Navigating New Waters: Pauline Butor’s Vision for Media.Monks Paris
In October 2023, Media.Monks Paris marked a new stage in its development with the appointment of Pauline Butor to the position of managing director. Six months later, it feels like both a moment and an age to her. “It goes so fast. And at the same time, I'm under the impression that it's been five years already. It's fast paced and there are a lot of new things to learn at the same time. You want to have an impact straight away,” she says.
Pauline has familiarised herself with every corner of the agency, which flourished as independent Parisian creative shop Dare.Win under founder Wale Gbadamosi Oyekanmi before it became part of the Media.Monks group in 2020. It’s also flourished since the merger. With 120 employees, it generated a turnover of €21 million in 2022 in France – a growth of 31%.
With Pauline taking up the role, Wale stepped into a chairman position. He’s one of the main reasons she joined after spending 15 years working at Google France, most recently as director of YouTube ads. “My first meeting with Wale, it was an evident match. I think we have the same kind of values,” she says.
One of Pauline’s primary focuses has been to solidify awareness of Media.Monks Paris in the French market. “Media.monks is quite well known globally, but in France, people don't know exactly what we do,” she says.
Change management is also on her agenda. “Coming from a really, super creative boutique independent agency to being part of a global group. It's kind of a challenge.,” she says. “Not everyone internally is super at ease to work with the level of agility and speed that I need to make a reality.” Her focus in these first few months has been on expertise, agility and making the most of Media.Monks’ international agency status, “really being able to assemble all the talents we have around the globe,” she says.
“The way I would love to do it is to make sure the whole team is joined up so that all the Paris Monks are taking an active role in designing this new agency.” To that end she’s spent a significant amount of time with her management and teams, making sure the vision is aligned. The whole agency recently visited Amsterdam, where the group was founded, “just to go back to the roots of Media.Monks,” she says. And to share that vision. “To see what kind of agency we want to build, our vision, our mission, our values – so that we can live all that together.” On one level Pauline wants Media.Monks to be an indispensable part of the group. “The mission of Media.Monks now is to reshape how brands interact with the world by combining creativity, data and tech and I would love to do that in France.”
There’s also a local mission for Media.Monks Paris specifically. “That will be to generate cultural impact now, and I want to use it as a catalyst in the future for everything we want to do,” says Pauline. It’s about balancing the agency’s identity – both international and French. “It's about structure and ways of working, she adds. “I'm trying to redefine us at the moment to make sure that we are living in our French ways, but being nourished by everything that Media.Monks is doing.”
Pauline is prioritising agency culture as she settles into her leadership. “I would love all the young generation to still want to work in advertising basically, and to still find our job desirable, which I think is sometimes not the case,” she says. That's Media.Monks Paris is doing things like its first open agency day for students, which happened recently. “I think it's super important for them to understand our jobs and what we do for clients.”
The result of that mentality is making the agency “a place when you can see yourself growing,” she says. It’s about making sure people feel they can learn from each other by working on cross-disciplinary, international teams, taking advantage of the Media.Monks network and perks such as being able to work from another office for one month per year.
This kind of melding of different minds is something Pauline calls ‘workshop mode’. “To me, you're never more efficient than when you have diverse people in the room, be it from an expertise standpoint or from a background standpoint,” she says. That allows a specific client’s need to be tended to by whoever has the right shaped solution. “Then we pilot, we test and when it works, then we implement. That's the way I want us to work.”
“Another reason I joined is having all this expertise in the same place available for our clients, not having silos anymore between all of these expertises,” she continues. “Having this mix of people who are really great smart generalists, able to understand rendering as well as the evolution of consumer behaviours; and others being super geeks, specialised in whatever it is – gaming or blockchain or 3D production. This is amazing. And I haven't seen any other place where you have this level of expertise and agility.”
That's what Pauline would love to push within what she thinks of as a new agency standard. “The way I see the agency in Paris is a shortcut to the amazing centres of expertise that we have around the world with the other local offices. Each time we have a client brief, making sure that we can assemble an A-team depending on their needs. This is super exciting. And to me, this is really new.”
