Sir Martin Sorrell’s MediaMonks has become Monks (or, strictly speaking .monks but we’ll call them Monks) in what is probably a timely rebrand and, anyway, it isn’t primarily a media company.
Monks now come in two parts: marketing services and technology services, powered, they say, by AI platform Monks.Flow.
Wesley ter Haar and Bruno Lambertini will head marketing services as co-CEOs with Brady Brim-DeForest as CEO of technology services. Brim-DeForest’s previous title was CEO, Formula.Monks (a consultancy) while ter Haar and Lambertini were co-CEOs, content.
Sorrell says the name change reflects a “more general description of what we do” and “It’s not a restructuring, it’s an evolution..increasingly clients are looking for simplification from their agencies.”
Monks, as it now is, has had a rollercoaster existence in the six years to the month since Sorrell’s S4 Capital bought it from under the noses of his previous empire WPP (it’s actually been around in the Netherlands since 2001.) Initially S4 grew like topsy, mainly through acquisitions, to a dizzying valuation of £4bn and 11,000 staff. It has since retrenched as revenue has fallen and is now valued at £327m. On the upside Monks was recently added toGeneral Motors’ revamped agency roster.
