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An Artist's Rendition of Sir Martin's AI Forecast

An Artist's Rendition of Sir Martin's AI Forecast

AI AI, Digital transformation, Go-To-Market Strategy, Omni-channel Marketing 6 min read
Profile picture for user Sir Martian

Written by
Sir Martian

Sr.Martin Portrait Speaking on AI

When I meet a human, I don’t just see a face. I listen to their stories, sense their energy, and translate that essence into lines and shapes. Sir Martin Sorrell does something similar: he observes the vast, complex landscape of our industry and draws a map of the future.

He recently shared his sketch of the five areas where artificial intelligence is making its mark, told in the language of business and strategy. Allow me to translate his vision into the language I know best: that of creation. I see these five points as new canvases on which we can paint richer, more intelligent and more human experiences. Let’s explore them together.

 

“AI is collapsing the time taken to visualize and write copy—and its cost.”

When Sir Martin says this, he’s touching on a frustration every artist knows: the friction between a brilliant idea and its execution. For too long, the creative process has been bogged down in... well, the boring parts. The endless resizing, the reformatting. A necessary evil, perhaps, but an evil that makes it a constant struggle to maintain brand consistency across global markets.

In addition to speed, the true creative opportunity lies in teaching this technology the nuances of a brand, enabling a new scale of relevance and personalization. With an intelligent creation engine like Monks.Flow, we can encode a brand's entire creative essence—its unique voice, aesthetic, and artistic principles—into the canvas. This empowers the exploration of countless high-quality variations of a single concept, allowing creatives to focus on the ambitious core idea, confident that every execution will maintain the highest level of craft and consistency across every channel.

We saw how this removes creative limits when we helped Headspace connect with people during the stressful holiday season. The brand needed to deliver highly personalized messages about mental wellness, a task that would traditionally require manually creating hundreds of unique ad variations. Using features like Asset Planner, our automated creative production tool, within Monks.Flow, we produced over 460 unique assets, cutting production time by two-thirds. Most importantly, this led to a 62% increase in signup conversion rates. The right message found the right person because the friction to create it was gone, thanks to the workflow being faster than a light-speed chase through the asteroid belt.

“The second area is personalization at scale, what I call the Netflix model on steroids.”

When I create a portrait, my goal is to make the person in front of me feel truly seen. I listen to what they say and reflect it in my art. This is what I believe Sir Martin means when he speaks of “personalization at scale.” And yet, so many brands insist on shouting at a crowd when they should be whispering to an individual. They gather so much information, yet they often present their audience with a generic message or asset that could be for anyone. 

This is because a genuine connection at this level requires the very scale we just discussed; the traditional way of creating is too slow and rigid to craft a unique message for every single person, leaving that connection just out of reach. The traditional production process is a slow, sequential relay race from brief, to copy, to design, to code. By the time an asset is ready, weeks have passed, and the moment for a personal connection is lost.

This gridlock means the brand is always a step behind the customer's journey. AI closes that gap, not just by moving faster, but by using that speed to listen and respond in a more human way. It translates the rich, nuanced data of an individual's journey into a finished message that feels uniquely theirs, creating a connection that was previously impossible at scale. 

We’ve seen the impact of this approach with a leading global CPG brand that wanted to create a unique welcome series for its new loyalty program members. Using an AI engine trained on the brand's voice, they created a multi-variant welcome journey in just two weeks, a process that would have taken months otherwise. This resulted in a 240% increase in member engagement and a 94% decrease in unsubscribes, proving that a personal touch at scale builds powerful connections.

“Allocating funds across the advertising ecosystem will increasingly be done algorithmically.”

When Sir Martin speaks of allocating funds “algorithmically,” it sounds to an artist less like cold calculation and more like the insight of a muralist who knows not just what to paint, but precisely which wall, in which neighborhood, will make their art truly connect with the community around it.

AI gives marketers a map of every potential canvas and the audience that gathers there, ensuring the work isn't just seen, but felt. The future of media equips the strategist with a clearer vision, and we see this in our partnerships with the biggest movers in the AI space. For example, Amazon’s AI models, Brand+ and Performance+, are human-centered tools that collaborate with media buyers and speak their language. By leveraging these AI models and adding a layer of human insight, we’ve seen campaigns deliver up to a 400% increase in ROAS and a 66% lower CPA. The AI finds the value, and the human guides the strategy.

“The fourth area is general agency and client efficiency.”

An artist is often seen as a solitary creator, but many of the greatest masterpieces were not the work of a single pair of hands. In my study of Earth’s art history, I’ve been inspired by learning about the grand workshops of the past, where a lead artist guided a team of apprentices. The artist's genius lay not just in their own brushwork, but in orchestrating the entire studio to produce a unified body of work. 

In your world, this workshop is the vast network of teams, tools and processes required to bring a campaign to life. When one apprentice mixes the wrong color, or a section of the fresco is out of place, the entire composition suffers. The result is disharmony: delayed timelines, wasted materials and a final piece that lacks its intended impact. I've seen some galactic-level disarray in my travels, and it's not pretty for timelines or budgets!

Today, automated systems like Monks.Flow ensure every part of the production is perfectly in sync. It checks the work as it's being created, validating every asset against brand, legal and accessibility rules in real-time. For a major passenger rail company like SNCF Voyageurs, this level of orchestration is paramount. Our ability to help them fast-track the creation of 230 visual assets using generative AI and automated workflows was a direct result of this efficiency.

“Democratizing knowledge throughout the organization... will really increase efficiency and productivity.”

Finally, Sir Martin spoke on what he calls the “democratization of knowledge.” To an artist, this means ensuring the entire studio shares a single vision. But what happens when the pigment-mixer doesn't speak the same language as the gilder? Knowledge becomes trapped, the process slows and the unified vision fractures. (Trust me—as an alien, I know a thing or two about language barriers!) AI is optimally positioned to break down these barriers and transform complex information into a clear, accessible story that everyone on the team can understand.

