First, Co-CEO of our Content practice, Wesley ter Haar, has won an award in the Individual category for his role in rallying our team around AI innovation. Our collective team has been awarded in the Organization – Strategic Planning category for our accomplishments in building AI workflows designed to help marketing teams overcome a wide breadth of creative and marketing challenges. And one of those workflows was honored as well, with Monks.Flow achieving a win in the Product – Hybrid Intelligent System category, just three months shy of the service’s initial launch.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Monks.Flow is an AI-centric, professional managed service that streamlines how humans and machines work together. News of the win comes hot off the heels of the launch of Persona.Flow, an expansion of the Monks.Flow service that provides deep consumer intelligence by simulating detailed, interactive consumer personas that marketers can engage with in real-time conversation. But overall, the trio of wins showcase the holistic efforts of our team—from individual influence to collective experimentation and innovation—to lead the industry in the AI economy.

Monks.Flow solves high-value use cases for marketers.

The powers of generative AI grow more impressive by the day, but we noticed a key perception challenge in early discussions with brand leadership: while AI-generated visuals are certainly remarkable, marketers felt that the output still lacked the kind of quality required for their specific marketing needs. We also realized that AI’s benefits went far beyond making individuals more productive; rather, automated workflows could help align business units and enable greater collaboration across teams.

We sought to address both challenges and opportunities in the development of Monks.Flow, which empowers marketers to exercise complete control over AI’s output across the life of a campaign. The service weaves together numerous workflows designed for developing insights, building assets at scale, adapting content, measuring performance and optimization and more—meaning teams can shape and influence the AI according to their precise requirements with custom brand models that are accessed in a safe and secure environment.

We continue to expand Monks.Flow to solve emerging needs with AI.

Ultimately, our goal is to streamline the ways humans and AI work together—and our latest innovation Persona.Flow takes this goal a step further, bridging the gap between brands and their customers. Persona.Flow is an interface that allows brands to speak to their data and get inside the minds of their audiences by conversing with dynamic, AI-powered personas. The core technology behind Persona.Flow is driven by a robust RAG framework that weaves together brand-owned data and factual data from market research libraries provided in partnership with data-driven marketing firm Claritas.

All of this enables brands to build up their customer insights, identify trends that resonate with consumers in real time, and act on those trends with incredible speed. Wesley ter Haar, who was also honored with an Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Award in the Individual category, compares these smart personas to digital twin technology. “Traditionally, digital twins allow you to test different scenarios, optimize existing workload and get warning signs when it comes to wear and tear. So that's quite a tried and tested concept when it comes to supply chains and factories,” he says. “Persona.Flow is a digital twin concept in which you create digital twins of your consumer base, allowing the ability to run hypotheses of your creative and marketing space.”

From workloads to workflows, we’re transforming the service model.

Monks.Flow represents another challenge that AI presents to our industry: the need to move beyond traditional, time- and materials-based business models to better reflect AI’s impact on work.

Our win in the Organization – Strategic Planning award category honors the work we have been doing to build a new service model designed for the AI economy. Others have shied away from the existential question of how you would rebuild an existing business for today’s reality, but we’ve embraced it. In pioneering a new commercial model for our industry, we’re building proven workflows that brands engage with via an SLA-based billing model that is focused on output.

Looking ahead, there’s far more innovation to come. Following the keynote at this year’s NVIDIA GTC conference, ter Haar spoke on how the presentation focused on compute as a catalyst for transformative change that shows no signs of stopping. “If you had to make the case for what is the most important accelerator for our world at the moment, it seems to be compute. We're looking at a historic upswing in the ability to deliver that at scale."

Speaking to a Digiday reporter at the conference, he noted, “I think [NVIDIA President Jensen Huang’s] point is that everything that can either be automated or done by robots will be automated or done by robots.” With the growing importance of AI in the marketer’s toolkit, and NVIDIA’s growing role in building the foundational infrastructure that underpins it, shows like GTC will make their way onto more and more marketers’ calendars, serving as further evidence of how our industry continues to evolve with technology.

Looking ahead at accelerated technological transformation.

The world keeps changing—and fast. Our wins from the Business Intelligence Group’s Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Awards underscore our collective ambition to not only improve individual productivity, but rather fundamentally transform the entire business with AI, enabling a higher degree of coordination, speed and scale for brands.

This is marketing-led business transformation at work, adapting and evolving the enterprise to better reflect the AI economy. There is no doubt that AI will continue to play an integral role in ensuring that we operate smarter, faster and on a larger scale than ever before—and we’re excited to lead the charge along every step of the way.

At its core, Smaller is Better dismantles the long-held belief that bigger always means better in the enterprise, presenting a compelling case for why smaller teams are, in fact, the secret weapon for achieving agility, innovation and competitive advantage in today's fast-paced market. Through a blend of rigorous research, real-world examples, and Brim-DeForest's own experiences leading our Technology Services practice, the book offers a transformative approach for organizations of all sizes to become more efficient, adaptable, and ultimately, more successful.

Whether you're a startup founder, a leader in a large organization, or somewhere in between, Smaller is Better provides a practical guide to reimagining how work is organized and executed. It invites readers to rethink leadership, collaboration, and performance, making a compelling case for the small team model as not just a strategy for success, but as a necessity for survival in the modern business landscape.

We sat down for an interview with Brady—here is what he had to say:

Your book, Smaller is Better, challenges the traditional model of large, siloed teams within enterprises. What are some of the specific drawbacks you've observed in these environments?

The drawbacks are multifaceted and deeply impact an organization's ability to innovate and respond to competitive pressures. Such teams, structured within a traditional large-organization culture, often operate in an environment that extinguishes risk and discourages failure. This risk-averse culture significantly stifles innovation, as it prevents team members from taking meaningful risks and exploring new solutions to complex problems.

Innovation inherently involves a degree of risk and failure; it requires doing things that are not fully understood or mapped out. When failure becomes anathema, team members tend to opt for safer, more predictable paths, even if they lead to suboptimal outcomes. This leads to a culture of learned helplessness, where innovation atrophies and the organization becomes less adaptable and more vulnerable to external changes and competition.

Traditional models of decision-making in large enterprises often place the power in the hands of executives who are far removed from the day-to-day operations and front-line information. This disconnection between decision-makers and the operational realities of their business not only slows down the decision-making process but also leads to decisions that may not reflect the best interests of the organization or its customers.

The "teams model" outlined in Smaller is Better challenges this status quo by inverting the decision-making hierarchy, thus empowering individual contributors and smaller teams to take meaningful risks within their specific missions. This model fosters an environment where small-scale failures are not only allowed but celebrated as learning opportunities, leading to faster innovation, improved productivity, and ultimately, greater organizational agility.

Our industry is evolving rapidly, with new trends and technologies emerging constantly. How do you see the "small teams" approach fitting into this fast-changing landscape?

