Innovating EssenceMediacom global agency platforms

Comprised of 10,000 people across 120 offices globally, EssenceMediacom combines Essence's performance, data, analytics and creative technology DNA with MediaCom's scaled multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise to help create breakthroughs for brands.

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With a tight deadline to launch and working with no brand from either side, we were briefed to lead on developing EssenceMediacom's new digital brand and user experience design, whilst implementing a modern headless software solution.

We immersed ourselves into the discovery phase with a market review, technical due diligence, and interviews and surveys with stakeholders and employees. From the insights gathered we focused on introducing a clear company purpose and values whilst also spotlighting case studies, thought leadership content and highlighting the benefits of working for EssenceMediacom.

A 5-day content design sprint followed to create and test a prototype focusing on the structure and flow of content, with the objective of aligning our knowledge, generating ideas and designing the end-to-end journey.

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We then created a mid-fidelity prototype focusing on product usability, inspirational content and improved trust through detailed content. The prototype was then tested with participants across various scenarios such as assessing services, case studies, thought leadership, and the EssenceMediacom careers experience.

Our design approach was to be flexible and adaptable, starting with a high-fidelity wireframe of the site with minimal styling to allow for future adjustments.

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Competitor research revealed a tendency for similar structures, so the focus was on creating something distinctive. The top section of the site featured various photos and masonry layouts, emphasising the importance of showcasing the work and humanising it by highlighting the people behind it, thus underlining the people element of EssenceMediaCom.

By choosing Contentful we ensured a smooth development experience, with Contentful widely considered as the gold standard for a headless CMS. Contentful allows for "content as a service" and eliminates the need for custom CMS infrastructure.

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With other local market sites in the roadmap for EssenceMediacom, Contentful offered brilliant options for localisation and translation while constantly improving its UI and feature set. It also runs its own backups, and ensures architectural separation from the front end.