SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE

A 360° CONVERSATION

David Adelman, media director

Johnson & Johnson Global Marketing Group

Richard Beaven, CEO Initiative North America

Andrew Swinand, president-chief client officer Starcom Worldwide

The rise of digital media, with all its new forms of reaching consumers, is bringing about a change in how marketers and their agencies do business. Before, marketing efforts centered around different media silos, such as print, broadcast, cable and online. Today, in a move that is shaking up marketing as companies are pushed to rethink—and even restructure—their efforts, the focus is shifting to a customer-centric approach: a 360° media world.

Even while some are just starting to realize they need to change, the definition of 360° media is expanding as the marketers and their agencies already in this area push the boundaries and explore the shifting relationship with the consumer.

To find out where this is all heading, along with the wrenching changes the trends have wrought within companies, writer Kathy Haley talked recently with David Adelman, media director, Johnson & Johnson Global Marketing Group; Richard Beaven, CEO, Initiative North America; and Andrew Swinand, president-chief client officer, Starcom Worldwide. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

ADVERTISING AGE: Is 360° media the approach you and your organizations are using today?

DAVID ADELMAN: That’s a good enough name for it. We call it integrated communications.

ANDREW SWINAND: The definition has changed. Before, people talked about surrounding the target, and it was very much that you would build a silo around every angle. But it was all still very isolated. The biggest thing that changed is the definition of

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New York, as U.S. director of digital communications in March.

Smaller integrated shops, such as Deutsch Inc., say their larger competitors are finally coming around to their way of doing things, putting creative development and media planning under one roof. “We’ve been seeing for a number of years a growing frustration with the separateness that exists at the media-only shops,” says Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch. “They’ve figured out this all has to work together, and they’re hiring people to rebuild themselves back into integrated companies.”

Ms. Gerzema says Universal McCann is organizing itself from a communications perspective, tying three “ecosystems” together organically. The client relations department consists of account directors and planners who understand the business side and work with clients most directly. The insights and applications team includes researchers, media planners and consumer insight specialists. The operational team is the internal group working behind the scenes in human resources and internal communications to help optimize efficiencies across the board. Ms. Gerzema says that each group includes different disciplines but that each can learn from the other.

“One of the things I’m trying to do is share best practices,” Ms. Gerzema says. “Even though people may be in different

departments, their experience is similar. Making sure different disciplines are working together is crucial, with insights people providing oxygen to people providing ideas.”

As agencies reorganize, they are also trying to improve how they assess the effectiveness of their campaigns. Many companies are building proprietary systems and tools to measure how consumers come into contact with brands and which contacts are most effective in building usage and loyalty.

Both Starcom and Mediaedge:cia are working with market research company Integration to build custom versions of its MCA (Market Contact Audit) product. Mediaedge calls its tool Connections and designed it to analyze the relative impact of different media choices, not only in driving initial demand for a product but also in spurring consumers in the activation phase, when ad campaigns are trying to get them to buy.

By studying consumer behavior and the way different media influence it, Mediaedge and other agencies are adapting to the 360° world, says Lee Doyle, the company’s managing partner and director of client services. “We’re examining what is the communications challenge better than we have in the past,” he says.

Because tools such as Connections rely partly on consumer interviews, however, they can’t always provide much measure-

ment of emerging media that might be highly appropriate for some clients’ campaigns. To experiment with venues such as these, agencies and their clients must be willing to take some calculated risks, Mr. Tobaccowala says.

He recommends an approach he calls 95/5: “Take some of the most interesting people in your company and, instead of putting them against your biggest existing business, put them against your biggest opportunities.” Assign to these people 5% of the company’s budget to pursue the opportunity, leaving the rest of the company to deliver 100% of objectives with 95% of budget. Do not, under any circumstances, cut the 5% of budget assigned to the experimenters, and do not require them to move a single case of product.

“By their very nature these people know your existing businesses, and they have the credibility within the company that they can mess things up if they are learning,” Mr. Tobaccowala says. “And once they learn, they can incorporate their learning into the company.”

Above all, Mr. Tobaccowala says, companies must move forward with strategies like 95/5 if they are to take full advantage of 360° media realities.

“You cannot learn by thinking about this,” he says. “You can only learn by doing.” o

NOVEMBER 6, 2006

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