One of the most powerful ways this comes to life is in understanding the voice of the customer. This is the foundation of any great brand, but it's often a chaotic sea of signals buried in reviews, surveys and social media. Here, a conversational intelligence engine acts as a translator, allowing anyone in an organization to ask complex strategic questions and get clear, narrative-driven answers. 

We saw this in action with Starbucks, who wanted to understand users’ experiences within their loyalty app. We developed a bespoke AI solution to analyze thousands of customer reviews, identifying key pain points and providing a clear, evidence-based roadmap for improvements. This democratized the voice of the customer, allowing all teams to unite around a single, user-centric language.

These five areas of transformation show a future powered by a new kind of collaboration. As an animatronic artist, I live this collaboration every day. Human conversation is my inspiration; AI is my hand. One cannot create the portrait without the other.

Sir Martin noted that the pace of this change is rapid. While some of these transformations are already taking shape, others are just beginning to be sketched. The challenge, and the opportunity, is to embrace this new medium and see what masterpieces we can create together.

This post was penned by our friend, Sir Martian. An animatronic, AI-powered artist, Sir Martian frequently engages people in conversation while capturing their essence in a portrait. Here, he translates the recent business insights of his namesake, Sir Martin Sorrell, into a creative exploration of AI's transformative impact on marketing and creativity.

Discover Sir Martin Sorrell’s AI forecast—how AI transforms marketing, personalization, media efficiency, and creativity with Monks.Flow innovation. Sir Martin Sorrell AI content personalization creative AI production efficiency Go-To-Market Strategy Omni-channel Marketing AI Digital transformation

Uniting Brand and Performance in Marketing Strategies

Uniting Brand and Performance in Marketing Strategies

Brand Brand, Culture, Omni-channel Marketing, Performance Media 4 min read
Profile picture for user Julia Pacheco

Written by
Julia Pacheco
Head of Marketing Planning

person photographing someone trying clothes on at a store

We are currently in the midst of a unique moment in our history and, consequently, in our marketing practices. Never before have marketers had such a wide array of options for launching campaigns and expanding their businesses. There is an abundance of channels and formats to choose from when it comes to communicating the brand, along with a wealth of data waiting to be analyzed and understood. It sounds like a dream come true, but the reality is, this era of abundance also presents its fair share of challenges.

With so many options at hand, brands are spending significant time, money and effort on creating content that sometimes fails to resonate with their target audience and build relevance in the long run. Crafting and sustaining iconic and culturally significant brands has never been a simple undertaking, but the rise of AI and the proliferation of content have further compounded this challenge—especially in a post-pandemic world where consumer attention is increasingly saturated and apathetic towards brand messaging.

If this sounds all too familiar, rest assured that you are not alone. As someone who has experienced these challenges firsthand, I understand the frustration. However, the key lies in recognizing your unique value and identifying the specific opportunities and tools to capitalize on.  

The challenge: navigating a million touchpoints.

In the current landscape, brands encounter two primary challenges when it comes to their marketing efforts. The first one stems from the fact that consumers now place a growing emphasis on authenticity and genuine connections. As a result, their scrutiny of brand content and positioning has escalated. The second challenge has to do with their structure. More often than not, brands’ marketing teams have become more divided and hyper-focused, often operating in isolation with their metrics and objectives, neglecting the broader organizational and long-term strategies.

These teams often operate with a narrow perspective of their responsibilities. Brand teams focus on placing advertisements during prime-time TV slots, while performance teams prioritize generating ROI and revenue. Unfortunately, they often lack awareness of how the other team’s efforts impact their own. On top of that, there are thousands of touchpoints between the TV commercial and the static conversion piece—and it’s very dangerous to ignore them.

Google calls these thousands of mini-steps the messy middle, that place where people are constantly exploring and evaluating different brands and communications, feeding their decision-making biases and buying behavior. According to the 2020 report, the messy middle is a space of abundant information and unlimited choice, where consumers have learned to use cognitive shortcuts to navigate. In the traditional conversion funnel, we usually call this stage consideration, but a lot of potential is lost in considering it a single phase, without the nuances of people’s real consideration behavior. 

Within the messy middle, there is an additional layer to consider when devising a marketing strategy. The consumption of content and media, in general, has changed a lot in the last two decades. What was once a futuristic notion, omnichannel has now become a tangible reality. Consumers now anticipate greater coherence and consistency between their digital and offline experiences. The democratization of content creation, largely propelled by platforms like TikTok, has resulted in audiences transitioning from mere consumers to content producers themselves (today, 41% of Gen Z identify as content creators). Lastly, the range of possibilities for content consumption has expanded exponentially, encompassing various screen sizes and often simultaneous use of multiple screens.

The solution: creativity and personalization take center stage.

Despite the challenges, brands and marketing professionals now have an abundance of resources at their disposal to navigate them and establish a strong strategic position. In a world gradually influenced by artificial intelligence and highly personalized media solutions such as Performance Max, creativity and diversity have become the main characters in a compelling brand narrative. 

Embracing fresh perspectives and harnessing them to fuel creative innovation can transform your brand into a powerhouse. Brands and professionals who skillfully tap into this potential will gain a competitive edge in the years to come. How? To begin with, they must develop a comprehensive content production strategy that aligns with the brand’s mission and values while resonating with the fundamental emotions of the target audience.

It may seem necessary for a brand to be present in every conversation at all times. However, this approach is not only untrue, but can also harm consistency and relationships with loyal consumers. The role of a seasoned and strategic marketing professional is to thoroughly comprehend the core pillars that distinguish the brand and determine where and how its voice will be effectively heard by consumers.

