Just an hour into his new life as a publicly traded chief executive, MediaMonks chief executive Victor Knapp told a crowd at Spikes Asia 2018 how his world has been turned upside down (in a good way) since being acquired by Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital.
In the heat of the takeover battle, he related: “Clients started calling saying ‘What the hell is happening with MediaMonks? I don’t know what you’re going to do, but take the Sorrell offer.’”
In the end, Knapp said, it came down to client wishes and a gut feel of what was right for MediaMonks’ employees. “Were we able to go on stage and tell 800 Monks we were an Accenture company?” he asked.
In the end, going with Sorrell not only felt right but also opened doors to a whole new network of C-suite executives, allowing the company to build a new strategy around what the industry actually needs:
– How to structure an agency roster
– Data versus creative
– Constant innovation pressure
Knapp spent much of his presentation explaining how MediaMonks functions differently from competitors, extolling its one P&L model and showing examples of how it delivers data-driven creative work at scale. He also reiterated expansion goals for Germany, India and Japan, and plans to acquire first-party data and digital media buying capabilities.
MediaMonks is “not an agency” and “not a consultancy”. Knapp stated: “We’re going to do things a little differently than others do, because we’re not a legacy company.”
