MediaMonks leadership looks to further capitalise on tech and digital demand
S4 Capital’s newly merged MediaMonks and MightyHive is continuing its growth ambitions in the Australian and New Zealand market. And while the branding of the offering may have recently changed, co-leader for the region Vinne Schifferstein, said for clients, the single offering has been in place for a long time.
“For many of our clients it is not that new,” explained Schifferstein. “We have one P&L, we lead between Kenny [Griffiths, head of data and digital media, APAC] and I, because the practices under us operated differently in terms of talent etcetera.
“For clients, if they deal with any other party in the market they need to show up with a PR agency, and their digital agency, and so on. For us, that is all combined under one umbrella.”
As flagged by Sir Martin Sorrell in a live interview at Mumbrella360: Reconnected in late 2020, S4 Capital’s merged the two agency brands to create a unitary brand.
MediaMonks in Australia has now 250 staff, and Schifferstein said that is set to continue to grow through organic and inorganic means, as a result of client demand.
“If you look at our client roster, it is pretty strong across Australia and New Zealand. What our ambition is, to make sure that all those clients tap into everything we offer. Working more and more with the clients that we have,” she said.
“Engagement does not start with ‘you are granted as our partner on record’. It often starts with a small campaign or a data assignment and from there, things evolve. It might start with a data conversation.”
One key area that MediaMonks has seen more clients coming to them for as a gateway to further work is digital transformation.
“There’s loads of clients that have tried to work with big fours and have a fantastic report in their draw, but still don’t have digital transformation. They just want to get going, and that is a massive push. They want a pragmatic partner that rolls up their sleeves and starts actually transforming with them.”
According to Schifferstein, quite a few clients in this market have legacy issues with their tech stack, and they come to MediaMonks for assistance. “From that, once we start solving the tech issues, you quickly get into the data elements or user experience work,” added Schifferstein.
“By having those informed conversations about something like Adobe Campaign, very quickly, it moves into what are you sending out, what do they look like, what is the copy, what is the creative, etcetera.”
More recently, MediaMonks has also seen an uptick in the demand for end-to-end social capability, which it is meeting with the acquisition of Decoded along with building out additional resources on the ground in Australia.
“Australia is quite unique for us, because we have all of those services on the ground,” Schifferstein explained.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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