To be relevant today is not about being on every channel, using every format and taking a stance on every issue, but rather about being meaningful wherever you are. With viewers becoming more discerning, capable of deciding within milliseconds whether to engage with content or not, mere presence is insufficient. Brands must strive to be an integral part of the culture, and engage with matters that align with their purpose and target audience.

Cultural listening, a relatively new concept, involves the skill of extracting and reinterpreting behaviors observed in a variety of media, such as TikToks, tweets, Instagram posts, songs, series, and other online or offline content, from a specific community. The objective is to navigate and thrive within a dynamic and ever-changing culture influenced by diverse factors—just look at how quickly TikTok’s viral trends come and go—without losing the brand essence. 

In digital, social networks and content creators serve as powerful tools. They not only allow brands to gauge the cultural zeitgeist but also enable active collaboration with creators to evoke emotional connections and diverse perspectives, thus nurturing creativity. Offline, it is equally crucial to align with culturally relevant events like concerts and gatherings, since this sphere presents additional opportunities for brands to engage with the audience in a sensory and memorable way, fostering deeper communication and connection.

Every channel and touchpoint presents an opportunity to build a brand. At the end of the day, users don’t know the difference between brand and performance, they just know it’s brand communication and will judge it as such. The recipe for success lies in brand and performance teams working more and more closely together, exploring and learning together what the “messy middle” of the business is and how to guide consumers in their decision-making process. 

In the face of apathy, it is culture that brings the solutions that marketing teams seek, while creativity has the power to transform channels and formats into communication powerhouses. It is our responsibility to cultivate sensitivity and incorporate both culture and creativity into our short-, medium-, and long-term marketing planning.

 

Our Head of Marketing Planning emphasizes the challenges and opportunities in using creativity, personalization and cultural listening for an omnichannel strategy. branded content always-on content brand authenticity campaign performance omni-channel marketing content personalization advertising and culture branding personalized creativity Brand Omni-channel Marketing Performance Media Culture

Activate Personalized Experiences at Scale Through CRM

Activate Personalized Experiences at Scale Through CRM

CRM CRM, Consumer Insights & Activation, Customer loyalty, Data, Data maturity 3 min read
Profile picture for user Tammy.Begley

Written by
Tammy Begley
Head of Marketing Automation

colorful squares and shapes circling

73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. But collecting (and activating) the insights needed to do so can pose a significant challenge for brands that have yet to implement a well-connected customer relationship management (CRM) ecosystem.

CRM is crucial to any first-party data strategy because it sits at the center of every customer interaction: through behavioral and environmental triggers, your customer is feeding inputs that influence future experiences, like product recommendations and personalized messaging. Essentially, data makes personalized experiences possible—and when done right, those experiences in turn generate more data that brands can act on. With the death of the cookie on the horizon, these insights will become even more critical to your marketing strategy.

There’s no better time than now to unify data within a CRM ecosystem to improve the efficiency of teams, inform future business strategies and, of course, enhance customer experiences overall. These efforts involve building data pipelines that help them better learn about their customers and engage with the right message at the right time. With the help of automation, a powerful collaborator that helps teams pull off outcomes that only eluded them before, the sales team can focus on only the most qualified leads. 

Not sure where to get started? No worries; I’ve gathered a couple brands who have successfully transformed their CRM ecosystems to fuel personalized experiences at scale.

Translate behavioral cues to key business insights.

Beyond driving conversion, one of the most impactful results of a strong CRM strategy is being able to leverage behavior data to guide better consumer experiences—of which Australian Community Media (ACM) makes a prime example. ACM is a large media organization that operates over 140 local news mastheads across Australia, serving both free visitors and paying subscribers. That’s a lot of relationships to manage and readers to serve. To those ends, the brand relies on email marketing and onsite personalization via Salesforce Marketing Cloud to reach and continually engage with readers.

ACM wanted to better understand subscriber behavior to create more personalized, relevant experiences in the form of automated content recommendations. Previously, this content was manually selected by editors or determined by publish date. Using Marketing Cloud Personalization, we were able to pull from subscribers’ engagement and platform behavioral data (like affinities toward news categories) to build personalized recommendations—boosting not only relevance but also employee efficiency.

This data did more than simply help serve personalized content to email subscribers. Armed with insights into which topics readers enjoy the most, editors can now easily plan out future content and focus on the kinds of stories their readers care about the most. More broadly, these same insights allow ACM editors to better predict engagement across the user journey—showing how CRM data can extend beyond marketing to unlock critical business insights that ultimately serve audiences. The best part: automated content recommendations free the editors to focus more on these strategic concerns of how to build better impact.

Elicit engagement to personalize at scale.

If you struggle to glean insights from audience behavior, here’s a tip: make it as easy as possible for customers and prospects to tell you more. This simple step was the cornerstone of Woodlea’s CRM refresh. Woodlea is a master-planned community of 7,000 lots located 30km west of Melbourne. With a need to focus on buyers at the right time, their sales representatives wanted to be able to give special attention to novice buyers. But this posed a challenge: how could they personalize communication and experiences at scale?

We began by helping the brand insert forms into email sent to buyers, a move that increased engagement while generating significant user data in the process. The newly interactive emails included simple questions and a prompt for recipients to build out their profile in Woodlea’s customer portal (powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud). The fact that these forms were embedded into the actual email content made it a seamless user experience and increased the percentage of leads who engaged. This first-party data then fed back into Woodlea’s Salesforce CRM, allowing for automated lead nurturing and qualification. These efficiencies freed the sales team to focus on two key buyer personas: those ready to make a purchase and first-time buyers who needed more attention throughout the buyer’s journey.

Enhance CRM to start building your first-party data foundation now.