The "small teams" approach is increasingly relevant and effective in the context of rapidly evolving market dynamics and technological advancements. Small team structures, contrary to being unrealistic for large companies, are ideally suited for enterprises of any size. They scale beautifully, whether the organization is managing one team or a thousand, as long as each team is aligned with an appropriately sized mission. This flexibility and scalability ensure that the basic structure and culture supporting small teams can lead to replicable success across the entire organization.

Moreover, the "teams" framework is highly adaptable, working just as well for remote and distributed teams as for those that are co-located. This adaptability proves that autonomy is a critical structure for teams, facilitating better performance irrespective of their physical work environment. Additionally, in the era of AI and other technological innovations, the move towards smaller, autonomous team structures becomes even more necessary. As teams become smaller, the use of AI tools allows them to make an outsized impact, driving organizations towards more nimble, innovative and efficient operations. The AI revolution, in essence, necessitates and amplifies the effectiveness of the small teams model, making it an indispensable approach for navigating the complexities of today's business landscape.

Let's talk about building and optimizing small, autonomous teams. How do you define and align teams around clear missions within a larger organizational context?

It involves a meticulous process that integrates the team's purpose with the organization's broader objectives. It starts with establishing a clear and compelling mission for each team, which is crucial for ensuring that the team's efforts are not only aligned with the organization's goals but also imbued with a sense of purpose and direction. This mission must be well-defined, measurable, and achievable, serving as a guiding star for the team's activities.

To ensure effective collaboration among these teams, it is vital to promote a culture of transparency and communication. This involves regular check-ins, where teams share their progress, challenges, and learnings with one another, facilitating a supportive environment where teams can learn from each other's experiences and coordinate their efforts more effectively. Additionally, leveraging collaborative tools and platforms can enhance this inter-team communication, allowing for seamless sharing of ideas and resources.

Moreover, aligning teams around clear missions within a larger organizational context requires a robust framework that supports autonomy while ensuring coherence with the organization's strategic direction. This may involve setting up cross-functional liaisons or integrating shared goals that encourage collaboration towards common objectives. By fostering an environment that values autonomy, mastery, and purpose, organizations can optimize the performance of small, autonomous teams, ensuring that they not only work effectively within their own scope but also contribute to the overarching success of the organization.

How does AI factor into the "smaller is better" approach? How can empowered, small teams best leverage AI tools to further enhance their performance?

AI plays a crucial role in enhancing the "smaller is better" approach by enabling small, autonomous teams to make an outsized impact. In a landscape where headcount is shrinking for many organizations, the integration of AI tools within team structures allows individual contributors to amplify their capabilities, automate routine tasks, and focus more on strategic, creative and problem-solving activities. This shift not only increases efficiency and productivity but also fosters an environment of innovation where teams can quickly adapt and respond to new challenges.

AI tools can help small teams analyze vast amounts of data, identify trends, and make informed decisions much faster than traditional methods, which is particularly beneficial in fast-paced industries. This ability to leverage AI effectively allows teams to maintain their agility and creativity, ensuring they can continue to deliver impactful results despite their small size. The "teams" framework, therefore, not only supports but thrives on the incorporation of AI, making it more relevant and necessary in the context of modern organizational challenges.

Can you outline a strategy for how to maintain agility as these small, autonomous teams begin to grow, scale and replicate across an organization?

A deliberate and phased approach is essential. Here is how I recommend an organization ensures sustainable growth while preserving the agility of small teams:

1. Start with success: Begin by conducting a carefully designed sandbox experiment. This initial success serves as a proof of concept for the small teams model within your organization.

2. Enlist support: After demonstrating success, gather support from stakeholders and secure additional resources. This backing is crucial for scaling the approach across the organization.

3. Limit scope: As you add new teams, carefully limit the scope of each addition. This ensures that the growth of teams remains manageable and focused on specific missions.

4. Incubate slowly: New teams should be incubated slowly and meticulously, allowing them to develop the capability to operate independently. Only after they are fully functional should more teams be introduced to the system.

It's important to move at a pace that allows teams to deeply understand their roles and objectives, learning through experience. By starting small, validating the model and expanding carefully based on success, organizations can scale their small, autonomous teams effectively, ensuring that agility and innovation remain at the heart of their growth strategy.

Your experience spans both startups and large corporations. How can leaders within established organizations, often with entrenched cultures, begin to implement the "start small" approach, especially if they lack C-suite support?

Leaders in such a situation can adopt a "start small" approach by focusing on actions that require minimal initial consensus-building and bypassing traditional gatekeeping wherever possible. An effective strategy involves empowering small teams to operate with autonomy, allowing them to directly interact with and sell to customers without necessarily seeking permission from sales or marketing departments traditionally seen as gatekeepers. This approach emphasizes the importance of agility, speed and the ability to learn from mistakes, which are critical for fostering innovation within constrained environments​​.

For leaders who find themselves in a situation where bypassing the traditional consensus is not feasible and stakeholder buy-in is necessary, the key is to frame the small teams model in terms of potential outcomes that align with the organization's broader goals. This could involve highlighting how the model will enhance quality, increase velocity or improve capabilities without committing to a specific measurable end goal within a fixed timeline. Instead, focus on selling the concept of a measurable improvement that the transformation is expected to bring about, thus aligning with the organization's overall objectives and demonstrating the potential value of the approach​​.

How are you applying the principles of "Smaller is Better" in your current role with Formula.Monks?

In my role as CEO of Formula.Monks, the Technology Solutions practice at Media.Monks, I apply these principles by tackling complex challenges with small, empowered teams. A striking example of this approach in action was when our organization was brought in to assist a two-hundred-person company that had been struggling for years to refactor their software for municipal agencies. Despite a product delivery team of over sixty people, they had made no progress and were rapidly approaching a failure state​​.

We discovered that the solution to their problem lay within the talents of just two engineers who were capable of using modern tools and moving the software to the cloud. The bureaucracy of the larger team structure was stifling these engineers' abilities to effect change. This situation underscored how larger groups can inadvertently limit innovation by adhering to the lowest common denominator, rather than leveraging the exceptional talents within​​.

By focusing on smaller, autonomous teams, we allow for greater agility, innovation and responsiveness to the unique challenges faced by our clients. This approach not only streamlines problem-solving but also harnesses the full potential of each team member, leading to more successful outcomes and transforming the way ambitious companies operate. This strategy demonstrates the profound impact of "Smaller is Better" principles, highlighting the importance of flexibility, focus and leveraging individual strengths in achieving organizational goals.

As our Managing Director in Mexico, Luis Ribó, said following the announcement, “TikTok has become a constant companion for a large portion of users who seek fresh, interesting content, which is why we strive to create culturally relevant campaigns that also allow people to enjoy their time.” Indeed, our approach is built on the belief that establishing a feeling of intimacy is paramount, and that TikTok offers a space to cultivate that sense of closeness. It’s working, but what does that look like, and what makes a brand more or less successful in this space?

