Monks’ Bryan Sherman on busting media silos and coveting consumer touchpoints

For Bryan Sherman, making customers the focal point of every single brand interaction is the key to creating great experiences. That goes for paid media, emails, SEO, commerce and everything in between.

Historically, this approach is no easy feat, as it depends on breaking down silos that historically plague media. But he’s determined to take this 360-degree perspective to his new role as EVP of global media, CX and investment at Monks (formerly Media.Monks).

Sherman joins Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik in The Current studio to talk about busting silos, who in the industry is getting it right, and how marketers can future-proof their data strategies. Consumers, he says, aren’t against sharing their data with brands — if they can get a high-quality experience in return.

You are somewhat new in your role, leading customer experience at Monks. What does it mean to focus on customer experience?

This is a pretty interesting role in that under my purview is our CRM, our commerce, our activation and our paid investment practice. What that allows us to do is really put the customer at the center, not just when we talk about our paid media, but every single touchpoint that a brand has with their customer.

And so we think about what is our email marketing strategy? What is our SEO strategy? How do we differentiate between brand.com and retailer.com? How do we think about how video and display and social and other channels are going to influence the messages we're telling our consumers, and ultimately what we're hoping to drive them to do and how that's an ingredient, but not the whole recipe.

I'm hearing this more and more, the importance of silo busting at this moment in time. Why do you think it's important to break those down right now?

Because I think we often talk too much about the consumer and our customers as if they understand what we do when more so, we need to understand how they behave and how they act in their lives. The more we can have a strategy that deploys across all those different marketing touchpoints, the more we can not just bring consistency to what we're doing, but also deliver a customer experience that they expect to get in exchange for the data that they're sharing with us.

You've spent a lot of time in your career watching digital media grow up, watching programmatic grow up. What are your observations about that evolution? Where do you think programmatic is today versus 10 years ago?

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons I was so excited coming to Monks was I felt like it was a place where those silos didn't exist and media and content creative and data really were blended together. And I just think that historically speaking, when programmatic was a team or was a line item on a plan, it wasn't sitting at the center like it is today. And as more and more inventory sources become available and more and more data becomes securely transmitted, it gives us the chance to view programmatic as kind of the center and the core of everything we do in media that all that information flows through.

You've seen a lot of data strategies on the agency and brand side. What's the one thing that you wish everyone was doing right now to future proof their data strategy?

Respect every touchpoint with the consumer. Every time, regardless of the channel or the platform, every time a customer or consumer engages with your brand, that is so tremendously valuable and you should covet that. And to covet that means you understand the laws and the regulatory environment with which that interaction happens. You have an infrastructure built out to collect that information, organize it, and then you use that data that's being shared with you to further their experience.

As I mentioned earlier, customers are willing to share data with brands and with companies, but they expect a more high-quality experience in return. And when they get that high quality experience, those companies are future proofing themselves because it's less about what I'm sharing and it's more about what I'm receiving as a consumer.

In the wake of Google’s ad tech trial, the supply chain on the whole has been under a microscope. In your view, what is not working about our supply chain right now?

I believe we should be continuously striving for the most highly efficient market between buyers and sellers.

When you think about the finance industry, that is what they have mastered. So for us to have a more highly efficient marketplace, we need transparency and the technology. We need aligned incentives between all parties. We need to have a fiduciary mindset where we’re thinking about how do we create value and not extract revenue.

When the supply chain or the ad tech ecosystem is too focused on revenue extraction, we lose a bit of what ultimately is good for all of us which is continuously adding value through transparency, trust and the partnerships we develop.