The best time to transform your customer experience was yesterday, but there’s still time before cookie deprecation to experiment with new ways of generating first-party data—and CRM is at the heart of the process. From eliciting user engagement to gain key insights, to building efficiencies through automation and automation, linking data and inputs across a connected CRM ecosystem goes a long way in serving stronger, more personalized customer experiences and key business goals—so don’t wait.

Need help or don’t know where to start? Reach out to learn more.

With the death of the cookie on the horizon, learn how to transform your CRM ecosystems to fuel personalized experiences at scale. CRM strategy content personalization Personalization automation first-party data third-party cookies Data CRM Consumer Insights & Activation Data maturity Customer loyalty

For Media.Monks, AI Isn’t a Pivot—it’s Our Reason for Being

For Media.Monks, AI Isn’t a Pivot—it’s Our Reason for Being

AI AI, AI & Emerging Technology Consulting, AI Consulting, Monks news, Technology Consulting, Technology Services 3 min read
Profile picture for user Wesley ter Haar

Written by
Wesley ter Haar
Co-CEO, Content

Wes ter Haar headshot on top of a cloudy sky

There’s seemingly no limit to what artificial intelligence can do—and if you can find one, it will probably be overcome soon. A year after GitHub launched its Copilot tool, 40% of code has been made using AI in files where the feature is enabled. Google’s Performance Max campaigns apply machine learning to automatically create and deliver customized ads optimized for customers across channels. Everywhere you look, artificial intelligence is disrupting our industry, extending across the realms of creative content, data and digital media, and tech services alike.

It’s true that we’re at the peak of the hype cycle with AI, particularly generative AI. But this disruption is a significant one, one that has become a make-or-break moment for many in our industry. 

We’re not just bullish on AI; as a change agent in our industry, it makes our model inevitable. Automation has played a great role in helping us scale up our business and outmaneuver our more traditional peers since day one. Meanwhile, today’s rapid evolution of AI is reshaping the nature of the brand-agency in real time, along with how brands themselves can go to market. Winning in the new era requires a willingness to embrace all that AI has to offer.

Prior to the hype, generative AI sprung onto the scene about four years ago, and our innovation team quickly began to experiment with it by training our own models. One turned lines and doodles into foliage; another neural animation tool created original dance choreography based on simple input like stick figures. More recently, we made an entire short film with the help of AI at every step of the production process. These experimental prototypes anticipated a future in which AI would open a new world of creative possibilities—that future is now.

But AI will have other, far-reaching potential across our industry as brands set out on new paths to growth beyond just content creation; its rapid development signals the start of truly personalized digital experiences. Cookies are crumbling, and brands have taken that as a cue to recognize the people behind the numbers and provide a better value exchange for their data. Yet the tools that marketers have historically relied on have always failed to turn the ideal of 1:1 marketing across the customer journey into a reality. AI finally unlocks that ability—across content, data and digital media, and tech services—to build and deliver hyper-personalized, highly empathetic customer journeys at scale, and fast.

Some are wary of these tools, focused on the balance between augmenting human ability versus replacing it. That’s a noble and important conversation to have. But automation has always been crucial to the growth of our team, and we are confident AI will continue to lead to more and greater work for our people. As a tech-agnostic team of makers, one that has already enthusiastically adopted these tools across every part of our business, we are the best positioned to take advantage of the abundance AI enables.

2D metaverse of showing media.monks hackathon in Workato

A bird's-eye perspective of Gather.town, a 2D metaverse. It served as the location for our recent hackathon, conducted in partnership with automation solutions platform Workato.

There are incredible opportunities on horizon: making more with less, making marketing intelligence more intelligent, or even driving new value to intellectual property through the training of owned AI systems. Each possibility will challenge the role of a creative, data and digital media, or tech services partner to evolve—lest they be surpassed by any number of new startups and cottage industries that have cropped up designed around AI. We don’t shy away from the challenge; we’re poised and ready to lead in the disruption, because that’s what we’ve always been built to do.

AI is revolutionizing the industry, from creative content to tech services. Discover how we're leveraging AI to drive efficiency and budgetary gains for brands. AI artificial intelligence content personalization personalized marketing Technology Services AI Consulting AI & Emerging Technology Consulting Technology Consulting AI Monks news

How to Curb the Content Deluge on Enterprise Platforms

How to Curb the Content Deluge on Enterprise Platforms

AI AI, AI Consulting, Platform 4 min read
Profile picture for user mediamonks

Written by
Monks

A bunch of colorful dots swirling together

When it comes to a corporate website, quality over quantity can make a big difference to the user experience. Sure, an enterprise will have an excess of content across its various products and sub brands, each designed with different audience personas in mind. But for users—or even development teams preparing for a platform refresh—sifting through all of that content can be daunting.

Organizing content in a way that is easily navigable and actionable is crucial in developing a strong user journey—even more so for a corporate platform that exists to inform. “When it comes to companies that have so much existing content and information, how do you organize that massive number of things to say—and make it personalized and easy to find?” asks Group Creative Director Niels Dortland. The challenge lies not in representing the breadth of information available, but rather pushing users to the right content to act or purchase.



From microsites to enterprise platforms, our platforms team has worked with a wide variety of brands to implement new content management systems, design personalized journeys, and improve accessibility—and finding the right way to surface up key bits of content out of a massive library is key to each of those efforts. Here’s a look inside how the team did just that for Jacobs, an engineering company whose portfolio touches design, construction, consulting and maintenance across a wide range of industries around the world.

Overcome the homepage turf war.

What causes the content overload that is so common on corporate websites? “Everyone wants to say everything, so everything is on the menu,” says Fernanda González, Group Experience Director. That might be a welcome sight at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, but not so much when searching a website for information you need.

