Jack Morton Launches Global Innovation Practice Genuine X

Global brand experience agency, Jack Morton, announces the launch of Genuine X, the agency’s innovation practice.

The initiative is designed to support clients’ business needs at a time of increasingly rapid change, often driven by technology. Genuine X will fuel innovation and creativity, pushing the boundaries of brand experience to help clients meet evolving consumer expectations and maintain competitive advantage. 

Supported by labs in London and Boston (and more to be rolled out in the new year, the first of which will be in Dubai), Genuine X operates at the intersection between content, emerging technology and data, creating innovative solutions to brand challenges through new experiences, products and services. The practice blends specialist expertise from both Jack Morton and its technology agency Genuine, leveraging a global talent pool to support client needs. 

Colleen Cosgrove, director, head of global events, Reebok said: “Jack Morton’s team has a way of working which opens new technological possibilities for us, while keeping our challenges and our audiences’ needs and interests truly front and centre of the experiences we create together. I’m excited about this innovative initiative and the opportunities it can open for us.” 

Damian Ferrar is appointed as global head of Genuine X. Executive creative director for Jack Morton, London since January 2017, in his new role Damian leads a global team of strategic, creative and technology experts with UX, creative technology, data analysis, film making, game design and coding skills. Key members of the team include director of strategy, Jillian Curran; creative technology director, Sebastien Jouhans; director of experiential technology, Rob Brecher and creative director, Martyn Gooding. Previously Jillian worked in insights and innovation for MTV, Sebastien was technology lead at R/GA, Rob developed the experiential technology offering at Genuine and Martyn was creative director at Gravity Thinking.

The agency also announces today three partnerships which will further enable innovative global agency-partner-client teams to invent together. Genuine X is partnering with instant emotion analysis service, EMRAYS; voice experience platform, Voicify and the UK government’s immersive technology agency, Immerse UK. EMRAYS is the first instant emotion analysis service, that instantly reads and feels emotions the same way humans do. The partnership between Genuine X and EMRAYS is focused on exploring the emotional impact of live brand experiences by predicting human reactions to different designs and concepts through AI simulation. With Voicify, the agency is working to harness the ever-growing power of voice search for the next generation of immersive brand experiences. And the agency’s partnership with Immerse UK means Genuine X will be working closely with academic institutions and tech start-ups to tackle industry problems and develop products and services which will help shape the future of brand experience.

Damian Ferrar, innovation director, global head of Genuine X, Jack Morton commented: “Technology is creating amazing new opportunities for brand experience. Genuine X is a new way of thinking, and a new way of working, which will allow us to harness the most relevant emerging technologies to help our clients win in an ever more disruptive marketplace.”