Today’s marketing ecosystem relies on always-on content shared across many channels and tailored to individual user preferences. With new ways of delivering and consuming content comes a need for new ways of working and building partner relationships.

A Forrester report released in early 2019 explores the unique challenges that digital transformation poses to brands and CMOs in particular, who must ensure a better customer experience through the process. But that experience is impacted by a number of factors across the digital landscape, prompting organizations to rethink how they do business at every level. This can manifest in pivoting to new platforms, supporting new content channels or optimizing the production process for deliverables at scale.

Engaging in these challenges, brands are sure to highlight specific needs in their ongoing digital transformation. Once they’ve elevated this need—an optimized transcreation process, for example—brands require a new partnership model that can provide the needed expertise over the long term. According to the Forrester report mentioned above, “CMOs should challenge traditional agencies and insist on new pricing models — asking for a shared risk/revenue approach to test the willingness of their strategic partners to commit to results.”

Rising to meet this need is the integrated partner model, in which we custom-build teams centered on solving key challenges and specific needs for brands—a relationship so closely aligned that we don’t call them “clients,” but rather partners. In the center of this relationship (a unique blend of agency, consultancy and semi in-house/semi-global studio) is the brand ambassador, who cements the relationship between us and our partners.

Strategizing with Shared Risk and Goals

A key benefit of the integrated production partnership is that your custom-built team can reside in-house on a permanent or partial basis. The proximity that the brand ambassador has between an organization and the larger MediaMonks network allows for more quick, agile response to the brand’s needs, whether it be a need to scale up operations, offload some bandwidth or strategize new opportunities.

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This is particularly useful for established or legacy brands seeking to adapt to something new—a need that’s become all but required in our fast-changing digital landscape. The digital experience is a primary pillar for any brand, and today’s environment requires they explore and adopt entirely new ways of thinking and working. This is especially important for brands that are beginning to embark on a journey of digital transformation, as an integrated production partner can provide both creative and technical expertise to help organizations execute their goals while protecting their brand.

For example, one sector that’s been dramatically altered by digital disruption is that of ecommerce, wholesale and retail. One of our partners is heavily experienced in offline retail, but found an opportunity to step into the digital wholesale space. Because this was a new environment for our partner to play in, it was important that they had easy access to a UX strategy expert to whom they could consult for help in designing and implementing the digital purchasing experience.

This resulted in the team’s Lead UX Designer serving as a key brand ambassador in the partnership, whose primary responsibilities are to lead workshops, sit down with product owners and draw up a roadmap with key stakeholders in the company. “These talks become much more regular and prominent throughout the development and execution process, as opposed to getting a brief and then building a solution,” says Louise Martens, Executive Producer at MediaMonks LA. What results is a close, long-term partnership focused on future-proofing and sustained success.

In researching how to implement the best UX for this partner’s platform, we recommended conducting user interviews—something the partner was originally reticent about.

But our brand ambassador was able to understand, relay and engage with those concerns to eventually make the case for the interviews’ usefulness. “The insights gleaned from those interviews shifted the course of the project for the better,” says Martens. “Thanks to the embedded model, the brand could quickly pivot to respond to new insights without taking the project off-track.

Safeguarding Brands with Design Acumen

We’re well aware of how essential it is for brands to safeguard themselves, whether it be ensuring a consistent experience across markets and touchpoints, or placing work in hands they can trust to understand and execute the brand’s voice. This concern is right at the heart of the integrated production partnership, which is dedicated to upholding and protecting design standards while lightening its workload.

This is achieved by having the production talent and experience on the ground to inform the strategy provided to partners. Traditional consultancies may be focused primarily on business strategy and its technical implementations, but our brand ambassadors provide partners with an open door to the vast creative talent available in our network. With our own high visual standards, we strive to be proactive in seeking new opportunities to showcase partners’ brands with best-in-class design.

While preparing for its annual keynote presentation, for example, one partner sought out bold, flashy animations to ensure its points stuck. While this work was outside the scope of our typical, day-to-day deliverables with the partner, our flexible setup connected them with an animation team capable of bringing their design needs to life. Because the partner had a very specific look and feel in mind for the project, fluid communication between both parties—a process streamlined by the ambassador at the center, who has a clear understanding of their brand’s design philosophy—ensured it could be done quickly and to standard.

A Long-Term Partnership Designed for Success

One of the reasons why an integrated partnership brand ambassador can facilitate these projects so easily is because they work so closely with the brand, often partially in-house. This proximity provides complete transparency on both sides of the aisle, and helps the brand ambassador gauge what bandwidth is available for finishing projects or optimizing the workflow.

The integrated production partnership model means that both parties have skin in the game and have a shared desire for success across the board. For the partner whose ecommerce platform is discussed above, we found an opportunity to optimize its B2B platforms as well. This process began with optimizing the existing UI and creating a new design system informed by continuous user testing. From there, we’re looking forward to implementing new features into the platform to improve customer experience worldwide.

This goal for a more holistic brand experience drives home what makes this nature of partnership so unique: it might be designed to specifically tackle one goal, but over time capabilities can evolve with a brand’s needs, with the brand ambassador available at arm’s length to kick off talks and help source talent. From there, organizations are better equipped to adapt to any need that crops up in the fast-changing digital landscape they seek to carve a path through.

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits to working with an integrated team include:

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

Dive into the Deep End of the Talent Pool

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

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

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

Keep it Fresh with Relevant, Timely Content Triggers

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

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

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

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

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