Why I Hate 360 Marketing
The buzz nowadays for marketing is 360, as in X-Box 360 degree marketing. This encompasses advertising, activation, public relations, media buyings, customer relationship management, etc under one roof. Thus, clients can just go to one shop and get the whole enchilada if needed yet only deal with one account director and one billing.
It is also one big money grab.
360 is basically a way for agencies to get as much as they can from clients, regardless or not if they really need SOME let alone ALL of the services offered. Suppose clients have an internal PR division, but only need advertising help. A 360 proposal is like getting (and paying) for 16 double cheeseburgers when a single Big Mac would do.
And that’s when it gets nasty.
Since chances are clients are unlikely to spend a whole lot of money on 360, some chunks would have to be excised. And each division, eying their internal budgets and targets, would begin clawing, backstabbing, lobbying and pleading to make sure their division is NOT the one that gets amputated.
Of course, 360 is supposed to foster big agency unity and let other sections move forward if our own services is not needed. Bullshit, if money’s involved, the knives are out and its just a question WHEN you get stabbed in the back, smiley face and all.
Screw advertising, they’re a bunch of award hungry parasites that bring no value to the client’s sales. Dump PR since you can’t really measure how effective the campaign is. Take on the ground activation since our performance is determined by actual on site sales (Never mind this division is so damn expensive and watch out for their internal profit margins on third party costs!)
Yep, 360 marketing is a strength of big agencies against puney ones, which is like saying “We can do everything under one roof, one can you do?” But big agencies also have big overheads. And aren’t we going into a global recession? Guess what get cut out of a client budget first?
i think 360 works for really big ideas, looking at campaigns like the Simpsons movie (Digital, marketing, advertising..) or Lynx in Australia (PR, advertising, digital)
it’s true, big agencies charge pretty high for this thing called 360 campaigns. but if you pull it off, it makes a remarkable and memorable communications campaign.
most advertisers don’t know about PR’s value, and vice-versa.. and budgets are usually being split, but if small, mobile communication and creative teams work togetrher, you get enough horizontal and vertical ideas being acted upon.