The shift toward social brands: acknowledging the power of social media.

When partnering with brands to collaborate on their social strategy, we prioritize an overarching goal: to ensure that our clients fully grasp the transformative power of social media. We go beyond the superficial notion of social as mere repositories of visually appealing content in a feed, or a simple channel for paid advertising. Instead, we emphasize the immense potential of an organic social media strategy that fosters spaces for meaningful interactions and community building. Through this approach, social media becomes a catalyst for shaping entire industries and influencing markets on a significant scale. We call this the shift toward social brands, and it highlights the power of social in creating brand value, influencing consumer decisions and driving growth. 

While it may seem obvious, it is surprising how many businesses still treat social media as an afterthought or underestimate its risks. The fact that social media can elevate our brand to new heights coexists with another undeniable reality: a single post has the potential to trigger a stock price drop, ignite a social movement, or even spark boycotts that can severely damage long-established brand equity and sales figures.

This is not meant to instill fear. When it comes to social and brands, the scales are tipped in favor of success. But whether we are embarking on a fully-fledged campaign to launch a new product or creating a 10-second TikTok video that taps into the latest trend, every action taken on social media carries weight and significance—and should be executed with the same level of excellence as any other endeavor. 

Building authentic connections and trust: the power of intimacy.

Recognizing that social media is a dynamic engine for brand and business value is the first step toward becoming a social brand. The second step is leveraging these platforms to create experiences and cultivate authentic human connections. To us, TikTok represents that authentic space where audiences can feel a sense of intimacy—which is ultimately the key to building long-lasting relationships with consumers.

This fact is better illustrated by the overwhelmingly positive response garnered by Toyota’s Escudería Canina campaign on TikTok. This project, which received the gold medal in the TikTok For Good category, pushed the boundaries of the “mobility company” concept by crafting custom-made wheelchairs for disabled dogs, enhancing their prospects for adoption. In other words, it aimed to make a positive impact on the communities where the brand operates, thereby cultivating trust with the audience and captivating their interest.

That said, it’s important to recognize that sustaining connections on social media goes beyond occasional for-good collaborations. It requires a consistent understanding of their interests and staying attuned to them on a daily basis. Additionally, humor can be a powerful tool as long as it resonates with their language and preferences. Take, for example, the success of KFC’s Nuggets campaign, which secured the silver medal. Regardless of the specific project at hand, a social brand must always demonstrate a deep respect for the audience and their entertainment.

The AI Agency of the Year meets the Creative Agency of the Year.

To summarize, social brands acknowledge the power of a single social post and know how to foster close relationships with their communities—but they aren’t doing it alone. Behind the world’s best social brands lies a machine that constantly analyzes what is happening online, what people care about and the spaces where they connect. In our case, this involves AI-powered workflows that combine human talent with artificial intelligence to react swiftly.

As Carlos Tejeda, our Associate Vice President of Innovation Technology, highlighted during Advertising Week, “We need to harness the power of AI in four key areas: insights, creativity, community management and measurement.” In doing so, we can infuse our creative process with data-driven inspiration and manage our communities more efficiently. The key is to do it in a way that enhances the human element—for example, by enabling more personalized interactions.

Ultimately, succeeding in the realm of social media relies on a powerful synergy between communities, brands, partners, and creators. As brands continue to leverage the potential of social media and embrace innovative technologies, such as AI, they will be better able to create that synergy and deliver exceptional experiences and drive growth. The Creative Agency of the Year award serves as a reminder of that potential, and the importance of constantly evolving in this ever-changing landscape.

Throughout the year that AI came of age, we’ve earned a significant new achievement of our own: in November, we were named Adweek’s first-ever AI Agency of the Year. Having experimented with the technology for years, both internally and in our work with brands, this moment has reaffirmed our approach to helping brands navigate new opportunities (and challenges) using AI with speed and confidence. 

“How you manage existing teams and processes and allow them to adopt, rather than compete with, AI will define success,” says Michael Neveu, Sr. Director ML & AI Solutions. “Rather than looking to maintain the status quo and asking if you have to adopt AI, most brands should be asking themselves how it will be of benefit, and for what.” As the year draws to a close, we’re looking back at how we’ve helped our clients and our own team manage navigate these questions.  Want to see the latest that we’ve been up to on all things AI? Check out our freshest AI-related content here. 

We were fast and first in the AI race.

Early in the year, we launched our report, The AI Revolution Will Be Generated, which offers a practical vision of how brands can begin their AI transformation. The report confidently explores the early moves that brands can take using the technology that’s available right now, while also identifying key outcomes as they progress on their journey to AI maturation. This report drew on a variety of experiences, perspectives and existing work from people across the Media.Monks team.

Shortly after its release, we made the annual pilgrimage to Cannes, where we opened shop at Les.Monks Café once again—this time with a full program of AI-related talks and demonstrations. After weeks of sparring with chatbots, nothing beat meeting up with clients and colleagues face-to-face. Catch up on everything we covered at Cannes in our recap.

We gave our people superpowers.

Outside of our AI wins, we were thrilled to have made the list of Newsweek’s Global Most Loved Workplaces 2023—an important milestone to helping our people thrive. This goal continued to take shape through a series of initiatives aimed at upskilling our team to excel in a workplace transformed by AI.

This process began by quickly creating an AI-Core steering committee focused on ensuring that we adopted AI responsibly across the organization. Among the AI-Core are representatives from legal, procurement, infosec, engineering and marketing—a multidisciplinary team whose expertise helped us quickly navigate AI tool risks and selection.

Through the work of the AI-Core, we were able to provide our people unfettered access to the latest models from OpenAI in the form of our own internal large language model tool, MonkGPT. In addition to giving our people a sleek interface and the ability to share, upvote and export high-performing prompts to their colleagues, MonkGPT adds a crucial security layer that safeguards against data leaks or the danger of proprietary information being shared to further train the public model.

Michael Balarezo, our Global VP of Enterprise Automation who led the formation of the AI-Core and development of MonkGPT, says, "LLMs unlock a revolutionary gateway, empowering our teams to explore untapped possibilities and unleash unparalleled productivity. Swift and safe integration of this cutting-edge technology is vital to equip our workforce with the essential skills for embracing AI-powered workflows and transforming our operations."

We tinkered away in collaboration with deep partner relationships.

From highlighting emerging tools to brainstorming new efficiencies across the creative process, people throughout our global team gathered in Slack channels and hackathons to play with emerging tools. This inspired a series of innovation sprints focused on technologies from some of our key partners, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. These sprints allowed for the development of use cases that cater to brands’ emerging needs—notably, ownership and data security—and an enhanced understanding of commercially available tools. Through experimentation and by nurturing our tech partnerships, our team is now better equipped to build custom-made solutions for clients.

