No escape

It's all over the place: 360 degree communication.

Don't get alarmed, but a brand wants to talk to you. Badly. How badly? Wherever you are, wherever you turn, it'll be there, ready to engage you.

An exaggeration this may be, but it's true that ad agencies and their clients are sold on the idea of reaching the consumer any which way possible. If there are eyeballs gallavanting about the malls, grab them. If there are surfers in cyberspace, nab them. If there are ears at the other end of a phone-in service, hold them.

"The consumer's world has to be tapped from a holistic angle," explains Prasoon Joshi, regional creative director, south and southeast Asia, McCann Erickson, "advertising and marketing will have to be present where consumers are "" it is as simple as that." And consumers are not always glued to media.

"Advertisers are increasingly looking beyond the box," adds Josy Paul, national creative director, David, "Digital media and online viral messaging are on the rise." So, should traditional media hit the panic button? No. It's not going to overthrow regular media advertising.

According to Santosh Sood, COO, Rediffusion DYR, clients must have the comfort of complete solutions, that's all. "Advertising still contributes over 90 per cent of any agency's revenues," he says. It's the creative crowd that must sweat, for it means more workload.

"There was a time when agency slogans read 'An idea a day, a campaign a week'. Today, it's all about an idea at breakfast, a campaign by lunch and 360 activation by dinner," quips Paul.

Not everybody is sold on 360 degrees, though. R Balakrishnan, national creative director, Lowe, dismisses the concept. "To me, it's just a fancy name "" out of 360 degrees, 358 is essentially the idea, or creativity," he says. Other critics say it's too scatter-headed as an approach.

"Creating too many faces of an agency results in diffused focus," says Tarun Das, director, integrated ideas, Oxygen, a small agency, "In fact, specialised shops are 'in' these days," he contends.

Balakrishnan's own agency is a full-service agency. So his point is not that it implies a loss of focus, but that it's not the real McCoy. "It is ideation alone that is core," as he puts it, "the rest are all peripheral."

Fair enough. But even a strong core message can't always afford to miss a degree here or there if it wants to make impact.