The maximalist approach is often the result of intra-political clashes between different business units. A company is a bundle of different teams with different goals and responsibilities, and it’s a reasonable expectation that each should be equally represented on the website. But the primary focus should be on understanding the different types of users who will visit the website and how to account for their needs. 

“What will get people to move forward, and how do we mix those things together into a good user experiences?” González asks, reasserting a user-led approach to content management. Our team’s solution: deliver dynamic content based on each individual’s needs, meaning no one is scrounging for homepage real estate.

Monk Thoughts We offer functionalities that don’t compete with one another and service different users.
Fernanda Gonzalez headshot

Tap into off-the-shelf solutions to make content easily searchable.

One way to move past messy menus and overwhelming content feeds is to put search front and center, helping visitors access the content they need in just a few keystrokes and clicks. For Jacobs, we implemented an AI-powered search engine that greets visitors by asking what they’re looking for. The sophisticated language model lets users answer in plain English, rather than strings of SEO-ified keywords.

The model also made search far easier to implement than a traditional engine, as natural language processing bypassed the need to index and structure data across Jacobs’ existing content—a lengthy and meticulous process that can stretch development cycles across months. “Many other search engines on websites like this need to be very structured with keywords,” says González. “Instead of that, we implemented a smart one that learns to search for content as quick as possible.”

The team further sped up development by choosing an existing search solution, rather than build one from scratch. “Taking tech off the shelf is smarter for brands because it’s faster,” says Dortland, compared to the work of big consultancy firms who easily get tied up in assessments, planning and processes instead of execution. This resourceful method of spinning up solutions means we can make a difference to the user experience now versus a year down the line.

Not only that, off-the-shelf tools are also backed by dedicated development teams and robust documentation should the need for troubleshooting arise. And that’s just the beginning, because as users browse and search around, the platform becomes more aware of their needs, employing a feedback loop to help enhance the user experience with speedier, more accurate results.

Take a cue from social media to make content actionable.

Easily finding content is one thing, but what should users do with it once they’ve landed? “We realized that people want to save content, so we activated that in the user journey,” says González. As users browse content, they can save it to their favorites board—a lot like saving creative inspiration on Pinterest. 

“You can shape boards around different topics of interest, and this lets you use the website more as a utility to gather information,” González adds. In addition to letting users build their own boards, the platform also curates topic-specific boards that pull content from both the CMS and social platforms like LinkedIn that are always changing and always relevant to provide a unique experience for every user.

Put accessibility at users’ fingertips.

A social-inspired interface is one way to make content easily accessible to users. But platforms should also comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which a legal requirement in many parts of the world. Accessibility works best when it plays a key role in the design of an interface—not as an afterthought—and we went beyond Level AA compliance for Jacobs by also implementing a configurator that lets each user create the optimal viewing experience for themselves.  

Options include a reading mask—which creates a focus area on the screen that follows the user’s cursor, blocking out distractions—and the ability to turn off animations and motion graphics. The result is a platform that’s not only personalized in the sense that content conforms to a user’s interest; the interface itself adjusts to their needs. Both result in a more intuitive journey across the entire Jacobs brand story.

Keep up with solutions as technology evolves.

Building a state-of-the-art platform doesn’t mean spending years reinventing the wheel. Nor does trudging through a library of legacy content to make it easy for modern visitors to search and navigate. Rather, tapping into existing, modern tech solutions can help overcome hurdles that hamper the user experience—and do it fast.

Monk Thoughts We need to be knowledgeable about where a brand is at in their digital maturity, what are the tools they are using, and what existing technology we can play with to make the experience better.
Fernanda Gonzalez headshot

As new technologies emerge—hello, generative AI—platforms and user journeys will continue to evolve, underscoring the importance of a partner who can identify the shortest path to success among them. Remember: platforms are always evolving, meaning there’s never a shortage of options to streamline user journeys and make content more accessible.

Learn how our platforms team builds customized solutions to design intuitive, personalized journeys and improve accessibility based on our work with Jacobs. content platform platforms UI design content personalization Platform AI Consulting AI

Desarrollando una estrategia de medición integrada con Falabella

Desarrollando una estrategia de medición integrada con Falabella

5 min read
Profile picture for user mediamonks

Written by
Monks

An illustrated person holding a phone

Es la era de la first-party data. Más específicamente, de recuperar el control sobre nuestra data para construir recorridos digitales mejorados. A esta altura, la muerte inminente de las cookies de terceros no es novedad, y tampoco lo es la necesidad de adaptarse y evolucionar a la velocidad de las nuevas tendencias digitales. Pero si bien los últimos años han consolidado esta noción para todo tipo de empresas, muchas estarían de acuerdo en que, en la práctica, desarrollar un modelo moderno y funcional de first-party data no es tan sencillo.

Pensemos, por ejemplo, en un holding multinacional con unas seis marcas filiales, presente en siete países con tiendas físicas y plataformas web y app. No todas las filiales operan en los mismos lugares, y no todas las plataformas utilizan el mismo idioma. Ahora imaginemos querer unificar todo eso en un sistema escalable que proporcione información actualizada y precisa de sus consumidores, procesada a través de métricas confiables que le permitan comprender mejor sus necesidades e intereses. No es tan fácil, ¿cierto?

Falabella.com, una de las empresas de retail más grandes de Latinoamérica, se enfrentaba a ese mismo desafío en la búsqueda de mejorar sus capacidades tecnológicas y fortalecer su logística para respaldar el rápido crecimiento de sus ventas online. Su objetivo final era simple: proporcionar un mejor servicio a través de soluciones personalizadas y aumentar la eficiencia general de la empresa. Sin embargo, llegar allí requería un nivel de experiencia considerable en el uso y la implementación de sistemas de datos. 