Having gained more hands-on AI experience across our team, we were able to envision a wide range of ways that AI is already transforming marketing workflows. This led to the launch of Generation AI, our second AI-focused report, which we published in collaboration with Salesforce. The report guides daring marketers on their path to amplify human creativity and marketing effectiveness across the full funnel, touching on themes like understanding customer behavior with incredible precision and how to effortlessly build content at scale with AI.

We helped brands set a solid data foundation to build AI solutions upon.

Behind every successful, AI-first company is a strong data foundation, because access to large amounts of data from across business units is a prerequisite to delivering value throughout the enterprise. The need to get one’s data in order has compounded this year with the sunsetting of Google Analytics 360, requiring brands to begin their transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). The Data.Monks have been helping brands like St. James’s Place make a smooth transition using a proprietary automation tool that ports over thousands of pages and partner properties within a just a few hours.

Tyler Pietz, Global EVP Data, spoke to Forrester about how CMOs can strategically integrate data across functions to overcome familiar challenges like disorganized data and departmental disconnects. The very same strategy sets brands up for success by unifying data to build a comprehensive understanding of the consumer and train AI models.

Earlier this year, we launched Blue Sky Thinking with Salesforce Data Cloud, a guide for marketers to understand what sort of features they should assess when looking into a customer data platform—and how one can help bridge the gap between the CMO and CIO. By helping provide a holistic view of what’s happening across the business, solutions like customer data platforms are essential for brands who are eager to invest in AI.  

We dove into strategies for optimization and effectiveness.

With data at your fingertips, you can harness AI to optimize the performance of your campaigns or individual assets. We’ve covered a handful of strategies throughout the year, including the development of bespoke tools built for specific client needs. This was the goal behind our work for Philips Domestic Appliances, in which we built an automated tool that identifies key creative elements that drive performance at scale, backed by campaign performance data.

Market mix modeling (MMM) is another approach that our Measurement.Monks have used to help brands better understand the market forces that influence sales. MMM employs advanced algorithms to drive insights for both CMOs and CFOs, speaking growth opportunities across the organization. Co-Founder Michael Cross explored this in more detail on our blog.

For marketers with insights at their disposal, but who are still looking to understand how AI and machine learning fit into their digital advertising and data strategies, look no further than Modeled Value-Based Bidding. Our data experts picked the brain of Drew Whitehead, Predictive Modeling Specialist at Google, in a webinar about the tech, covering how to determine if it’s right for your business and how it can help you draw insights in real time while safeguarding consumer privacy. 

Elsewhere on our blog, our media experts have kept a keen eye on other emerging tools from Google—like Performance Max—that may change the way marketing teams optimize discoverability in an age of AI.

We set our sights on delivering new, incredible consumer experiences.

By joining deep data insights with content production in an integrated marketing workflow, brands can leverage AI to enable truly personalized experiences like never before—and ultimately live up to the promise of digital.

We put this thinking to the test with the reveal of Fan-Focused AI Highlights at the 2023 International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam. Announced in partnership with AWS and NVIDIA, Fan-Focused AI Highlights is an offering within our software-defined production offering. The proprietary system utilizes AI and machine learning to select highlights from live broadcasts and more effectively distribute custom content highlights to tailored, interest-based audiences.

We leveled up our creative potential.

Did you ever wish you could speak one-on-one with history’s greatest? The Labs.Monks have given influential English playwright and poet William Shakespeare a digital double in the form of Asketh Shakespeare, a virtual Twitch streamer waiting to answer your questions either in verse or ye-olde turns of phrase. Asketh Shakespeare brings together a series of AI innovation—OpenAI’s text-to-speech capabilities, Wav2Lip lip-synch applied to real footage, and a voice clone made possible by ElevenLabs—and offers a look into how individuals and groups alike will be able to converse directly with mascots, characters from entertainment or other high-profile personalities. Learn more about it and dive deep into other creative innovations in our Creative Tech Inspiration series, which also launched this year.

At Amazon re:Invent, we demoed a similar experience, only in person: a moving, talking, interactive animatronic alien that converses with people in natural language. The robot relies on audio transcription to understand people, a large language model for response generation and audio synthesization to talk back. In addition to precise lip-synching, the robot uses eight axes of movement to achieve lifelike expressivity.

In addition to these unique experiences, we’ve also been helping brands overcome traditional production constraints and amplify their creative potential. Group Creative Director Chris Hoffman shared how he and his team have embraced AI in the realm of video and film projects. Meanwhile, our work for HP Omen demonstrates how AI, when joined with virtual production techniques, can scale the ambition of a creative idea. You can read more about the work here.

There are other, less obvious ways that AI is making its way into the creative process. Our recently launched report, AR Unleashed, explores how AI-enabled workflows are helping brands quickly build 3D content and spatial experiences—often with little to no coding knowledge involved—as usage of mixed reality headsets continues to grow. AI’s role in 3D content development is a great example of how the technology can help teams adapt to new trends even if they historically lacked the expertise required.

We’re guiding brands on the journey to become AI-first.

Brady Brim-DeForest, CEO Tech Services, met with Fox Business to share more about the persisting role of the human within a creative process augmented by AI. This speaks to a larger theme that he’s explored within our technology services practice and other consultative work: that AI can help turn work into a more human experience by automating away mundane tasks and allowing employees to focus on deep, innovative work. Brim-DeForest shared more on that topic in an article for the Miami Herald.

For brands hoping to do the same, Brim-DeForest laid out a step-by-step strategy at Forbes. There, readers can learn more about how to set goals, balance scale against cost savings, address risks and liabilities, and more.

Speaking of reducing risk, Brim-DeForest’s team has launched a service that empowers decision-making by allowing professionals to quickly extract insights from corporate documents. DocRobot is a chatbot capable of answering questions based on data from PDFs that the user shares with it. The bot scrubs sensitive information and encrypts communication in real time, meaning all of your information is safe from being shared with third parties. It solves a critical need that many brands grapple with early in their AI transformation: how to use the tech while maintaining control, ownership and security of proprietary information.

Cheers to 2023!

It's been a fast-moving year, and with the accelerating rate of AI’s evolution, 2024 will probably move even faster. Throughout 2023, we have embraced AI as a powerful tool, helping brands navigate the ever-changing landscape with agility and confidence. These efforts have earned us the title of Adweek's AI Agency of the Year, a testament to our unwavering commitment to harnessing the potential of AI.

But more importantly, it’s helped us guide brands toward similar success in their journey to become AI-first. From establishing strong data foundations for brands, to forging strategic partnerships and seamlessly integrating AI into marketing workflows, we’re continuing to push the boundaries of tech—all with the aim to deliver personalized, assistive, and highly effective advertising and experiences. Here’s to more innovation in 2024!

Brands often run into one of two common problems when making early moves in AI: they either understand the benefits of the technology but don’t know where to start, or they stitch together a Frankenstein’s monster of point solutions and tools that are ultimately disconnected from each other—inhibiting AI’s potential. Solving these operational challenges is our bread and butter as a consultative partner because we use AI each day—and have built our credentials in the technology over the last decade.

