What you need to know:

• S4-owned Media.Monks has transitioned its services into two practices: Marketing Services and Technology Services, ushering in the next stage of convergence under its single P&L structure.
• The business will now be known as '.Monks', underlining it's operating beyond the realm of media.
• APAC boss Kenny Griffiths says the consolidation has been in the S4 playbook from the start, with the 34 acquisitions made by the company since its 2018 launch having been made with the "purpose of always integrating them into one unified company". Thus, the new model achieves what Martin Sorrell originally set out to do.
• Meanwhile, the Australian unit of the business is building back after shedding some staff - Griffiths puts ANZ headcount at the 225 mark, versus the 250 cited by former MD Vinne Schifferstein in 2021.

New religion

The clue is in the name. Media.Monks has moved end-to-end and well beyond media. So it's now called .Monks.

Essentially, the company has shifted its nine core services – media, data, technology, social, platforms, studio, experience, commerce and brand – into two practices: Marketing Services and Technology Services.

The new structure has “been part of [S4] planning journey from day one”, per Monk’s APAC managing director Kenny Griffiths. He joined the business via the MightyHive acquisition back in 2018. 

“Sir Martin had one vision when he started S4 – it was a digital-first solution. Essentially what we have been doing over the last four or five years is that we have been on a strong path of creating a unified, one-stop-shop for anything around digital marketing.”

Three years back, S4 debut what Sorrell described as a “new era/new age advertising and marketing services model”, bringing together digital media outfit MightyHive with its flagship marketing and technology firm under a single P&L structure, to create Media.Monks. The dot made for a short-lived naming convention that divvied the business by capability – e.g. Commerce.Monks, Data.Monks, Experience.Monks.

It was the culmination of the 24 acquisitions S4 had made at the time, with another 12 businesses having been brought into the fold in the years since.

“We went on a very strong inorganic merger path about three or four years ago – 34 acquisitions in a period of three years, with the purpose of always integrating them into one unified company,” says Griffiths. “Those 34 companies across the globe represent almost every service you can think of in the digital marketing ecosystem, and what we have been doing is integrating them to be under one umbrella, but [also] under one brand.”

The aggressive approach to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a well-worn strategy for Sorrell, who built out WPP the same way. But this time, it’s different.

“We're trying to disrupt the traditional model where you had numerous companies under one shell company, numerous brands competing,” explains Griffiths. The gear switch from Sorrell’s usual approach of attrition has seen S4, in the space of just a few years, collapse 34 agency brands into a unified company with a single-entry point under the Monks moniker.

End-to-end

Griffiths says the latest Monks evolution was driven by client demand.

“The clients generally want everything through one company, a one stop shop, [with] one rate card… [A company that can] can do everything from strategy, creative production, media buying, data analysis, UX, design, all under one roof - and that's what we're trying to do.”

Already, he says there’s a number of clients looking to “maximise the full scope of [Monks’] nine capabilities under one roof to unlock “growth, transformation and automation”. Meaning now it’s “more of an internal organisational structure conversation to see how we better rock up as a unified model to clients”. That conversation remains an active one – the organisational and reporting structures that will support the new services model aren't due to land until 2025. 

“Clients are accessing all of our skill sets and capabilities now, but we're just trying to simplify how they engage with us as a unified brand… like being able to access almost seven and a half thousand people, through the nine different capabilities, through one contract.”

It's a model that has served other holdcos well – with analysts suggesting that those further along the consolidation path will outgrow laggards.

Griffiths says Monks will continue to fine tune the model based on client and market demands, but that it's ultimately delivering on what it “set out to do”. By dropping individual agency brands entirely, “we think that this is a unique offering that that we are disrupting the market with.”

Growing pains 

Since landing in Australia with the acquisition of Melbourne CX shop BizTech in 2019, Monks has endured some turbulence – the broader business, heavily exposed to tech clients, felt the pain when tech valuations took a battering last year.

ANZ headcount was cited as 250 by the agency’s former MD Vinne Schifferstein in 2021, but now Griffiths says the figure is closer to 210 in Australia, with another 15 sitting on the team in New Zealand.

Local roles were impacted as part of a 13 per cent cut to S4’s global headcount in the 12 months to March 31 of this year. Q1 results for 2023 saw an 11.7 per cent fall in like-for-like net revenue off the back of the company’s first full year of negative revenue growth in 2023 (down 4.5 per cent like-for-like).

But Griffiths insists that Australia is the darling of the APAC region for Monks. 

“In terms of our local footprint, we have seen the integrated narrative in Australia probably get more traction than other markets in Asia Pacific.”

It's likely helped by the four acquisitions that have been made in Australia alone – including BizTech, as well as Datalicious Australia, Destined, and Lens10. 

“Considering the size of the market, it's quite a mature digital ecosystem, even compared amongst larger markets. So, there's a lot of talent in Australia, and hence, we've had a lot of mergers here, and we have seen a lot of learnings over the last three years, ever since we've merged six different companies under one roof.”

Monks’ local client stable includes Commonwealth Bank, Australian Super, Kmart, and Woolworths, amongst others.

“Australia is quite a mature digital ecosystem … our clients being able to access our creative production skill set here, our data and media all under one roof, has seen quite an uptick from our clients locally.”