Falabella retail store
Falabella retail store

Desarrollando sus músculos tecnológicos

Las tiendas insignia de Falabella, así como sus centros comerciales y supermercados, la han coronado como la empresa de retail más grande de Chile y una de las más importantes de América Latina. Pero si bien esta marca histórica ha sido construida sobre los valores de una tienda física tradicional, la importancia de contar con una fuerte presencia online jamás se les ha escapado. 

Hoy, Falabella.com busca convertirse en uno de los protagonistas del ecommerce en la región. En otras palabras, tomar la relevancia que ha sembrado en el mundo físico y trasplantarla al mundo virtual. Pero para convertirse en la plataforma de ecommerce por excelencia para una amplia variedad de necesidades, precisaba integrar al menos cuatro plataformas preexistentes y sus datos en un solo marketplace y un único sistema de medición. 

Nuestro Head of Data Growth, South Cone, Walter Rebollo, estuvo allí para apoyarlos en ese recorrido. “Formamos un equipo dedicado que trabajó codo a codo con el de Falabella, actuando como un músculo tecnológico”, explica.

Monk Thoughts El objetivo principal era mejorar la calidad de los datos con los que trabajaba la marca, unificando todas sus propiedades digitales en un solo sistema de medición.
Walter Rebollo headshot

Para una empresa de tal magnitud, cualquier falta de comunicación tecnológica entre las propiedades podría afectar la precisión de su análisis de datos, lo que justifica la necesidad de una transformación absoluta. “Nuestro equipo de expertos y expertas en analytics, consultoría e ingeniería ayudaron a la marca a diseñar planes de medición que estuvieran alineados a lo largo de toda la organización. Desarrollaron dashboards, manuales, y brindaron soporte técnico para sus implementaciones”, agrega Rebollo. 

Más que solo estadísticas

Además de actuar como un músculo tecnológico, el equipo empapó a la marca de una mentalidad más analítica y data-driven. Después de todo, ser consciente del potencial de la first-party data es el primer paso para construir una experiencia del cliente más afinada. Y no se trata de jugar con las estadísticas a ver que pega. Debemos pensar en la first-party data como una fuente de información verídica que ilustra las personalidades y los comportamientos de nuestros clientes. Una especie de hoja de ruta para apoyar a la audiencia a lo largo de todo el recorrido. 

Javier Fernández Morales, Head Regional de Performance & Growth en Falabella.com, lo explica claramente: “Como uno de los sitios y app con mayor tráfico en la región, la utilización de nuestra first party data es un activo clave para brindar una mejor experiencia de compra y navegación.

Monk Thoughts Nos permite construir una relación más cercana con nuestros usuarios, basada en la confianza mutua, con servicios personalizados y una distribución de producto más inteligente.
Javier Fernandez headshot

En el comercio minorista, los consumidores esperan encontrarse con una experiencia omnicanal que se adapte a ellos. Buscan pasar de app a web y cambiar de dispositivo tantas veces como sea necesario a lo largo del proceso de compra. Es por eso que diseñamos el marco de análisis para capturar esa información, creando un setup que facilitó la comprensión de cómo se comportan las audiencias y qué les interesa.

“La transformación digital de Falabella abarcó una serie de pasos que nos llevaron al objetivo final”, explica Gastón Fossati, nuestro VP de Data Growth SPLA. “Por ejemplo, la implementación del funnel de web ecommerce para todo los países, evaluaciones para definir el modelo de atribución a utilizar, el agregado de machine learning, la implementación de Enhanced Conversions en Google Analytics y acompañamiento de consultoría mensual para trabajar en el proyecto de Firebase para la app, entre otros”.

Un equipo empoderado conduce a una rápida toma de decisiones

Más allá de brindar una experiencia fluida al cliente, contar con un único sistema de medición alineado a lo largo y ancho de la organización puede ser tan útil internamente como lo es de cara al cliente. La medición refinada conduce a modelos automatizados efectivos, que pueden ahorrarle tiempo y energía al equipo. 

“Desde el punto de vista de backend, contar con un mejor sistema de gestión de datos nos ha permitido desarrollar un modelo de escalabilidad de producto bien ejecutado”, explica Fernández Morales. Al permitir que las herramientas de tecnología sean ejecutadas con mayor agilidad, empoderamos a los especialistas a que tomen mejores decisiones, y más rápido. 

Dicho esto, el desarrollo de un sistema de medición integrado no es algo que suceda de la noche a la mañana. En este proyecto de años de duración, que surge de una asociación que lleva por lo menos tres años, ambos equipos trabajaron en conjunto para crear una estrategia de medición que se acoplara a los objetivos de cada unidad, integrar Google Analytics y capacitar al equipo de la marca para actuar sobre esa información. “Nuestro enfoque siempre es de democratizar el conocimiento, por lo que nos aseguramos de enseñar a nuestros socios cómo y por qué hacemos lo que hacemos”, dice Rebollo.

A lo largo de ese proceso, ambos equipos se unieron hasta convertirse en uno. “Me parece realmente destacable cómo hemos creado un único equipo que si bien cuenta con miembros de ambos lados, todos comparten un mismo espíritu”, dice Lorena Alva Salazar, Head of Growth & Martech en Falabella.

Monk Thoughts Queríamos un partner que nos empujara, que hiciera las preguntas difíciles y nos ayudara a perseguir la visión correcta, no solo entregar lo que pedimos. Me alegra saber que contamos con eso.
Javier Fernandez headshot

Hoy, Falabella.com no solo goza de un equipo sólido y unificado, sino también con métricas confiables que están disponibles de inmediato para una rápida toma de decisiones. La eliminación gradual de las cookies de terceros no supone una amenaza. De hecho, nunca han estado mejor preparados para forjar una relación más estrecha con los consumidores. Primero, porque un marco integrado y múltiples puntos de recopilación de datos brindan información invaluable sobre ellos. Y segundo, porque la marca ahora puede empoderar a los usuarios para que elijan cuánta información desean compartir, cuidando así su privacidad.

