Rajesh Joshi of Chariot Media on Why a 360-Degree Approach Still Works as Agencies Specialise
Delhi [India], November 13: Advertising agencies in India are narrowing their focus. Some handle only digital, others only outdoor or performance marketing, and each pitches depth in one area. Rajesh Joshi of Chariot Media has taken the opposite route. Joshi, the director of the New Delhi agency, has built the business around a 360-degree model, where television, radio, print, outdoor and digital are planned as one campaign instead of five separate ones.
Why agencies are specialising
The appeal of specialisation is easy to see. A digital agency can spend all its time learning how platforms change. An outdoor specialist knows which sites work and which ones only look good on a rate card. Clients get a narrow service, a clear price and a team that does one thing well. None of this is a flaw in the specialist model. It simply works best when the brand’s needs are narrow.
The trouble starts when a brand needs more than one channel, which most growing brands do. It ends up hiring several agencies, and each one writes its own plan, reports its own numbers and defends its own budget line. Nobody owns the whole picture.
What a split plan costs a brand
Take a retailer preparing for a festive season. The television spot goes to one agency, the newspaper ads to another, and the social media push to a third. By launch day the TV film uses one offer, the print ad uses a slightly different one, and the social posts have a tone that matches neither. A single plan would have fixed the offer once and carried it across every medium.