Integration lays the groundwork for AI transformation.

One of the major opportunities in AI is that it serves as a systems integrator, ingesting data and insights from across business units and customer touchpoints to enhance the customer experience and build new efficiencies. At least, that’s the ambition. Each element of the marketing mix—data, media, creativity and technology—must combine for AI to be deployed at its fullest potential.

In the past five years, we’ve made the case for an integrated marketing services partner who can unify each of these practices. That process has laid the groundwork for building an AI-powered, end-to-end workstream extends across and merges each of our capabilities. Our recent release of Generation AI, a formative report launched in collaboration with Salesforce, offers a window into how the technology is helping teams shape the entire marketing remit from insight to idea to execution.

Breaking silos and building a culture of experimentation have accelerated our ability to build this mature AI offering for brands. In fact, experimentation with AI has long been part of our business, with Co-CEO, Content Wesley ter Haar telling VentureBeat in 2017, “[AI] will allow us to refocus our efforts on what’s really going to impact the project in a meaningful way––which is design vision, design thinking and real creative leadership.”

But experiments in AI have long been relegated to the realm of R&D rather than the hands of everyday talent. When the generative AI boom suddenly ignited a year ago, making the technology far more user-friendly to people regardless of their knowledge in AI, our team enthusiastically rallied around Slack channels dedicated to brainstorming ways it could help them in their work.

This collaborative spirit has matured from casual experiments to innovation sprints that push tech to its limits, to products and services built bespoke for brands. Just look at our work with BMW Group, in which we built an AI-powered music creation platform that celebrated the brand’s partnership with EDM festival Tomorrowland. Music fans worldwide could create their own custom festival track by selecting different options in mood, pace and feeling, enabling creative expression on an unprecedented level.

A cohesive, end-to-end workstream beats random acts of digital.

Every brand may have a different need for AI: enhancing the customer experience, overcoming production constraints, activating customer data, or even a combination of those needs. That’s why we’ve built a flexible, AI-driven pipeline that connects a wide range of proprietary and third-party microservices across a single workstream.

In addition to making it easier to develop content at scale, the workstream critically has the potential to break down siloes between marketing and adjacent parts of the business. For example, imagine if your product design team could share 3D renders used to iterate assets that are then tested for performance, ultimately identifying the product angles and other variables in creative that best fit customers’ interest. Marrying product design, creative production, market mix modeling and customer insights, this workstream results in a flywheel that can inform future product designs and content.

"Experimenting with AI is important, but what’s more important are the business workflows,” says Michael Dobell, Co-Founder and EVP Innovation. “AI has sparked the need for workflow transformation, and we guide them through that change, unlocking performance gains, lowering costs of production and finding new ways of working." While marketing may be the most natural place for AI to make an impact right now, it’s actually a harbinger for wider business transformation—and this view, in turn, sets a new expectation for the role that agency partners will need to play to help brands get there.

For Kraft Heinz, we took a strategic approach to helping their in-house agency, The Kitchen, identify where and how AI could drive high value by increasing efficiencies, saving costs and elevating creative output. Together with the team, we developed a roadmap that walked through four key takeaways: data security, internal adoption, testing use cases and establishing adaptable frameworks. Overall, the engagement resulted in actionable, initial steps for the brand’s own internal team to take calculated steps toward AI maturity.

Here's to many more wins in the AI race.

We’ve always called ourselves a new age, new era partner to the world’s most innovative brands. Earning the title of Adweek’s AI Agency of the Year demonstrates that we’re already ahead—and just in time at the dawn of what’s been called the fourth Industrial Revolution.

See what else we've been up to with AI here.

It all started with a hunch: communication agencies always relied on external production houses to create their content, looking elsewhere for editors, producers and motion designers. At Miyagi—now Media.Monks Milan—we immediately proposed an "all inclusive" approach, where inclusiveness also meant the idea of ​​merging creativity with production capacity, creating in house what others were looking for outside. In this way we have integrated strategy, creativity and production both as our mindset and as our modus operandi, knowing how to solve problems immediately and before others, like the new Mr. Wolf of communication. Lean, fast, smart, without forgetting that coolness that is so popular in Milan.

Content first, because content is our king. 

We have always been a content-oriented company. But how do you get there first? How do you anticipate a trend? You do it by following the evolution of both culture and social media. Which came first, TikTok or its content? Why do certain themes become trends and others don’t? What “works?” We must keep in mind that society and social media always influence each other.

It’s not enough to be creative. We need to have a structure capable of continuously shaping itself, driven by the desire for novelty and constant change, and thus become capable of adapting to the zeitgeist of the moment. There we were, with our flag planted on the moon before it became mainstream.

Anticipating trends means knowing how to grasp them but also welcoming them, without prejudice, with curiosity and interest.

When, for example, for Ray-Ban they asked us to launch a social activation on TikTok—a channel where the brand was not yet established—with the goal of eliciting user generated content, we sought to understand the inkling of what would become common tropes: what are these people doing in the elevator? Why do they start making videos of themselves dancing between doors that open and close on the next floor? What if they put on sunglasses?

Thus, in one afternoon on a sofa scrolling TikTok, an explosive, highly successful campaign was born. It was all there: the brand, the wow effect, the gameplay mechanics and the perfect positioning of the brand within a context like that of TikTok. Ray-Ban was speaking the right language, and it was having fun too. The campaign earned 17.2 billion views, 3.2+ million new videos and an engagement rate of 14%.

Creative thinking with a productive approach.

Back in the day, agencies offered clients mostly static social content. Beautiful, original, engaging—but static. And videos were another category, often not even requested, because they were perceived as too complex both to create and in terms of economic sustainability. The so-called "production machine" was demanding, requiring an effort that was seen as time-consuming and expensive in investment.

Our mindset, however, has always been that of a varied group, a production structure with creativity shared horizontally between each profession. In short, the team saw the power of strategic figures such as videomakers, editors, graphic designers, etc., collaborating together. Thus we could propose lateral, disruptive, cool and much more dynamic ideas to a client than static content. And all this was absolutely affordable. It wasn't magic, it was our added value: creativity with a production structure. Something different from an agency, something more than an agency.

At the time, therefore, our direct B2B customer found himself with video content instead of static, but at prices that were difficult to find elsewhere. And at the same time, end customers and consumers could benefit from cool content that stood out from the others.

On the other hand, when we face a brief we don't immediately launch into the execution of a good idea. We take a step back and analyze the brand in depth. This allows us to identify not only the business problems, but all the aspects that led to that problem, in order to be able to provide a creative solution that is not only beautiful but also effective. And consistent.

Smart flexibility.

