explore how to use AI as a springboard for unique brand experience. Attendees will learn how to build workflows that empower creative teams, navigate the ethics of authenticity and leverage machine intelligence. Learn more.

Throughout our programming, we’ll offer a proven, scalable architecture for CMOs and CTOs to move past experimental AI and achieve:

  • Unprecedented efficiency: Replace layers of process with intelligent agents that brief, create and optimize in seconds, not weeks.
  • Cultural intelligence: Anticipate cultural shifts and audience sentiment, identify business-relevant moments, and plan investments accordingly—all before competitors even notice.
  • Sovereignty and scale: Get creative control and complete ownership. You own your creative assets, built to your brand standards, on your own platforms.
  • Subscription to innovation: Monks.Flow keeps you ahead by evolving continuously - integrating the latest advances into your marketing operations so your teams keep getting smarter, faster and more effective.
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Transform Marketing into a Growth Engine With Monks.Flow

Monks.Flow, our AI ecosystem for marketing orchestration, turns marketing into a source of margin and momentum, making your organization faster, smarter and more effective than your competitors.

Learn about Monks.Flow
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Eliminate Creative Guesswork and Guarantee an ROI with LiveVision™

Move from legacy control rooms to scalable, intelligent production. LiveVision™ leverages AI to automate complex video workflows, from smart footage tagging to managing wireless resources, allowing you to deploy high-performance broadcast pipelines wherever they are needed.

Learn about LiveVision™

Client Stories

Samsung Galaxy S25 Launch • A Hologram Experience Revealing a Galaxy of Wonder

  • Client

    Samsung

  • Solutions

    Retail Concept InnovationImmersive Brand StorytellingImpactful Brand ActivationsExperiential Strategy & Production

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Case Study

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A captivating campaign showcasing the power of Galaxy AI.

Samsung, a globally recognized leader in technology and innovation, is renowned for its cutting-edge consumer electronics. Ahead of the highly anticipated launch of the new Galaxy S25 device, Samsung tasked us with creating a tease campaign designed to spark intrigue and fuel social conversation. Our brief was to build excitement and highlight the promise of Galaxy AI—without revealing the device itself or its specific features. With a stunning hologram animation suspended in the London sky as its centerpiece, the campaign evoked the wonder of Galaxy AI and showcased Samsung’s commitment to incredible innovation, all while keeping the details under wraps.

An inspiring view into how technology comes to life.

We built a hologram by leveraging cutting-edge holographic LED grid technology to create an ultra-thin, high-transparency display that delivers spectacular 3D visuals. Unlike conventional LED panels, our innovative grid design was lightweight, flexible and nearly invisible, allowing video content to appear three-dimensional from multiple angles. By connecting power and signal components externally through cords, the screen maintained its transparency and sleek aesthetic.

Suspended in air. Spread across the globe. Galaxy AI launched with a tease that lived between reality and imagination.

A multi-prong strategy amplified the experience to viewers afar.

To ignite curiosity and build anticipation ahead of the Galaxy S25 Unpacked event, we launched a multi-channel tease campaign that unfolded in stages. The journey began with virtual out-of-home (FOOH) content, created in collaboration with local creators and polished by our post-production team. These visually striking pieces depicted the hologram activation in iconic urban settings around the world—including Seoul, Sydney and Istanbul—sparking conversation and excitement across global audiences.

This momentum led up to the campaign’s centerpiece: the real-world hologram activation in London, captured in a hero film and a series of cutdowns that fueled even more anticipation for Unpacked and the Galaxy S25 reveal. Working files were shared with Samsung’s regional teams, enabling localized adaptations and maximizing global impact. 

When innovation meets imagination, the world watches.

Samsung’s campaign blurred the line between future tech and present hype.

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Proving the power of innovation and imagination.

The campaign achieved remarkable results, solidifying Samsung's reputation as a leader in innovation and creativity. The FOOH content garnered an impressive 4.9 million views on the @samsungmobile Instagram account, while the hero film captivated audiences, drawing 108 million views on the same platform and an additional 20 million views on Samsung’s YouTube channel. This multi-channel success not only amplified awareness of the groundbreaking Galaxy S25 and its revolutionary AI but also reinforced Samsung’s commitment to pushing technological boundaries. The campaign’s global reach and engagement left a lasting impression on consumers, setting a new benchmark for creative technology storytelling.

