S4 Cap. Regulatory News (SFOR)

20 November 2019

S4 Capital plc ("S4Capital" or "the Company")MediaMonks announce deal with high-end Indian content creation and production shop WhiteBalance

The move sets in motion plans to make India a leading content creation hub

S4Capital plc (SFOR.L), the new age, new era digital advertising and marketing services company, announces that its global content practice MediaMonks today conditionally agreed a merger with Delhi-based content creation and production company, WhiteBalance. After opening an office in Bangalore in February this year and appointing Poran Malani as S4Capital's Director for India, the company further strengthens its position in the region. 

WhiteBalance, recently voted as one of the 'the world's 10 most beautiful offices of 2019' by inc.com, was founded in 2010 by Robert Godinho with the intent of creating a one-stop shop for high quality visual productions. With a state of the art content studio and in-house film, 3D and post-production talent, WhiteBalance is fully equipped to produce content from feature films, commercials and documentaries to high-end digital content. To support its credibility within the Indian production market, WhiteBalance has also recently won Gold at the ICMA 2019 in Digital Branded Content, Marketed Content & Digital Non-Branded Content categories. A video giving an experience of WhiteBalance is available here.

With the merger, MediaMonks adds 50 experts to the team, with the intent of doubling the India business in the coming six months. MediaMonks will also continue to invest in growing the content studio in Bangalore into a creative hub for APAC, and aims to size up the teams and studio facility in Delhi.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman S4Capital: "India is a country very close to my heart - one built on a heritage of creativity, and characterised by a vibrant culture. As you can imagine, I'm delighted to continue to expand into this fast growing market, offering a wealth of talent and significant growth opportunities, and the merger with WhiteBalance is the next step for us to build a leading creative content business here. At the same time we're strengthening our position in the APAC region - ever more important - as India continues its trajectory to become the most populous country on earth."

Robert Godinho, Founder & CEO WhiteBalance: "WhiteBalance is a close-knit family of artists, designers and visual storytellers. Our dream is to put a ding in the universe by creating internationally recognised work from our home, India. Having worked with the world's leading media organisations, we're incredibly excited that our journey has led us to join forces with MediaMonks. We're looking forward to bringing the same professionalism to customising creative solutions for our clients in the APAC region."

Victor Knaap, Global CEO MediaMonks: "We are happy to welcome a company this talented to the MediaMonks family. It's unbelievable how well our cultures match in terms of passion for creativity and quality. What MediaMonks can bring to the Indian market is merging the disciplines of film and tech, by inviting directors and developers to come together and produce world-class digital storytelling."

Poran Malani, Director for India, S4Capital: "The opportunity for the S4Capital model in India is huge. India is globally recognised for its creativity and its leading-edge technology, making it the perfect place for integrating the two into a new service model. With operations in our current production hub in Bangalore, combined with the strength of WhiteBalance, bundling our forces in the pursuit of excellent fit-for-format content is an exciting prospect as we introduce our global network to this dynamic market and open it up to world-class digital work."

Enquiries

About MediaMonks 

MediaMonks is a global creative production company that partners with clients across industries and markets to craft amazing work for leading businesses and brands. Their integrated production capabilities span the entire creative spectrum, covering anything you could possibly want from a production partner, and probably more.

From creative campaigns and content to bespoke development and design, MediaMonks works above the line and below the fold at the intersection of creativity and technology. Operating across teams, time zones, and technologies with an incredible in-house team of 950+ Monks. Their work is recognized by advertising and craft awards around the world, producing 131 Cannes Lions and 220+ FWAs to date.

Founded in 2001 and rooted in digital, you can find MediaMonks anywhere on the Web as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Dubai, Singapore, and Shanghai. 

In July 2018, MediaMonks joined forces with S4Capital to build out the production platform of the future. Under the direction of Sir Martin Sorrell, MediaMonks is increasing its firepower on all fronts, adding new Monks, monasteries, and services such as data analytics and digital media buying.

About S4Capital

S4Capital plc (SFOR.L) is the new age/new era digital advertising and marketing services company, established by Sir Martin Sorrell in May 2018.

Its strategy is to build a purely digital advertising and marketing services business for global, multinational, regional, local clients and millennial-driven influencer brands. This will be achieved initially by integrating leading businesses in three practice areas: first-party data, digital content, digital media planning and buying, along with an emphasis on "faster, better, cheaper" executions in an always-on consumer-led environment, with a unitary structure.

Digital is by far the fastest-growing segment of the advertising market. S4Capital estimates that in 2018 digital accounted for approximately 45% or $225 billion of total global advertising spend of $500 billion (excluding about $400 billion of trade support, the primary target of the Amazon advertising platform), and projects that by 2022 this share will grow to approximately 55%.

S4Capital combined with MediaMonks, the leading AdAge A-listed creative digital content production company led by Victor Knaap and Wesley ter Haar, in July 2018, and with MightyHive, the market-leading programmatic solutions provider for future thinking marketers and agencies, led by Peter Kim and Christopher S. Martin, in December 2018. 

In April 2019, MightyHive merged with ProgMedia to expand operations into Latin America and MediaMonks acquired film studio Caramel Pictures to expand content studio capabilities. In June 2019, MediaMonks announced a planned merger with Australia-based BizTech, a leading marketing transformation and customer experience company. In August 2019, MediaMonks merged with Amsterdam-based digital influencer marketing agency IMA. In October 2019, MediaMonks merged with Firewood Marketing, the largest digital marketing agency based in Silicon Valley, that was recently ranked, along with MediaMonks, as one of the fastest growing agencies by Adweek, and MightyHive merged with award-winning UK-based digital analytics, biddable media and data science company ConversionWorks and South Korea-based data and analytics consultancy Datalicious Korea.

Victor, Wesley, Pete, Christopher and Peter Rademaker (formerly Chief Financial Officer of MediaMonks, now Chief Financial Officer of S4Capital), all joined the S4Capital Board as Directors. The S4Capital Board also includes Rupert Faure Walker, Paul Roy, Daniel Pinto, Sue Prevezer, Elizabeth Buchanan and Scott Spirit.

Following the fundraising for Firewood, the company has a market capitalization of approximately £875 million ($1.1 billion) and 2000 people in 26 countries, across the Americas, Europe, the Middle-East and Africa and Asia-Pacific.

Sir Martin was CEO of WPP for 33 years, building it from a £1 million "shell" company in 1985 into the world's largest advertising and marketing services company with a market capitalisation of over £16 billion on the day he left. Today its market capitalisation is £12 billion. Prior to that he was Group Financial Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Company plc for nine years.