Today we are increasingly dealing with a dynamic world, where projects merge with channels, brands with content, and the dynamics are even faster and constantly evolving. There is no longer time to think in just one direction; but we need to have a broad outlook, to be able to interpret ourselves in many different aspects.

Our being "smart" is above all a productive flexibility, which continuously adapts to any need. There are projects that start one way and then evolve into new forms and possibilities, how do you manage not to go haywire? By planning from the beginning and knowing how to anticipate problems and needs. You cannot be rigid, otherwise you will find yourself blocked at every unexpected step. And so moving forward, taking a long view and knowing how to adapt becomes a method and a mentality that concerns all departments, from creativity to production.

In this way, dismantling and reassembling a production plan becomes part of the journey, a team effort that adapts to needs and which always focuses on the quality and effectiveness of the result.

Technology as a superpower.

Artificial intelligence is the big theme these days. The world is divided between those who see it as the end of humanity and those who see it as the path to a better future. For us, AI must be an ally, a tool at our service.

If when we started our adventure, over ten years ago, we were able to enter the market as an agency different from the others, precisely because our method and our "know-how" could be an added value, today we want to be the first to know how to interpret new technologies and integrate them into the way we work. Instead of being afraid of it, we must know it, understand it, and study it. And make her become part of our team.

We like to think of AI as a super power in our hands, and—to quote Spiderman—"with great power comes great responsibility." Translated into the Monks context, AI is a huge opportunity to improve the quality of work. It's up to us to decide how.

One way is by integrating it into our work routine, as a useful support and not as a shortcut. For copy, it is an ally in creating many variations on the theme, testing ideas and content, and generating text that can provide new inspiration. For an artist it is a way of being able to travel with the imagination, accelerating the creation of complex and daring ideas, allowing oneself to make the most of time. The speed that AI offers us is not so much in doing in less time what previously took hours, but rather being able to do more, being able to dedicate ourselves more deeply to real priorities and not blocking creative processes.

AI is part of our smart and flexible path, because, just like in our early days, we are capable of remaining competitive, fast and cost-efficient without sacrificing quality and originality. This is why we want to be ready immediately, before others, learning to govern it, manage it and foresee its uses and new scenarios. In line with our history, we like to be ready and always prepared.

We’ll be there for you.

And now? We will continue to be there before others, hungry for curiosity and full of enthusiasm. Milan has taught us to always be open to the future and listen to what is happening around us. We have always liked getting straight to the goal with concrete, coherent and achievable ideas, but we also want to amaze. We believe in the value of the team as a group of people who collaborate to share a common passion together. It is exciting and a great satisfaction to expand our group more and more today, opening ourselves up to new worlds and an international context. After always looking for it, we too feel a bit like that "next best thing."

The HBCU impact: Advancing inclusivity and amplifying voices.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established in the United States primarily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide higher education opportunities for African Americans who were excluded from predominantly white institutions due to racial segregation and discrimination. During a period marked by systemic racial inequality, these institutions played a pivotal role in empowering Black individuals through education, nurturing leadership qualities, and driving forward the cause of civil rights.

HBCUs transcend the traditional notion of education; they stand as launchpads that propel future generations into greatness. In the sacred confines of these prestigious institutions, the next generation of visionaries, boundary-pushers, and trailblazers are being nurtured. Our Fellowship mission? To cultivate a vibrant talent pipeline that fosters professional growth and ignites an industry-wide transformation. We're partnering with HBCUs to connect their exceptional graduates with our mission of enriching and diversifying our industry's landscape. Together, we're turning the page on history and writing an exciting, inclusive future!

You can read more here to learn more about these institutions and how they continue to make significant impacts in our communities across the nation. If you’d like to learn more about us within the Fellowship, continue reading below!

Behind the voices: Introducing our Fellows and their stories.

Join the S4 Fellowship: Ignite your journey!

Having gained insights into our personal journeys and aspirations, we extend an invitation for you to embark on this extraordinary voyage alongside us. Stay connected and up-to-date by following our company's social media platforms—the central hub for the latest updates, perspectives and captivating narratives.

Applications for the 2024 recruitment cycle have closed, but you can learn more about the S4 Fellowship at our dedicated landing page. Keep an eye on our social channels for updates of when we open applications for the next round of Fellows!

You can’t beat the impact of sound.

Call me biased, but I consider sound to be an essential part of integrated production. It has the power to fully immerse people in any type of environment. By emphasizing different moods, sound design and music can guide the attention of the listener, create a sense of anticipation, elicit emotions, spur (inter)actions, or simply bring a lot of positive energy into a room. In any case, sound can leave a big impact—sometimes it’s even the only thing that people remember from a piece of content.

Through our 2023 sound reel, which captures some of our most outstanding work for the world’s biggest brands, we aim to convey the unrivaled experiences that sound can bring. In essence, it’s a compilation of the most exciting, extraordinary and even unexpected projects that not only stuck with us, but also struck a chord with our clients and audiences. 

We unify composers, musicians and sound designers across the globe.

Our sound team is spread across Argentina and the Netherlands and consists of an eclectic mix of composers and sound designers who come with a wealth of experience. Whether you need a custom composition, lively sound design, or an immaculate mix, we got you covered. As wide-ranging as sound itself, our team not only houses a diverse spectrum of skills, but each member also has their own expertise. On top of that, we have many talented musicians on board, from gifted violin players to hard-hitting drummers. 

Even though our team is split across two locations, with a massive ocean in the middle, everyone is completely attuned to each other and used to collaborating on projects across continents. This comes in handy when you work with clients around the world. When one workday ends, another’s still in full swing, which allows us to leverage the benefits of covering multiple time zones in meeting tight deadlines. 

For integrated production, it takes two (or more) departments to tango. 

Not only is our international team able to work together effectively, despite the distance and time difference, we also love to join forces with other departments—and it so happens that our internal Films, Post and Animation people are just a few desks away. One especially stunning outcome of these collaborations is the 2022 animation reel, a project that’s very close to our hearts. We composed original music and got to record it with the world-renowned Metropole Orkest at their homebase in Hilversum, which was a mind-blowing experience in and of itself. 

Throughout composing this piece, our Senior Music Composer & Sound Designer Gabriel Barredo, who is based in Buenos Aires, worked closely together with the animators to ensure perfect alignment with all the visuals. He told me that he was very impressed by the music brief. “It had conceptual and technical depth and the music references were awesome,” Gabriel said. “Also, the sound team provided a lot of ideas and feedback so that I could keep improving the piece. It was a great experience because everyone was so involved in the process. It became abundantly clear that we all love what we do, and everyone on the team is willing to share their knowledge, experience and ideas—even if we are thousands of miles away from each other.” 

Hereafter, our Senior Composer Pim van den Heuvel took over as music supervisor, creating scores for every section of the orchestra. He also attended the recording session and consulted with the orchestra and its conductor. Finally, he took on the daunting task of mixing everything together—if you’re curious to see how he managed, make sure to take a peek behind the scenes. 