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January 6-9

Join Monks at CES 2025. Let’s shape the future of innovation together.

This year, we'll explore how cutting-edge technology, innovation and creativity intersect to fuel brand growth.

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Event Details

Here's what you can expect this year from Monks.

    • C Space Conference Track

      AI Now: Marketing's Journey from Hype to How

      Join us as we partner with Adobe and other leaders to discuss trends shaping entertainment, media, and brand marketing.

      • When: Wednesday, January 8th 
      • Time: 10 - 11:40 AM
      • Where: ARIA, Level 1, Joshua 8
    • Empowering Creativity in the Enterprise with NextGen Tech

      Join us for an engaging fireside chat including insights on the state of creativity in the enterprise. Explore how generative AI is revolutionizing creative processes and driving innovation in customer experiences across various sectors. Discover how the fusion of AI-driven personalization and creativity, rooted in inspiring brand themes, captivates the imagination of Gen Z and beyond.

      • With: Denise Colella, VP, Head of Digital Strategy Group, Adobe
      • When: Wednesday, January 8th  
      • Time: 10 - 10:20 AM 
      • Where: ARIA, East Level 1, Joshua 8
    • GenAI Personalization: Advancing the Promise of Digital

      Generative AI is enabling brands like Delta Air Lines and Paramount+ and Adobe to advance digital marketing’s promise of getting “the right message to the right user at the right time.” In this panel, we'll explore how brands are using AI to create a cohesive and relevant user experience for consumers—that effectively generates revenue. Learn strategies to scale ad creative, ramp up testing, and personalize messaging, while also improving performance outcomes and ROI. Gain practical insights to elevate your digital advertising efforts through generative AI.

      • With: (Moderator) Linda Cronin, EVP Media, Monks; Sam Garfield, Head of Digital Strategy, Communications, Media and Travel, Adobe; Jake Abel, Head of Marketing Strategy, Operations, & Planning, Delta; Michelle Garcia, SVP Marketing, Paramount+
      • When: Wednesday, January 8th  
      • Time: 10:20 - 10:40 AM 
      • Where: ARIA, East Level 1, Joshua 8
    • AI-Powered Transformation: Reimagine the Creative Enterprise

      Join industry leaders from Adobe, AWS, Meta, Monks and NVIDIA as they explore AI-driven creative enterprise transformation. Explore practical strategies for integrating advanced technologies to enhance efficiency, foster innovation, and enable seamless collaboration. Discover how strategic partnerships between CIOs and CMOs can facilitate these transformations, and gain insight into leveraging data capabilities for real-time personalization and elevating your brand's creative processes.

      • With: (Moderator) Henry Cowling, Chief Innovation Officer, Monks; Varun Parmar, VP & GM, Adobe; Chris Blandy, Global Leader, Strategy & Business Development for Media & Entertainment, AWS; Bianca Pryor, Director of Data Science for Media & Entertainment at NVIDIA; Jimmie Stone, VP, Global Head of Creative Shop, Meta
      • When: Wednesday, January 8th  
      • Time: 10:40 - 11:10 AM 
      • Where: ARIA, East Level 1, Joshua 8
    • Fireside Chat – AI and the Future of Marketing

      Join Sir Martin Sorrell and MMA Global CMO Greg Stuart for a fireside chat on the industry opportunity to revolutionize brand creativity through AI. In this discussion, Sir Martin Sorrell and Greg Stuart will explore how generative AI is reshaping content creation, enabling personalized consumer touchpoints, and driving measurable marketing outcomes. As the marketing landscape rapidly evolves, learn how Monks is empowering brands to harness AI's potential for enhanced creativity, reduced costs, and streamlined collaboration—all while keeping relevance at the forefront. Join us in navigating these practical applications of AI that are setting the standard in modern marketing.