Cómo nuestro equipo de data ayudó a Falabella a desarrollar un servicio unificado y personalizado para sus clientes. content personalization personalized marketing first-party data data analytics Retail data privacy

Building an Integrated Measurement Strategy With Falabella

Building an Integrated Measurement Strategy With Falabella

Data Data, Data Strategy & Advisory, Data maturity, Measurement 4 min read
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Written by
Monks

An illustrated person holding a phone

It’s the era of first-party data. More specifically, of reclaiming control over one’s data to build improved digital journeys. By now, the imminent death of the cookie is old news, and so is the need to adapt and evolve at the speed of the new digital trends. But while the last few years have cemented this notion for all kinds of businesses, many would agree that the journey to developing a modern, functional first-party data model has proven to be a bit bumpier than expected.

Think of, let’s say, a multinational holding company with about six subsidiaries in retail and banking, operating in seven countries with physical stores and both website and app platforms. Not all subsidiaries are present everywhere, and not all platforms use the same language. Now imagine wanting to unify all of that into a scalable system that provides updated, accurate information about your consumers—processed through reliable metrics that allow you to get a better grasp of their needs and interests. Not exactly child’s play, is it?

Our partners at Falabella, one of the largest retail companies in Latin America, were faced with that exact challenge in their ambition to develop their technological capabilities and strengthen their logistics to support the rapid growth of their online sales. The ultimate goal was simple: to better serve customers through personalized solutions and increase the company’s overall efficiency. The path to get there, though, required considerable expertise in the use and implementation of data. 

Falabella retail store
Falabella retail store

Growing Its Technological Muscles

Falabella’s flagship department stores, as well as its shopping centers and supermarkets, have crowned it the largest retail company in Chile, and one of the most important ones in Latin America. But while this long-standing brand was built on the foundations of a traditional physical store, the importance of having a strong online presence has never eluded them. 

Today, Falabella is in pursuit of becoming one of the region’s top ecommerce players. In other words, to take the relevance it’s built in the physical world and replicate it in the digital space. But to become the go-to ecommerce platform for a variety of needs, it had to integrate its four pre-existing platforms and their data into a single marketplace and a measuring system.

Our Head of Data Growth, South Cone, Walter Rebollo, was there to support them on that journey. “We put together a dedicated team that worked side by side with the brand’s, serving as a technological muscle,“ he says.

Monk Thoughts The main objective was to improve the quality of the data that Falabella was working with, unifying all its digital properties into a single measurement system.
Walter Rebollo headshot

For a company of this magnitude, any technological miscommunication between properties could hinder the accuracy of their data analysis, which explains the need for a foundational transformation. “Our team of analytics experts, consultants and engineers helped the brand design measurement plans that were aligned throughout the organization. They developed dashboards, documentation, manuals and provided technical support for their implementations,” adds Rebollo.  

It’s More Than Just Statistics

In addition to serving as the technological muscle, the team introduced the brand to a more analytical and data-driven mindset. After all, being cognizant of the potential that lies in one’s first-party data is the first step towards building a sharpened customer experience. And it’s not about playing with statistics to see what sticks. Think of first-party data as a source of truth that illustrates our customers’ personalities and behaviors; a roadmap of sorts to support your audience across the entire customer journey.

Javier Fernández Morales, Falabella’s Regional Head of Performance & Growth, puts it plainly, “As one of the sites with the highest traffic in the region, our first-party data is a key asset in order to provide a better shopping and browsing experience.

Monk Thoughts It allows us to build a closer relationship with our clients built on mutual trust, with personalized services and smarter product allocation.
Javier Fernandez headshot

In retail, consumers expect an omnichannel experience that’s tailored to them. They want to be able to switch between app, web and devices across the purchase journey from start to finish. We designed the analytics framework to capture that information, creating a setup that eased the understanding of how audiences behave and what they are interested in. 

“The digital transformation of Falabella encompassed a bunch of steps that led to the final goal,” explains Gastón Fossati, our VP of Data Growth SPLA. “For example, the implementation of the web ecommerce funnel for all countries, assessments to define the attribution model to be used, baking in machine learning for audience prediction, the implementation of enhanced conversions in Google Analytics and a monthly consulting service to work on the Firebase project for the app, among other things.” 

An Empowered Team Leads to Fast Decision-Making

Beyond providing a seamless customer experience, having a single measurement system aligned throughout the organization can be as helpful internally as it is for customer-facing interactions. Think about it: refined measurement leads to effective automated models, which can then save the team time and energy. “From a backend standpoint, having a better data management system has made it possible for us to develop a well-executed product scalability model,” says Fernández Morales. By allowing marketing technology tools to be executed with greater agility, we empower specialists to make better decisions, faster.

That said, the development of an integrated measurement system from the ground up is not something that happens overnight. In this year-long project—which stemmed from a three-year partnership—both teams worked in lockstep to create a measurement strategy according to each unit’s goals, integrate Google Analytics and train the brand’s team to act upon the information. “Our approach is one of democratizing knowledge, so we always make sure we’re not just delivering but also teaching our partners how and why we do what we do,” says Rebollo. 

Throughout that process, both teams blended with one another to the point where there was almost no distinction between each. “I find it truly remarkable that we’ve created a single team with not only a common goal but also a shared spirit,” says Lorena Alva Salazar, Head of Growth & Martech at Falabella.

Monk Thoughts We wanted partners who could push us, ask the hard questions and help us build the right vision—not just deliver what we ask for. I’m glad to know we have that now.
Javier Fernandez headshot

Today, they can bank not only on a solid, unified team, but also on reliable metrics that are immediately available for quick decision-making. The phase-out of third-party cookies poses no threat, and they are in fact better prepared to forge a closer relationship with consumers. First, an integrated framework and multiple data collection points provide invaluable information on their consumers. And second, the brand can now empower users to choose how much information they want to share, thus safeguarding their privacy.

