360o communications. Give me a break!

We are in a middle of a storm. New media and consumer-generated content has us all dizzy and confused. In response to these shifts, small and medium-sized agencies develop a sort of paranoia and begin to create new departments, new fancy positionings, and recycle tools with cool sounding names. In the meantime, big networks buy more digital shops. In some dramatic instances, agencies end up changing their business models and offering to something absolutely different than what they were intended to in the first place.

There is no need to either make pacts with the devil or hire a Shaman to know what is happening out there. Just like major shifts in history, technology has shaped a new way to relate among individuals and, specifically in our industry, has allowed consumers to have more platforms to express themselves. In a way, we now have more than a billion idea inceptors and of course, we have a huge chance of getting interesting stuff from that renovated imagination powerhouse comprised by regular people.

What really interests people is now more visible and competes with what we, as advertisers, think that is interesting to them. Basically consumers are telling us that life now is more exciting, and that advertising is just one element that sometimes amuses them, but only sometimes.

Among all these attempts from the advertising industry to interest consumers we find creative products that truly engage the consumer, “elfyourself” is a recent example. But more often than not, we find clumsy executions that just go after a contact point. A lot of marketers want to reach the consumer, no matter what. Here we see an interesting metaphor (we are full of them), entering our discourse: the 360o communication approach. In a nutshell, this is an euphemism to say, bombard them and make sure you hit them, anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

In physics, there’s a lot of magic stuff going on dealing with multidimensional reality: string theory, chaos theory, M-theory, fractals. In advertising we talk about 360o degree communications. This approach is inspired by consumer touch points. If we think of the consumer as the center, the 360o scope is a circle around his/her feet. In this circle, or 360o scope, advertising is a plethora of stimuli the consumer faces whenever and wherever he looks. That is basically what we are doing now, ads in airplane tables, urinals, eggs, cell phones, elevators, coffee cups, and the list goes on.

What is wrong this picture? First of all, doesn’t it make brands look a bit desperate? Those stimuli are all over the 360o scope, pushing consumers to try to escape them. These days, brands look like pathological ex-boyfriends trying to get some attention so their beloved fall back in love. Well, as usually happens, their beloved is probably in love with a rebel, badly dressed but cool guy that rides a motorcycle.

We can find another way to understand what we are doing wrong, at the neurological level: neurons struggle to get their message across with master brain decision makers, and since there are millions of neurons, they try to cancel out other neuron messages around them so they can get all the attention. Brands, funny enough, tend to behave just like neurons.

Just imagine the Ariel neuron, the VW neuron, the McDonald’s neuron all trying to get attention. While these brands spent countless media dollars to drown out the ‘neurons’ of competing brands, others neurons, Mentos, Diet Coke and YouTube, were able to accomplish this with less money and effort. What was their strength? Maybe it was the power of seeing simple people performing a spectacular but simple act? Or our childhood-unsatisfied desire to create a chemical reaction? Ask your planners.

If we just insist on targeting consumers with a 360o approach, for the sake of it, then our ads will be annoying obstacles for consumers to live their normal life or worse, they will be elements that due to their irrelevance, will only serve the purpose of making other stimuli stand out, such as: a YouTube video made in the Philippines, a TiVoed show and an underground-unbranded party.

In trying to avoid this, Account Planning is your best ally. When you make sure that agency teams actually understand what truly is motivating people, chances are that your advertising will generate worthy content, and your executions will help brand building. Where to put your message is the least of your problems. To make consumers fall in love, you just need a 20o scope, or less, but finding which 20o to target is the real challenge. You need to see how and where you can connect with what they stand for and what they want their brands to mean. You need to establish a ‘cultural connection’. If you don’t, you’ll not only be risking millions of dollars, but also undermining your ability to exist as a brand in the complex world ahead of us. The 360o approach is simplistic, clumsy and arrogant.

By: Ivan Sanchez
VP Account Planning
Latinvox