      • With: Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder & Executive Chairman, S4 Capital; Greg Stuart, CMO, MMA Global
      • When: Wednesday, January 8th  
      • Time: 11:10 - 11:40 AM 
      • Where: ARIA, East Level 1, Joshua 8
    • AI Now Sessions

      A person standing over mountains and cities

      Schedule an AI Now session led by an executive from our Innovation team to learn how to validate and scale your AI investments. Email ces@monks.com to book your 45 minute slot.

    • Unified AI workflows are key to achieving today's marketing goals.

      The scaled integration of teams, capabilities and technology is instrumental in meeting the most vital needs of the CMO's agenda. Successful workflows unlock a cascade of growth, savings, efficiency and effectiveness.

    • Failure to implement AI workflows leaves value on the table.

      Extract new value from prior investments. Latent insights lie beneath the surface of your existing data, waiting to be found in service of profitable growth; don't leave them behind.

    • Realizing AI's promise relies on paying gains forward.

      Agencies dangle productivity gains before their clients while holding cost savings close to their chests. We're building the model that offers both to our clients, underpinned by service-level agreements and ongoing advisory.

    • Live Demos

      Join us in our C Space Hospitality Sky Suite at the ARIA for hands-on demos of both Sir Martian and our proprietary AI-driven tool Monks.Flow.

    • Meet Sir Martian, our AI-powered robot with lots of personality!

      Image of Sir Martian, an animatronic in the form of an alien with large eyes and a cat-like nose. He wears an outfit befitting a Parisian street portrait artist.

      Sir Martian is a groundbreaking fusion of AI innovation and artistic expression, transforming the traditional experience of street portraiture into an interactive, otherworldly encounter. This humanoid alien robot, affectionately named after S4 Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell, invites visitors to engage in a dynamic conversation while it creates a personalized line art portrait. This experience is not just about capturing a likeness but also the essence of the individual, informed by the dialogue shared.

      Learn More
    • Monks.Flow–An end-to-end AI professionally managed service.

      Monks.Flow branding with colorful waves

      Monks.Flow is an AI-centric professional managed service for marketers. It streamlines how people and AI work together. It offers solutions for major marketing activities by connecting AI, Enterprise Software, and microservices into efficient, automated workflows.

      Learn More
    • STEMinists: Architecting Tomorrow's Digital Landscape

      In our hyper-connected world, STEM careers are the cornerstone of an equitable and innovative technological future. Yet, the gender disparity persists, with women occupying only 35% of STEM positions in the U.S.—a gap that widens on the global stage. This conversation brings together STEM leaders to band together in our desire to increase women’s representation in the field. Together we’ll talk about the importance of recruitment, methods for fostering career advancement, and work to chart a course for a more diverse and inclusive tech ecosystem.

      • With: Jordan Cuddy, EVP, Global Head of Experience; Aisha Bowe, Founder and CEO, STEMBoard; Allison Stransky, Chief Marketing Officer, Samsung Electronics America; Kamal Bhandal, VP, Invisalign® Brand and Consumer Marketing, Align Technology; Amber Coleman-Mortley, Sr. Director, Community and Culture, The Female Quotient
      • When: Wednesday, January 8th 
      • Time: 4:30 - 5 PM
      • Where: CathĂ©drale at ARIA
      Learn more
    • Virtual Humans, Conversational AI: Text/Video/Audio Experience

      An AI that can respond with human intelligence & human emotion, that can reason, that can converse in text, with a pleasant voice or even with human-like appearance is here today.

      • With: Jordan Cuddy, EVP, Global Head of Experience; Jessica Berger, Senior Vice President, Innovation, Publicis Media; John Canning, Director Developer Relations - Creators, AMD; Jake Becker, Director of Creators and Founding Team, Genies; Kumaran Ponnambalam, Principal Engineer, AI, Outshift by Cisco; Joanna Popper, Former Chief Metaverse Officer, CAA; (Moderator) Lori H. Schwartz, Founder & CEO, StoryTech
      • When: Monday, January 6th 
      • Time: 2 - 2:40 PM 
      • Where: ARIA, East Level 1, Joshua 8
      Learn more

Subject Matter Experts

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Report

25 Key Insights for 2025

Get our latest report from our multidisciplinary team of global experts that will help reshape how brands engage, grow and thrive in the year ahead.