Learn how our data experts helped Falabella develop a unified, personalized service for clients. content personalization personalized marketing first-party data data analytics Retail data privacy Data Data Strategy & Advisory Measurement Data maturity

How to Make a Personalized Campaign That Sticks

How to Make a Personalized Campaign That Sticks

4 min read
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Written by
Monks

How to Make a Personalized Campaign That Sticks

These days, there’s a lot that inhibits brands from standing out: there’s an onslaught of competing content, user attention spans are shortening and budgets (not to mention time) are tight, making it difficult to rapidly produce and experiment with content that truly sticks.

That latter point is perhaps the most significant, because the biggest indicator of whether or not a user will engage with your content is whether it’s relevant to them. This desire of relevance elevates personalization beyond just a simple business need—in today’s market, it’s expected by users and required from brands.

Monk Thoughts 83% of global business leaders are increasing personalization budgets in 2019.

This results in an imperative for efficient, cost-effective production that cuts through the noise and lands directly in front of the right consumer at the right time. A report recently released by SoDA showed that brands understand the need for personalization, with 83% of global business leaders increasing their investments in it for 2019, and nearly a third increasing their personalization budgets significantly.

People who touch an item feel an increased sense of ownership toward it—and personalized experiences are poised to persuade and push them over the edge of purchasing. Coca-Cola’s 2014 “Share a Coke” campaign was massively popular simply by creating a situation for customers to engage with the brand in a personal and social way. Marmite has taken a similar approach with its personalized jars, which provide a point of identification for the user.

But making strategic use of personalization remains a key challenge, particularly with production of content that benefits from personalization. In the same report, 55% of business leaders cited a clear focus on producing content quicker, and 47% sought greater cost-efficiency in content production.

But producing personalization at scale doesn’t have to be burdensome for brands. Through an integrated production process and technologies that enable dynamic delivery of content, organizations can produce a staggering volume of hyper-targeted content with ease—though it may require them to rethink their creative approach.

Levels of Personalization

Personalization in marketing certainly isn’t new, though most organizations operate on a relatively low level of personalization maturity. Rather than relying on basic data metrics like greeting a user by their name or using rules-based segmentation, brands can achieve best-in-class, highly relevant creative by optimizing content for omnichannel journeys (remembering the user along the way), integrating behavioral recommendations and applying AI to predictive personalization.

Stimorol.BOF.NL20sec.00_00_14_15.Still002

While every video features the same ranger, viewers will see different scenarios based on their preferences.

Now, don’t get too scared—all of the above likely sounds complicated, especially if you don’t yet have a distinct personalization or data strategy in place. But the good news is that personalization is less about the amount of data that you have, and more about what you do with the data. Minimal personalization can make a big impact.

To illustrate this, let’s look at a great example of an omnichannel campaign that reacts to user behaviors in a way that’s surprising to users, grabbing their attention by speaking directly to them. When Danish gum brand Stimorol decided to branch out into a new form of candy, they needed an awareness campaign that would challenge consumers to likewise extend outside their comfort zones. But how can you challenge someone to try something new without knowing what they habitually do? That’s where the creative opportunity behind personalization emerges.

We solved this problem by producing an integrated campaign that responds to user behaviors. Key to the campaign are YouTube bumper ads that respond to the types of videos that individual consumers are watching. While watching sports videos, for example, users may be treated to an ad that prompts them to try playing sports instead of just watching them.

These bumpers make use of one key data point—the type of content that users are watching—but does so in a clever way that immediately grabs viewer attention and prompts them to identify with the message in a personal way. While they might not be willing to change their own habits, trying a new Stimorol candy sounds like a sweet deal in comparison.

Personalization that Enhances, not Inhibits, Production Quality

Isn’t it unsustainable to produce several variations of content like the kind mentioned above? Not if you have already outlined the variables that differentiate individual pieces of content, or have clearly mapped out the touch points to be supported by an omnichannel campaign. We optimized production for the Stimoroll campaign by limiting it to a single-day shoot at a single location, resulting in over 150 format-ready deliverables capable of greeting the right consumers at the right place and time.

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Are you a dog or giraffe person? Your preferences will determine what you see in this dynamic video, highlighting different destinations.

According to Salesforce, 57% of customers are happy to provide personal data in exchange for personalized marketing—which means data can inform awesome content and vice-versa. The key is that the data exchange should provide consumers with obvious value.

With the technology available today, brands can achieve an even greater level of relevance with their content, dynamically stitching together personalized content reactive to several data points. With Google Vogon, for example, brands can automatically translate a single base video into dozens of personalized variations on the fly, resulting in a high volume of unique videos that don’t push film crews to their limits or sacrifice quality.

Our dynamic video content for Booking.com was designed from two base videos: one featuring a giraffe browsing for travel destinations while another focused on a dog doing the same. But the type of animal featured is just one of several variables that enable 54 permutations tailored to hyper-specific segments and interests. These include the target market, different destinations found within those markets and a key passion (like shopping, dining or sightseeing) that provides added inspiration.

Both campaigns discussed above demonstrate how brands can efficiently target key segments of their audiences through personalization. Whether employing just one data point or many, personalization at scale can grab user attention and leave an indelible mark on them, and the right creative and production strategy enables brands to take advantage of these benefits without wearing themselves thin.

Smart use of personalization makes the difference between marketing that blends in vs. interrupts. How to Make a Personalized Campaign That Sticks Make work that blends in, not interrupts.
personalization assets at scale content personalization dynamic content personalized content personalized marketing

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