Prepare to Be Jelly: Jam3 Joins MediaMonks

We’ve got some news that will sweeten the deal for any brand that wants to elevate digital experiences: Jam3 is joining MediaMonks! Based in Toronto and servicing forward-thinking brands around the world, the highly decorated experience agency shares our maker’s mindset—and reinforces an end-to-end approach that combines cultural insights with creativity and technology to connect people to brands, to each other and to the world.

Founded in 2004 by Mark McQuillan, Pablo Vio and Adrian Belin above a Toronto garage, Jam3 started from humble beginnings—and has since grown to Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Montevideo, expanding our presence into Uruguay and bringing S4Capital to a total of 31 countries. Shared clients include Google, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix and more.

As Jam3 gained ground around the world, the team has also joined us in claiming space on the digital craft award leaderboards. They became Campaign’s US Digital Agency of the Year (Gold), adding to our recent EMEA Agency of the Year (Gold) award and other Campaign wins, and were named alongside MediaMonks in Forrester’s “10 Digital Agencies to Supercharge Your Marketing.” Finally, they join us in the FWA Club 100—an achievement shared by only 10 teams.

“The work that Jam3 and our team does is some of the most iconic digital work over the last decade,” MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar told Ad Age. “This makes it easier for our clients. Rather than putting us in competitive spaces, clients can put us into combined efforts.”

Scaling Up Innovation Together

By joining forces, Jam3 and MediaMonks blend together two teams of cross-border, multidisciplinary talent—making us better equipped to scale up innovation and best in class customer experiences (CX) around the world. With our unitary structure in place, brands will have seamless access to the world’s leading talent in creativity and technology.

In fact, this model has been key to both of our growth over the decades. Like us, Jam3 has maintained a single P&L model that embraces friction and brings together diverse disciplines, which lay the foundation for groundbreaking work that resonates on both a cultural and individual level. In that sense, you could say our teams were made for each other like peanut butter and jelly.

“When we’re talking about being unitary or one P&L, we don’t turn up to the pitch with the same T-shirt,” says Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Director at S4Capital. “We are bringing companies together as one. Clients want us executing on the creation, production, and distribution of content. MediaMonks and Jam3 are two competitors who have had great respect for one another, and it’s been interesting from my point of view to bring the two together.”

Trailblazing a Shortcut to Transform at Speed

Perhaps more urgently for brands, our unitary approach is key to unlocking transformation at speed. When faced with social distancing and the need to serve audiences at home, many brands were ill-prepared to show up within a digital-first landscape. They had long placed their faith in consultancies who burned their hours consulting rather than doing—an approach that was never sustainable and failed brands when they needed to compress years’ worth of innovation into just weeks or months.

A longtime Jam3 mantra encapsulates this thinking: “Never trust an idea from anyone who doesn’t make the end project.” By cross-pollinating learnings across a vast global network of talent, we’re better able to pinpoint the fastest path to transformation while pushing technology to its creative limits, a process that has become essential for brands as consumer behaviors continually evolve.

We achieve this by zeroing our focus on building impactful, individual experiences—a purpose Jam3 is ideally suited for, as validated in its work and accolades. “When we looked into Jam3’s future, we were seeking a superpower partner of our own who understands the value we bring to the table and allows us to really excel at what we do best, which is the CX work, this high digital work,” says Mark McQuillan, President and Founder of Jam3.

Once rivals on the digital craft leaderboards, MediaMonks and Jam3 are now better together—and soon, our clients will be, too. “S4Capital is an amazing platform with lots of relationships, and we’re already seeing opportunities with our clients,” says McQuillan.