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Dive Deeper

Blue Sky Thinking with Salesforce Data Cloud

Blue Sky Thinking with Salesforce Data Cloud

Consumer Insights & Activation Consumer Insights & Activation, Data, Data Privacy & Governance, Data Strategy & Advisory, Data maturity, Death of the cookie 1 min read
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Monks

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Unlock deep customer insights with a CDP

While the nomenclature of Data Cloud might sound soft and fluffy, a CDP is anything but. CDPs can deliver value across an organization, from marketing operations to IT, data science to paid media, but it’s important to take a few key considerations into account before making the leap.

In this report, you will learn how to handle key considerations like data governance, efficiency management, virtualization principles, consent management, unification, and activation to build a holistic view of what is happening in your business.

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You’re one download away from…

  • Understanding governance and privacy standards that come with CDP adoption
  • Seeing how CDPs bridge the gap between the CMO and CIO
  • Assessing your readiness to implement a CDP

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Thinking about a Customer Data Platform (CDP)? This report guides you through essential considerations like data governance, consent management, and data unification to help your organization gain a holistic view of its customers. AI Personalization customer data artificial intelligence creative technology emerging technology automation Data Data Privacy & Governance Consumer Insights & Activation Data Strategy & Advisory Data maturity Death of the cookie

How AI Is Changing Everything You Know About Marketing

How AI Is Changing Everything You Know About Marketing

AI AI, AI & Emerging Technology Consulting, AI Consulting, Digital transformation, New paths to growth, Technology Consulting, Technology Services 1 min read
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How AI Is Changing Everything You Know About Marketing

Artificial Intelligence is disrupting every aspect of business across content, data and digital media, and technology. The delivery of hyper-personalized experiences, real-time insights via predictive marketing intelligence, and the emergence of owned machine learning models are just a handful of ways that AI has turned business-as-usual into an unfamiliar landscape that continues to evolve at the blink of an eye.

Indeed, the efficiencies and opportunities that AI enables can radically uplevel brand experience and output, though unlocking their true potential relies on understanding how to uplevel teams to use the technology effectively. Those who can fully leverage the power of AI and infuse it within every aspect of their business will dominate the market. But for those lagging behind, this is a Kodak moment: there will be no loyalty for businesses that are slow to deliver AI-powered experiences that make consumers’ lives easier.

Throughout this guide, we’ll showcase AI’s potential to transform marketing today and tomorrow, as well as the actions you can take right now to reap those rewards and lead in the new era.

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You’re one download away from…

  • Preparing for your journey to AI transformation now
  • Establishing a strong data foundation to serve AI innovation
  • Finally unlocking true personalization across the customer journey
  • Future-proofing your business culture and teams for the new era

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In this report we discuss the impact of AI on the business landscape and how it can offer hyper-personalized experiences and real-time insights for brands. AI Personalization artificial intelligence creative technology emerging technology automation Technology Services AI Consulting AI & Emerging Technology Consulting Technology Consulting AI Digital transformation New paths to growth

A Frame-by-Frame Look at How Generative AI Supercharges Creativity

A Frame-by-Frame Look at How Generative AI Supercharges Creativity

AI AI, AI & Emerging Technology Consulting, Digital transformation, Experience 6 min read
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By now, you’ve seen it all over social media: uncanny images painted by artificial intelligence. Fun to play with thanks to its accessibility, generative AI has exploded in popularity online. But it’s also raised questions about the nature of human creativity: what is the value of artistry and craft if anyone can generate images in a few seconds?

The impressive output of generative AI has led some to voice concerns about whether their livelihoods are in jeopardy. Creativity, after all, has long been considered a strictly human skill.

