Jack Morton launches global innovation practice "Genuine X"

Jack Morton, the global brand experience agency, has launch a new innovation practice - Genuine X. The initiative is designed to support clients’ business needs at a time of increasingly rapid change, and help clients meet evolving consumer expectations and maintain competitive advantage.  Supported by labs in London and Boston, 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.  According to Jack Morton, more labs will be rolled out in the new year, the first of which will be in Dubai.Along with the new launch, Damian Ferrar is appointed as global head of Genuine X. In his new role, Ferrar will lead 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 Sebastien Jouhans as creative technology director; Rob Brecher as director of experiential technology; Jillian Curran as director of strategy; and Martyn Gooding, creative director.  Previously Ferrar has been the executive creative director for Jack Morton, London since January 2017. While Jouhans was technology lead at R/GA, Brecher developed the experiential technology offering at Genuine, and Curran worked in insights and innovation for MTV and Martyn was creative director at Gravity Thinking. “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,” said Ferrar.Genuine X also inked three partnerships which will further enable innovative global agency-partner-client teams to invent together. It is partnering with EMRAYS, the instant emotion analysis service; Voicify, the voice experience platform; and Immerse UK, the UK government’s immersive technology agency.  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. While the agency will work closely with academic institutions and tech start-ups via partnership with Immerse UK, aiming to tackle industry problems and develop products and services which will help shape the future of brand experience.