S4Capital's MediaMonks merges with Firewood

Martin Sorrell’s S⁴Capital has announced that its digital global content practice MediaMonks has merged with Firewood, an international digital marketing agency built on extensive partnerships with some of the world's best-known technology brands.

Firewood is the largest independent agency in Silicon Valley and, along with MediaMonks, has recently been ranked as one of the fastest-growing agencies by Adweek. Firewood is a leading proponent of the “embedded” model of client partnership, a deeply collaborative way of working with clients to deliver on speed, quality and value.

Founded in 2010 by Juan and Lanya Zambrano, Firewood offers a broad range of digital capabilities including creative, strategy and planning, performance media and technology services. Headquartered in San Francisco, the agency employs over 300 people in 7 offices across the Americas and Europe, in San Francisco, Mountain View, Sandpoint, New York, Dublin, London and Mexico City.

Firewood employs a pioneering and disruptive engagement model with their roster of well-known clients including Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce and VMware.  To combat the inefficiencies found in traditional agencies, Firewood deploys teams of creative and strategic marketing professionals who work as extensions of their clients’ internal marketing team. Their client/agency partnership model is based on the three core principles of collaboration, integration and flexibility. Firewood’s approach has been embraced by clients seeking a more agile, efficient and transparent way of working.

For S⁴Capital, the announcement is another important strategic step towards delivering a purely digital, first party data-driven, faster, better and cheaper content and programmatic offer for clients worldwide, with a unitary business model.

Sorrell, Senior Monk and Executive Chairman of S⁴Capital, said, “This merger is a further step in creating a new era communications services leader. Firewood has an enviable client list comprising many of Silicon Valley’s finest; and we are delighted to welcome Juan, Lanya and their colleagues to the S⁴Capital family. We will now have over 1,800 professionals in 23 countries, with over 500 in each of two nodes, one in Silicon Valley and one in Amsterdam.”

Wesley ter Haar, Founding Monk and COO of MediaMonks, said, “Firewood’s “embedded” approach will allow us to build deeper and broader relationships with our clients, helping us work in a more flexible, collaborative and integrated way.”

Lanya Zambrano, Founder and President of Firewood, commented, "This merger is recognition of all our people. The richness of our differences creates our collective value. We embrace finding diverse talent; as a certified Women/Minority-owned Business Enterprise, 38% of our employees are from diverse ethnic backgrounds, 67% are women, and our leadership team is comprised of nearly 64% women. We look forward to developing further a new, disruptive model in the communications industry with MediaMonks and S⁴Capital as further proof that diversity is an intrinsic part of our industry’s future.”

Juan Zambrano, Founder and CEO of Firewood, commented, “We came from the client world and had a very different and non-agency mindset. From day one, we created an integrated and disruptive model built on transparency and collaboration that supported becoming extensions of our clients and something that other agencies weren’t doing. We are delighted to be teaming up with MediaMonks and joining the S⁴Capital platform. We believe this is an exciting next step for our clients and colleagues and we look forward to continued growth and success.”

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