But creatives aren’t about to lose their jobs to robot overlords who can spin strings of text into pixelated gold. To the contrary, these tools—which rely on human input and some level of artistic aptitude to really shine—are unlocking creative potential and helping people bring their concepts to life in new ways. This outlook prompted the Labs.Monks, our research and development team, to explore how generative AI can uplevel the work of our teams and our clients.

“We’ve been playing with this technology for a while, and after it began to trend, we’ve been getting more and more questions about it,” says Geert Eichhorn, Innovation Director and Head of Labs. For instance: a lot can be said about the future of content creation aided by AI, but how could today’s tools integrate into a present-day production pipeline? 

Looking for an answer, the Labs.Monks collaborated with animators and illustrators on our team to develop a prototype production workflow that blends traditional animation methods with cutting-edge AI technology. The result is an animated film trailer made using a fraction of the time and resources that a typical, frame-by-frame animation of its length would require.

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Learn to live with the algorithm.

Ancestor Saga is a 2D-animated side project focused on a central question: what if people in the Viking Age realized they were living in a simulation? After learning that their purpose in life is to entertain the gods, will they accept their new reality, or put an end to the world by bringing about Ragnarök?

The theme might feel familiar to anyone trying to make sense of the increasingly algorithmic world we’ve suddenly found ourselves in. “We wanted to tell a story that could integrate with the tech we’re using: virtual worlds and virtual people,” says Samuel Snider-Held, Creative Technologist. Associate Creative Director Joan Llabata takes this thought further, citing some of the challenges faced when humans and AI don’t quite connect. “There’s some space where we need to find the best way to communicate with the machine effectively,” he says.

When using generative AI, a bespoke approach is best.

That challenge of getting humans and AI to play nice demonstrates the need for a team like the Labs.Monks to experiment with the tools that are available. While off-the-shelf tools are great for empowering individual creators, integrating them into team pipelines requires a more custom solution.

AI is designed to do specific tasks very, very well. Projects that involve multiple capabilities and phases call for a workflow that can integrate a variety of generative AI to fulfill different goals throughout. With an animation project, this means plugging into creative concepting, storyboarding, sound and of course animating the visuals.

In our case, says Snider-Held, “We wanted to explore how AI could allow us to do the work we really want to do, even if the time or the budget isn’t there.” He found that while our animation team loves classic, frame-by-frame animation, the method is often overlooked because it is slower to produce and less cost-efficient than other ways of animating. 

Now the team had a clear goal: orchestrate an AI-based workflow that could output a frame-by-frame animation in record time, without compromising quality. They took inspiration from rotoscoping, a method used by animators like Ralph Baskhi, in which an artist traces images over existing footage. This task of translating an existing recording from one style to another was ideal for image-to-image generative AI. In addition, the team used AI technology to develop background designs and read out the animation’s voiceover.

Generative AI isn’t a radical departure from tradition.

The team began by recording a 3D character model in a virtual setting, capturing a variety of poses for an illustrator to trace over. These visuals were then used to train the AI model on how to draw the character in different movements. “If you draw about five frames, you have enough to teach a neural network how to paint the others,” says Snider-Held, noting that it’s important to select frames that are different from one another so the AI can pick up on various forms, shapes and poses.

In addition to rotoscoping virtual production, the team also experimented with live-action stock footage. Being able to use two different types of visual source material baked extra flexibility into the process; teams could mix and match the different methods according to their specific needs or abilities. Fantastical creatures might be captured more easily in virtual production, while a team lacking in their ability to animate lifelike movements may prefer using live-action film as a base. “You get better acting from footage versus a 3D model, but the visual output is ultimately the same,” says Snider-Held.

Much like how that process emulated classic rotoscoping by hand, other ways of integrating AI followed a traditional animation process, albeit with some additional steps here and there. For example, the storyboarding phase is important for visualizing which types of shots or animations are needed for a specific sequence. In addition to pondering that, the team also planned which kinds of AI would be best for generating this or that shot.

Using Stable Diffusion—a kind of generative AI that translates a text prompt into an image—allowed the team to create a large volume of backgrounds that they could swap in and out to test how they looked. “You can explore a lot in this phase,” says Snider-Held.

