Sorrell said the name change reflects a “more general description of what we do,” admitting that the previous name could be “confusing” for people who thought of Monks as only being able to handle traditional agency services such as media and production.
“It’s not a restructuring, it’s an evolution of what we do,” Sorrell said. “Increasingly, [clients] are looking for simplification from their agencies.”
Sorrell said that clients such as Google, SC Johnson and BMW take advantage of both marketing and technology services at the company.
Sorrell is also looking for this simplification to improve performance for S4 which he admitted had a “difficult” 2023. S4’s first quarter net revenue this year dropped by 11.7%. Media.Monks, which at one point had around 9,000 employees, currently has 7,600 workers.
Despite these difficulties, Monks came away with a big win this year when it was added to General Motors' roster to essentially manage mass personalized content development at scale with the use of its AI capabilities. This new organizational structure is also meant to more easily work with clients that have an interest in this type of work, said Sorrell.
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“GM is probably the most revolutionary [AI] use case that we’ve seen in the industry so far,” Sorrell said. “I can’t think of anything else that anybody has done in the U.S. or elsewhere, which is as innovative or revolutionary, as this, which involves a huge change.”
The industry as a whole has been beefing up its AI capabilities, in part to provide this type of personalized AI offering. As more businesses opt for this type of AI work, which is meant to save costs, it will likely also change compensation structures for agencies from a more traditional time-based model to an asset-based model, which Monks is doing with GM.