But to make sure that team stays in the A tier, they need to be satisfied as creative people. “Work-life balance is going to be crucial for us if we want to keep being creative and smart,” says Pauline. “You need to have time to get new energy, to be really plugged into the culture, to go to exhibitions and meet people. I think it's what people are looking for at the moment. So if we all want to have a sustainable future as an agency, we need to pay more attention to that.”
Only six months in, it’s early days to show the fruits of Pauline’s labour. But one campaign which came to life after she joined embodies everything she admires about the work Media.Monks Paris can do. That is the sponsorship of a team sailing the Transat Jacques Vabre 2023 – a transatlantic boat race. “It's starting with a simple insight idea and making it beautifully come to life,” says Pauline. “Chrome is a browser. So it's about how you browse the ocean. When you see these boats with the Chrome logo on a white sail it's so beautiful.”
It was more than a simple sponsorship though. The two skippers who were Basile Buisson and Kieran Le Borgne – outsiders in this competition in their Class40 Google Chrome. Basile's unique story echoes Chrome’s sponsorship of the race. First an online player on Virtual Regatta, he was selected from 10,000 candidates to participate in his first real race. A unique chance for him to measure himself against the elements and make his dream come true. At his side, Kieran is a former kitefoil champion converted to sailing.
Pauline sums up the challenge they faced: “How do you browse an infinite ocean with security, embodying all of the Chrome attributes?” Media.Monks amplified the skipper team’s achievements with influencer and social campaigns to drive this home. “It was important to me coming from Google to be super proud coming to Media.Monks and this beautiful campaign,” she says. “It could have been a super technical campaign on Chrome and it's beautiful, simple. And to me, that's the kind of stuff that builds brands. And I'm a sea lover, so it was special.”
She’s also proud of the cumulative efforts of the agency in its partnership with Netflix in the social space. “Seeing the amount of volume but still the level of engagement – to me it still blows my mind,” she says. ”Knowing that Netflix is a big brand, but being rooted into culture, in what audiences are looking for. Keeping this stream, engaging people and entertaining them, and being their partner on this journey is just super interesting.”
Social expertise is core to what Pauline wants Media.Monks Paris to be known for. “It goes beyond Netflix. How do we help brands to build social-first brands? I think that's what they need to push business and revenue,” she says. She sees the power of understanding a brand’s best practice with its particular audience online to “build intimacy at scale.”
That will be a huge focus for her as she further shapes the agency. Another is AI, which Media.Monks has been deeply engaged in for many years of course. For Pauline, a central question is: “How do you transform the way you produce content, using AI and technology, so that you can add even more creativity and craft, but still pushing for efficiencies and business results?”
Media.Monks being a pioneer in AI is another reason Pauline joined the company. “What I like is that being at Media.Monks and not within a giant tech company like Google or Amazon, you can use both creativity and technology to help brands to overcome their challenges. To me, it's really about how you empower the teams.” Regular stand-up meetings make sure everyone at the agency knows what the latest tools can do for them, from newly added prompt functionalities on ‘MonkGPT’ to the progress of the group’s partnerships with Nvidia, Runway and others. “Making sure that we have capacity to use all the greatest tools and tech, but keeping infusing it with this level of craft and creativity that we have. And again, I think it is a mix of creativity and tech that will enable us to make the difference to help our clients. That's really why I'm here. The mix of both is super effective.”
Pauline’s aware of the challenges that come with maximising social and AI technologies’ capabilities. “How do you do that with great responsibility,” she asks, “because when it comes to social networks or AI, you can totally screw up, when it comes to misinformation, using too much social. I mean, I have three kids, so I really see where it can lead you if you don't use it in a responsible way. With big ambitions come great responsibilities as well. And I think if we want to shape the future, we're going to have to do it while thinking of the risks.”
When she joined, Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, praised Pauline’s ‘human values’ and she believes her leadership style is guided by positivity and empathy. This is what will help her in navigating the challenges that the agency and its clients face. “The way you grow is by growing people, so you just have to make sure that you listen, make sure that everyone is able to speak and [that you have a] wide diversity of points of view so that you can grow by mixing them.”
By the time Pauline’s spent a year as managing director, she’ll have even more to show off as her agency goals progress. “Short term, I just want us to shape beautiful, impactful campaigns for clients, make them happy and help them to navigate this new world. I think we are well placed to do so. And to tap into new opportunities[...] to really think in a new way about their brands.”