More recently, our sound talent across the globe collaborated on a major project for Hulu’s History of the World Part II. To promote the highly anticipated release of this hit series, Media.Monks designed, animated and developed an interactive game for mobile, web and Xbox. Users can spring into the silliness of the show as they’re guided through hilarious historical recreations, such as “The Big Burp” that created the universe. As we were responsible for the music, this project required all our sound design experience, composing power and time zone flexibility. The experience features a massive soundtrack consisting of 11 tracks in wildly different styles. As players progress, the music seamlessly moves from one style to the next and pulls them into new eras. Moreover, the aim of the sound design was to make each environment truly come to life. This required close collaboration with our creatives and developers, as we produced nearly 600 sound files and VO lines—some done by Mel Brooks himself!—on top of the entire music system. 

Sound is the heartbeat of every production.

Needless to say, having sound in-house as an integrated part of the team has many perks. The biggest benefit of them all is that tighter alignment with our creative and other teams automatically results in a more cohesive end product. Whether we are sound designing for an interactive experience, composing a catchy tune, recording VO in different languages, or mixing for the big screen, we always work in close collaboration with our directors and creatives to deliver our best work possible—which you’ll hear when you tune into our 2023 sound reel.

“The companies on this list stand out to their employees. They have open-door policies where employees feel heard, offer flexibility that supports work/life balance, and provide opportunities for professional development, promotion and recognition—to name a few,” to use the words of Nancy Cooper, Newsweek’s Global Editor in Chief. 

This recognition goes to show that our mantra—empathy, transparency and diversity—has paid off, and there’s no doubt that these goals will continue to guide the efforts of our global and local leadership in providing a space for all our people to thrive and feel pride in their work. It’s safe to say that this is one of the greatest moments in my time at Media.Monks, especially as this past year hasn’t been an easy one. 

We’re here to help our people overcome obstacles. 

From a people perspective, our organization—and many others with us—has been met with various unexpected and very difficult social challenges these last couple of years. While strict lockdowns as a result of the pandemic kept several of our teams in Asia-Pacific homebound, our people in Ukraine were suddenly forced to flee or take shelter due to the ongoing war. At the start of this year, we were also deeply saddened by the disastrous impact of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. More than anything, these tragic and unforeseen events have made it abundantly clear that taking care of our people, which means making sure they are safe, satisfied and happy, should and always will be our top priority. 

Meeting our people’s needs and caring for them is not something that can be done in a couple weeks—it must happen in the present. That’s why we practice what we preach every single day, and if I may speak on behalf of our global People team, we are very proud and honored that our efforts to establish a clear vision and direction for the health, wellbeing and happiness of our people hasn’t gone unnoticed. Now, let’s take a closer look at what exactly we do to support our talent. 

Paving the path for our people to thrive. 

Beyond providing the basics such as health insurance, caregiver leave and paid vacation days, I believe that building a workplace where our 8,700+ people worldwide feel at home is about culture, belonging and representation, and making sure this is in line with everyone’s unique needs. 

Before we dive into this, it’s important to highlight that as an organization with presence in every part of the world, we always have to make sure our efforts and initiatives account for the many jurisdictional, regulatory, cultural and demographic differences that constitute our global footprint—what may be a mandatory diversity policy in one country, might be legally prohibited in another. That’s why we not only prioritize data-driven analysis of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion challenges to support more localized approaches, but we also encourage and facilitate employee-led community groups and initiatives in all our offices. 

In establishing a company culture where everyone can flourish, our initiatives are aimed at fostering an environment of DE&I and belonging. From supporting women in tech to taking action to realize diversity, these initiatives include community groups—think of our Melanin.Monks, Pride.Monks or AAPI Community Group—cultural and heritage-based events and celebrations, and local coalitions to support near and dear creators and businesses. 

Besides fostering a safe and inspiring environment, most of the above initiatives facilitate peer-to-peer learning, which is just as important in building a solid company culture. And if we encourage our talent to educate themselves and others, then we should also provide space and opportunities for growth. That’s why we have initiated a range of educational programs, including our Women Leadership Program and the S4Capital Fellowship. Furthermore, next to offering bespoke online training on various topics, from foundational DE&I principles to managing a team with empathy, we’ve recently launched our first-ever global professional development program: Accelerate.Monks. Featuring internal subject matter experts, this initiative is all about upskilling and knowledge sharing between our talented colleagues. 

The golden thread in all of this is our insatiable curiosity, creative spirit and can-do mentality. To better understand the experience of our talent, the People team has deployed net promoter scores and found that many of us have dreams way beyond our daily work and want more purpose-driven jobs. These insights have ultimately shaped our operating model of creative-first and “break it and make it.” I believe that creativity breeds creativity, and long-lasting culture is all about constantly reinventing yourself in art, culture and business—that’s why we give our talent the tools they need to always rise to the moment. 

Another accolade closer to our mission.   

Despite our size and relative infancy in this industry, our mission is to become an industry force, and raising extraordinary talent is essential to this. That’s why I’m so thrilled that Media.Monks has received this honor, as it’s testament to our efforts and proof that we’re on the right track. As a top 10 Cannes Creative Company of the Year, Webby Production Company of the Year, and the owner of the most FWAs ever, I believe there’s no doubt about our creative chops. But as the Global Chief People Officer, entering Newsweek’s Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces just hits different, because this tells me that our talent not only creates outstanding work, but they feel appreciated, valued and cared for in doing so—and right now, that’s all that matters.

NextUp.Monks offers emerging talent from our 8,900-strong multidisciplinary team the opportunity to continue to cross and push boundaries—and reaffirms our commitment to support them along the way. With our people spanning 57 talent hubs in 32 countries, this internal initiative is the perfect way to bring our talent closer together and provide them with a platform  to shine on a global stage. The first edition turned out to be such a great success that there was no other option but to bring it back in 2023. 

“Our ambition is to transform the industry. We want to change the work, what the work can do, and who does the work—and that change starts with us, right now,” says Jouke Vuurmans, our Chief Creative Officer. “NextUp.Monks is one of the ways we work towards this goal, as it gives our up-and-coming talent the chance to be bold, think outside the box, and ultimately thrive both within our company and on the global stage. What we saw last year is that it’s not just about professional development, it’s also about personal growth. Through this competition, participants get to meet and mingle with like-minded and equally ambitious colleagues from every corner of the globe.”

Connecting talent from across categories and capabilities 

As the aim is to give people the opportunity to thrive within our company and the industry, the main rule of NextUp.Monks is that everyone can join—as long as you have seven years or less of industry experience and are not in a managerial position. If you check those boxes, you are good to go find a partner to team up with and get to work. 

The competition consists of three categories, each of which is designed to highlight specific strengths, skill sets and interests. Teams are invited to participate in any category, regardless of their current role within Media.Monks. 

