360 degrees and more

Call it total branding or 360-degree advertising. Branding strategies that go beyond the usual print or television campaigns seem to have caught the advertiser's fancy.

Amara Raja Batteries' retail outlet
THERE are several car drivers and two-wheeler riders in Chennai who would have got chilled bottles of mineral water at traffic junctions this summer, courtesy Amara Raja Batteries. The bottle came with a small note which said: `At 40 degrees Celsius, if your car has an Amaron battery, it doesn't need water, but you do.'

Similarly, Nerolac Paints is trying to reposition itself as a larger-than-life brand through its new advertising campaign which talks about Nerolac adding colour to everyone's life. The company's new brand ambassador, Amitabh Bachchan, signs off by saying, `Yeh rang hai jo har ek zindagi ko choota hai'.

The company recently carried forward its positioning of touching every individual's life by associating itself with an organisation for underprivileged children in Mumbai called Akanksha. It set up huge canvases in different parts of the city and called upon people to dip their hands into a can of Nerolac Paint and leave an imprint on the canvas. The company promised to donate Rs 2 for every colour imprint to Akanksha.

These are but just a couple of instances of 360-degree advertising, where the key advertising message is delivered in different ways and through various other media. "Most companies today expect their advertising agencies to think beyond the usual TV and press campaigns," says Indu Balachandran, Creative Director, JWT, Chennai.

Balachandran says that though most companies have been using media other than advertising to reach their target audience, clients over the past couple of years have been more focused about translating their key advertising message through other media. "For instance, the branding exercise that we had done for Parry's Coffy Bite was an argument on whether it was coffee or toffee. This was not only brought alive in our advertising campaign but also taken forward by sponsoring school-level debates, as debates are all about arguments."

"A 360-degree campaign nails the key brand message in the minds of the consumer in different ways," she adds. JWT has branded its 360-degree services as Thompson Total Branding.

In fact, the term 360-degree is the proprietary brand name of Ogilvy & Mather (O&M). Says R. Krishna Mohan, Executive Director, Ogilvy & Mather, "A lot of agencies offer complete branding services, but we at O&M try to bring alive the brand promise at every point the customer comes in contact with the brand," he says. "We try to surround customers with the brand message. We make sure that the message doesn't crowd him, but is available when it is most relevant," he adds.

Suguna Swamy, Former Creative Director, O&M, says, "360-degree is a single idea interpreted uniquely through respective medias. The 360-degree way intensifies brand experience."

A total branding campaign would therefore involve all the wings of an agency - creative, media, PR and direct marketing - working towards a single goal, which is to translate the brand values of a certain product through different media.

"You take the same brand idea through different platforms. The promotion needn't necessarily be done through an ad campaign. It could be done with the help of a PR exercise or a direct marketing campaign," says Nirvik Singh, Chairman, Grey Worldwide.

What is most important in a 360-degree campaign is that the message is delivered at a time when it is most important to the consumer, says O&M's Mohan. "If I could deliver a sachet of coffee with a packet of Aavin Milk at a consumer's doorstep, I would be doing it at a time when a steaming hot cup of coffee is his topmost priority," he adds.

Mohan quotes instances from a 360-degree campaign which O&M had done a couple of years ago for ANZ Grindlays Home Loans. "Before working out a 360-degree strategy, we usually track the various moments of truth when a consumer comes in contact with a brand in a day, a week or a month. In the case of ANZ Grindlays, we realised that the first contact of the consumer with the product is when he sees the ad and calls up the bank for information. Therefore, we gave the operator a script and told her how she should take the call and made sure that she didn't ask the customers unnecessary questions."

"As the brand promise of ANZ Grindlays Home Loans was `Going beyond expectations', we tied up with architects, paint companies, flooring and sanitaryware companies and got a good price on these products for all those who took an ANZ home loan. A consumer who decides to buy a house will definitely need an architect and paint. Therefore, by getting into an affinity market tie-up with all these segments, we were able to bring the brand promise alive," he adds.

So, what do clients have to say?

While the advertising agencies are all for the total branding concept, the companies also seem to be equally excited about it, and feel that a 360-degree branding exercise is essential.

S. Ramachandra, Executive Vice-President, Amara Raja Batteries, says that for a low-recall segment like batteries, a 360-degree branding exercise is essential for the consumers to remember the brand. "We did a number of exercises at various points of consumer contact. We started off by giving a distinct look to our exclusive retail outlets, we even created innovative battery cases and also labelled our products in black, in order to stand out. To increase the brand's recall we also distributed puzzles in Shatabdis, so that the passenger could spend time solving puzzles during their six-seven hour train journey."

"In order to position ourselves as a larger-than-life brand, it was essential for us to embark on a total branding exercise, apart from just running a print or TV campaign," says Anuj Jain, Vice-President (Marketing), Goodlass Nerolac.

Jain says the company's recent campaign, wherein the public in Mumbai were asked to leave imprints of their hands on canvasses set up in various parts of the city, was a great success. "We got around 40,000 imprints and were able to contribute around Rs 2 lakh to Akanksha, which went a long way in translating our positioning as a larger than life brand," he says.





The World Gold Council also did a 360-degree campaign to promote the usage of gold. The challenge here was to remove the notion that gold was slowly become passé. Though Sanjiv Agarwal, Managing Director (Indian sub-continent), World Gold Council, feels that a 360-degree campaign is an ideal way to translate the brand's ideologies, he also foresees some problems in the long run. "If you take up a 360-degree campaign, you are no doubt able to convey your core message through different media, and it also means a one-time brief to all the divisions of the agency, but as all of them are different business units, having their own financial bottomlines, accountability could become an issue in the long run."

However, Swamy, former Creative Director, O&M, says accountability will not really be an issue. "It all depends on how the client drives the point into the agency about how consistently he wants his core message to be conveyed through all the media."

Is 360-degree advertising a costly proposition? Mohan of O&M claims that a client spends much lesser on a 360-degree campaign, as it is a combined package. Hiring individual agencies for various jobs, he says, would be much more expensive.

"We have done an extensive 360-degree campaign to promote O&M's Eco-Village in Kodaikanal, for which we have spent only Rs 3.5 lakh in the last one year." 360-degree advertising delivers a lot more for a lot less, he says.