As for developing backgrounds in particular, “It’s like describing the shot you want to a director of photography,” says Llabata. He was able to test hundreds of different environments, camera angles, artistic styles, lighting and more, all with relative ease.

a grid of landscapes of a house amid mountains and fields

Unlock efficiencies and long-term gains.

The findings above hit on perhaps the biggest gain that a generative AI-powered workflow can provide: greater flexibility throughout the life of a creative project. Being able to generate 60 frames in one minute—rather than one frame in 60 minutes—makes it incredibly easy to pivot or change things up in the blink of an eye.

Monk Thoughts It’s a producer’s dream to be able to create so many assets so flexibly. It redefines linearity in the pipeline because you can always go back and change things.
Joan Llabata headshot

It doesn’t require a sophisticated hardware setup either, further making content creation accessible to teams of all sizes. “You don’t need a giant server or cloud computing,” says Eichhorn. “A reasonably good gaming PC can churn out assets like backdrops quickly.” Still, more complex uses of AI like rotoscoping may require more power.

The flexibility unlocked by integrating generative AI into a team’s pipeline continues to pay dividends beyond the life of a single project. “If you have a project whose scope is really big, the effort and money you spent in that R&D is compounded in value over time,” says Snider-Held, noting that whether a brand wants to make 10 animations or 30, the steps to lay down an AI-powered foundation will be roughly the same.

Experiment to find an approach that suits your needs.

Tools like stable diffusion aren’t meant to replace those in the creative field. “An AI will not achieve anything by itself,” says Llabata. Instead, these products will give teams the ability to chase more ambitious projects with fewer constraints in time and budget. Just consider how closely the creation of the Ancestor Saga trailer follows a traditional animation process, just with more efficiencies baked in. 

Such flexibility afforded by generative AI can go well beyond traditional animation.

Monk Thoughts The merging of data and creativity is something we’re always exploring at Media.Monks, and this technology is going to supercharge that. Imagine using data that we already use for media campaigns to generate hyper-personalized images.
Portrait of Geert Eichhorn

Whatever your use case for generative AI, understand that while building tools from scratch can be challenging, the result is extremely powerful. “Our approach is that if an off-the-shelf tool is mature enough, use it. If not, create it yourself,” says Snider-Held. In addition to ensuring a tool is calibrated for their specific needs, teams who go the bespoke route will also be better poised to future proof as the technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

So, think you’re ready to explore what generative AI means for your field? Learn more about the ins and outs of the technology in the latest Labs Report exploring the rapid evolution of digital creation.

Labs.Monks collaborated with animators and illustrators to develop a prototype production workflow that blends traditional animation with cutting-edge AI. artificial intelligence animation prototyping creative technology Experience AI & Emerging Technology Consulting AI Digital transformation

TheoremOne Joins Media.Monks with a People-First Approach

TheoremOne Joins Media.Monks with a People-First Approach

3 min read
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Written by
Monks

Last fall saw the launch of our technology services pillar, and we already have exciting news to share that will strengthen our offering: TheoremOne has joined the Media.Monks team! TheoremOne's expertise adds to our full-stack suite of solutions designed to bridge the gap between the modern CMO and CTO. Together, Media.Monks and TheoremOne will deliver full-funnel, transformative technology services to enterprise brands, from long-term digital strategy and change enablement to custom software and product development—all powered by world-class content and advanced data&digital media expertise.

Founded in 2007, TheoremOne is an innovative engineering and technology services consultancy led by Brady Brim-DeForest, CEO; Will Jessup, Founder & Head of Services; and David Kullmann, Partner, Staffing and Embedded Teams. The team advises clients on product strategy, engineering, design, and culture, then partners with them to build and launch technology-driven solutions to their most complex problems. While over 70% of its employees are based in the US and Canada, TheoremOne employs a global team of distributed talent to best serve the needs of enterprises everywhere, including American Express, Intel, Starbucks and Caterpillar.