First up, the Innovation.Monks are future-facing visionaries. They’re adept at sniffing out innovative ideas and turning them into reality using the latest in emerging tech and formats, resulting in groundbreaking experiences and new possibilities.

Second, the Film.Monks deliver cinematic stories for screens of all sizes. They’re an inclusive bunch of thinkers that have a knack for original concepting, scriptwriting, visual treatments, film treatments, shooting, directing, editing, VFX, post—and everything in between. Together, they believe that film has the power to connect people and tell stories that we’ve never seen or thought about before.

Third, the Interactive.Monks are driven to build creative experiences that go beyond the mundane. They put the audience at the heart of every moment they craft, giving them the opportunity to immerse themselves within compelling, transformative digital experiences that build lasting memories.

Sparking boundary-pushing ideas  

For this year’s edition, we teamed up with a world-renowned global brand to develop a unique creative brief for each category. Our aim was to get people to flex their creative muscles and give shape to the craziest and most mind-bending ideas. 

The brief, “VR for Good,” challenged participants to think about VR as a vehicle for change and to find ways to excite Gen Z consumers about the potential of this technology. Through each category, teams were tasked to demonstrate VR’s transformative power to positively impact areas such as medicine, sports training, and emergency response—and ultimately change people’s minds about VR as a device solely intended for gaming.

If you ask Steve Latham, Head of Learning at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, all participants understood the assignment. “After last year’s success, our team couldn’t wait to continue to work with Media.Monks on this groundbreaking initiative and breathe new life into our shared goal to spark boundary-pushing creativity,” he says. “Once again, our minds were blown—just when I thought the bar couldn’t go any higher, their talent raised it. Massive shout-out to everyone who participated, because the level of future-forward thinking, creativity and craft was outstanding. Now, it’s time to meet the winners at Cannes Lions 2023!”

And the winners are… 

With so many incredible submissions, we had to be very diligent and detail-oriented in reviewing all the work. So, we established an esteemed jury of internal Media.Monks employees and industry experts, who reviewed the work in a blind judging process using the following judging criteria: the creative idea (40%); the insight and strategy (20%); the relevancy to the brief (20%); and the execution (20%). The jury selected bronze, silver and gold winners across each of the three categories. While the silver and bronze winners received a personalized trophy—plus eternal bragging rights—the creative minds behind the gold-winning work earned an all-inclusive ticket to Cannes. 

Those going down in history as the 2023 NextUp.Monks gold medalists are Anna Zhang and Yazad Dastur in the Innovation category, Vasyl Ilba and Mykyta Zolotoverkhyi in the Interactive category, and Jorene Chew and Ashwin Paul in the Film category. Out of these teams, the judges crowned Anna Zhang and Yazad Dastur the ultimate winners. This means that in addition to their trip to Cannes, they have also been admitted to the prestigious Creative Academy at Cannes—which will welcome a mere 30 people from around the world this year. 

“I still feel like I’m dreaming,” says Anna Zhang, Junior Designer. “Two months ago, I went to a little happy hour mixer for the NextUp.Monks competition and met Yazad. I didn’t really think I would enter the race, but Yazad told me that his best trait is his personality—and I was sold. We may have started as partners, but through this competition, we have become great friends. We come from totally different backgrounds, career paths, and even parts of the organization, but we got together with one common goal: to create something that feels true to us and, most importantly, to have fun!”

“Something that really made the difference when Anna and I decided to do the competition together was that we developed a rapport before we got to work, and really got to know each other as people and understand where the other was coming from—both creatively and personally,” adds Yazad Dastur, Junior Copywriter. “Becoming friends allowed us to tap into a deep emotional place and insights, and I think that’s what made it so much more important for us to give it our all. To find a partner who is willing to stay up until 6:00 am to finish a project is rare, especially one that does not guarantee an outcome. So, I think the fact that we told each other ‘let’s have fun and give this our best’ made this process an experience that we are truly proud of. I’m absolutely grateful for Anna—we completely pushed each other whenever one of us was faltering, doubting or even falling asleep.”

Bridging cultures and crossing borders

As much as the winning pitch, the NextUp.Monks initiative itself is all about creating strong connections, both across our organization and the globe. Not only did this internal competition garner interest from more than 600 employees in 25 countries, with a striking 350 people actually participating in the race, the top three teams are based in completely different places—from Los Angeles to Poland to Malaysia. 

This circles back to the fact that NextUp.Monks helps our emerging talent grow professionally as well as personally, as this initiative—within the context of our unified business structure—allows our people to work with peers from different countries, categories and capabilities. 

“Being a global team, we rely on an agile, flexible framework that lets people be themselves while staying keyed into the emerging opportunities and challenges that brands and our industry face. We’re a unified organization, but everyone is given the space to let their distinct voice and personality shine through—and our NextUp.Monks initiative only reinforces this spirit,” says our Chief Marketing Officer Kate Richling. “The competition opens up a myriad of possibilities for our up-and-coming talent across the globe to work together, no matter their location, expertise or job description.” 

Nothing Cannes stop our winners now

All that’s left for the winners to do is pack their bags, hop on a plane, and enjoy their time in Cannes—and if we have to believe Noelle Mayasich, our Senior Creative and last year’s winner, this will be the easiest part. 

“The amount of knowledge my partner and I gained from Cannes Lions has been so valuable to the way I look at creativity in my daily work—the workshops and keynote speeches have honestly molded me into who I am today,” says Mayasich. “We saw many notable speakers, including heads of large agencies, industry-wide influential figures, and even Ryan Reynolds, who talked about his break into the industry. Some of the speakers made us cry, and many others made us laugh. What truly stuck with me were the following lessons: be ambitious and humble at the same time. Create value for people of the world, not fluff. Sometimes we fail and sometimes we win, but having that freedom gives us the power to be creative.”

But Mayasich’s biggest takeaway from this experience was that the creative people in our industry really do care about the good of humanity and social, cultural, environmental and societal issues. “While our creative work reaches so many people on a daily basis, we don't often get to see this impact because we have to move on to the next project. This festival made me realize that my work is so much more impactful than I thought it was, and we’re the living proof there’s a fighting force behind it,” she says.

“It’s every advertiser’s dream to go to Cannes, so to say we’re excited would be an understatement—I’m actually still in shock,” says Dastur. “What makes me the happiest is that people saw potential in our idea and understood what we were trying to convey: that there’s a promise to the future of AI and VR. When utilized responsibly, these technologies have the power to bring people closer together.”

As we continue to provide our talent worldwide with diverse opportunities for growth, who knows where they will be in their careers next year—it might just be the French Riviera. As Media.Monks Co-Founder and Executive Director of S4Capital Wesley ter Haar says, “This year's NextUp.Monks was amazing. Great to see so much fun work and boundary-pushing thinking from teams across the globe, which is the result of our exciting partnership with Cannes Lions. I’m sure we'll see some of this year’s participants back there in the foreseeable future.”