Bryan Wiener

Today we announced a strategic partnership with social software firm Expion that will result in a powerful integrated earned and paid Facebook platform and services offering, bringing together community management, advertising, social applications and advanced analytics to measure and improve our clients’ Facebook marketing efforts. Our parent company Dentsu Network West has also reached an agreement to take a minority stake in Expion to catapult the company’s growth.

This move underscores our agency’s firm belief that the success of brands in social rests heavily on a keen understanding of the interplay between paid and earned media. It’s a vision shared not only with Expion, but with Facebook as well, which is slated to announce a series of updates at the Feb. 29 fMC Conference that will further expedite this convergence.

Despite continued investment in Facebook by brands – marketers created four million brand pages and spent more than $3 billion on advertising within the platform in 2011 – there exists a technology gap that has prohibited brands from effectively managing and optimizing across paid and earned media. Our goal in partnership with Expion is to therefore create an environment that promotes seamless cross-functional collaboration and more holistic management of a brand’s overall Facebook program. For example, real-time community analytics will inform our ad targeting and bidding strategies, resulting in better advertising performance. We will also be able to more closely align advertising with content strategy to drive deeper engagement and fan acquisition.

Earned and paid media will continue to converge across the social ecosystem, with each having a multiplying impact on the other. This creates a need for an integrated approach to managing and measuring social programs across community, content and advertising. We look forward to working with Expion to advance this shared vision of the future of social media.

It’s with great honor and excitement today that I announce that 360i has been named to Advertising Age’s Best Places to Work for 2011. Our agency was one of 30 featured among thousands of organizations — not solely agencies – in the media and marketing space.

The list highlights companies that have created cultures that are both respected and embraced by employees – places that boast unique benefits, immense growth opportunities and a real dedication to collaboration and creativity. Writes Ad Age: The companies on this list are “combining benefits and culture to create environments for workers to thrive.”

This honor is especially important as it follows a separate accolade from Ad Age, listing 360i on its prestigious Agency A-List of top 10 agencies in the country. In fact, we were the only agency recognized as one of the Best Places to Work and an Agency A-Lister – something we see as causal rather than a coincidence. We believe there is a direct correlation between our strong employee culture and the work we produce on behalf of our clients.

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We’re thrilled to announce today that Dentsu – one of the world’s most renowned advertising companies – has acquired 360i along with its sister companies,  SearchIgnite and Netmining.

Dentsu presented us with a wonderful opportunity to increase the value we provide to our clients by granting an increased global presence, enhanced technology investments and expanded, integrated capabilities. At the same time, Dentsu has partnered with us to maintain the management style, culture of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that have defined our company to date. We will continue to run our agency in this way within the Dentsu family. You can read the official announcement here.

As we embark on this new and exciting chapter in our company’s just-over ten year history, we will continue to offer forward-thinking solutions to our clients and retain and recruit more great people for our growing team along the way. While we look forward to exploring each of the far-reaching benefits this new synergy has to offer, our chief objective and focus at 360i remains unchanged – to best serve our clients and to relentlessly pursue innovation and the emerging opportunities that will meet their business objectives. We are confident that this move makes us better equipped than ever to deliver on that promise.

As always, you can follow our journey and thoughts here on Digital Connections and of course on Twitter @360i.

Warm regards,
Bryan Wiener
CEO, 360i

By Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i

Display advertising: Can it be both a branding and a performance marketing tool? I’d argue yes, but not at the same time. And that’s where some of the recent debates over the art-and-science approach to display have gotten it wrong.

You see, we need to rethink the way we buy and sell display advertising in a way that clearly distinguishes between various marketers’ objectives — whether that is direct response (e.g., e-commerce sales or generating web leads) or enhancing the brand (influencing purchase intent, favorability ratings, etc). We’ll be best served by treating it not as a hybrid but as two different tactics.

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