“With the intersection of marketing, sales and information technology continuing to be a key topic for brands and all C-suite executives, we at S4Capital are building a genuinely integrated offer for our clients comprising best-in-class technology services combined with content and data&digital media expertise,” says Sir Martin Sorrell, S4Capital Executive Chairman. “We are delighted to welcome Brady, Will, David and their colleagues–their vision and ambition will no doubt be a great fit for us.”

A Disruptive Approach to Innovation

We’re attracted to teams that share our mindset to disrupt the industry, and this makes us good fellows with TheoremOne. The team is driven by a strong mission to dismantle an archaic consulting ecosystem and replace it with a distinctive, durable and effective system for transforming the way businesses solve problems. This is reflected in TheoremOne’s small teams, lean budgets and unparalleled velocity, as well as a desire to build cultures of innovation within the world’s largest enterprises.

Among the biggest innovations built by TheoremOne are a series of popular open-source technologies that developers depend on. These include (but are not limited to) Redis hosting services OpenRedis and Vagrant, which predate DevOps tools like containers. TheoremOne aims to enable information through custom software development rather than produce cookie-cutter solutions or integrations. By hiring experts in leading cloud platforms, programming languages, databases and more, TheoremOne invests in talent ideally positioned to help brands navigate digital transformation, full-stack innovation and experience design.

People-Powered Transformation

To achieve its mission of maximizing human potential, TheoremOne has developed a unique operating model: an Operating System for Innovation. This modular service offering enables a more client-centric approach to software development and information technology services, much like the way our API model—another computing metaphor for organizing people efficiently around a common goal—connects the world’s best digital talent around solving specific client needs.

We launched our API to democratize our talents’ ability to spot challenges in the market that we can solve together. Likewise, the structure at TheoremOne is built on principles of decentralized leadership and small, autonomous teams. These qualities breed a culture of extreme ownership to make a significant impact.

And while much of TheoremOne’s talent is based in the United States and Canada, a core belief behind the business is that exceptional talent can be found anywhere. The global team collaborates remotely across borders and time zones to best meet the needs of clients around the world—an approach that plugs in well with our own global team and single P&L. TheoremOne has leveraged its expertise in remote collaboration to help brands achieve similar efficiencies: its remote work transformation service offering fills a growing white space as businesses continue to restructure their teams around digital collaboration.

A Shared Vision

TheoremOne shares many of our own values, from acting like owners and solving challenges together to driving transformation across people, process and technology. Now plugged into an integrated team of digital experts, TheoremOne is better equipped to help build digital products and experiences that people love, all while cementing our investment in full-funnel, transformative technology services to enterprise brands.

TheoremOne has joined Media.Monks! TheoremOne's expertise adds to our full-stack suite of solutions designed to bridge the gap between the modern CMO and CTO. technology creative technology marketing innovation

Enhance Creative by Turning Data into Insights

Enhance Creative by Turning Data into Insights

4 min read
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Written by
Monks

Mejora la Creatividad Convirtiendo Datos en Conocimiento

Today’s CMOs have a lot on their plate: their role is increasingly responsible for overall business growth, managing brand communications, customer experience and in some cases the adoption of new technologies. Each of these responsibilities touch upon the different ways that consumers interact with a brand, making it essential for CMOs—and their teams—to manage a wide-lens view of the consumer journey. But in order to successfully integrate business objectives with data and customer experience, they’ll need to establish marketing strategies in which both work hand-in-hand to support one another.

By achieving this through constant performance measurement and optimization of content, organizations empower themselves to adopt a more agile process of marketing, which enables them to rapidly experiment and optimize campaign content and media spend through engagement. This culture of experimentation—with results to back it up—is key to achieving the always-on stream of content that today’s consumer expects, offering several relevant, personalized permutations of a message rather than the “big idea” campaign that was so popular in the past.

Close the Loop on End-to-End Marketing

Effective marketing today isn’t born just from an initial set of figures, but in fact results in new data that can be used to further optimize that content. This strengthens the creative so that it remains relevant to consumers along the digital journey. Whether an initial set of metrics lives up to expectations or not, data-confident organizations that continually measure performance may use those insights to increase content effectiveness, save in costs over the long-term and maintain trust in their creative partners.

Think about what a campaign that uses data poorly looks like. We’ve all found ourselves haunted by a product we’ve viewed (or even purchased) in our travels across the internet—an experience that can come off as annoying or even downright creepy. That this situation is all too common demonstrates how brands often miss key opportunities for effective retargeting or adapting their message to consumers’ changing priorities or intents. Those who continually optimize content through an agile process rapidly gain and apply new insights to adapt their message to the consumer’s interests or place in the sales funnel, resulting in more relevant and effective targeting.

Monk Thoughts Many brands may rely on automated optimization, but then they miss out on understanding what their audiences are thinking.

We took this end-to-end approach in a recent awareness campaign for Gladskin, the Dutch skincare brand, and their award-winning acne treatment. The processes described below enabled the brand to five-times lower CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) and higher-than-forecasted reach. To achieve this, we measured what content brought audiences past initial engagement, then applied those insights to continually change the positioning, messaging and creative for greater results.

Optimizing Content for Increased Relevance

As with any campaign, this one began with an initial set of research on a hypothesized audience. Through preliminary engagements from consumers, we were able to quickly zero in on key insights that informed the next phase of production and user targeting. For example, we noticed that Instagram Story content focusing on models’ faces performed especially well in the awareness stage; this content achieved a 37% higher CTR than story content that focused on the product’s effect on the skin.

This aligned well with what you would expect from a platform like Instagram, as the face-focused content was akin to your standard beauty deliverable. But we found that the opposite was true in the consideration phase: Instagram Story content that performed better at this stage fixated on the skin and science behind the product.

Similarly, content that drove more users to convert focused on the research behind the product’s award-winning formula and customer testimonials, depending on the format used. The former was most effective with carousels that let users dive deeper into the product benefits in detail, while the latter performed best in single-image link ads.

Which type of message performs best per platform or format isn’t set in stone; it’s different per campaign, driving home the importance of closely measuring performance across the course of any campaign. But what both winning formats in the consideration and purchase phases had in common was that they provided consumers with justification to buy after their interest had initially been piqued, a key insight for subsequent retargeting efforts.

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Stitched together from a selection of pre-existing assets, we applied performance metrics to identify the most effective designs per segment and channel.

One can imagine how sticking to a single type of content throughout the consumer journey is comparatively ineffective in pushing consumers through the funnel; think back on that example of a product listing stalking a customer who happened upon it once. By highlighting new insights through frequent A/B testing, we could rapidly remix transformable assets into more and more attractive deliverables—and even support new creative formats, like Instant Experiences on Facebook.

Boost ROI with Optimized Spend

Cracking the code to the most thumb-stopping, relevant messages to consumers is one thing, but it doesn’t do anyone good when those messages fall on deaf ears. In addition to optimizing content, agile marketing processes let you plug data in to deeply target new groups (or continue to retarget engaged ones) for continued success.

For Gladskin, we worked with Brainlabs (an award-winning digital marketing agency) on a new approach to organizing target interests. Rather than sort them by theme—in this case, things like “teenage skincare” or “acne treatment”—we identified how well each individual interest performed. From there, we divided the top-performing ones from the bottom.

Weekly reporting enabled us to continually replace the lowest-performing interests with new ones. Over time, this process will result in ever-higher engagement rates and reach into new, increasingly relevant audiences over the course of the campaign. Tied with the process of optimizing insights-driven content as detailed above, this end-to-end approach is truly reactive to audience engagements and intents.

As measurement becomes increasingly essential for CMOs to improve customer experience, increase communication effectiveness and drive overall business goals, brands must embrace agile processes that allow for the continuous optimization of campaigns. This repeated experimentation through closed-loop, end-to-end systems provides brands with the insights they need to achieve specific business outcomes for long-term success.

Measuring campaign performance not only helps brands make creative decisions. It also grants them a clearer look at what different segments think at different stage of the customer journey. Enhance Creative by Turning Data into Insights Measuring performance to attain a clear, unblemished view of the consumer.
programmatic media buy performance marketing campaign performance assets at scale creative technology consumer data first-party data social media marketing channel marketing

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