Dentsu Revives 360i With Lean Team and Fixed-Fee Model

Dentsu is resurrecting search agency 360i as a "solution" within the wider Dentsu network spanning social, creators, and community, the holding company said Wednesday. The new 360i will be led by a team of just four, helmed by Christine Cotter as managing director, 360i and head of social innovation at Dentsu. Joining her is a yet-to-be-announced head of creative, head of media, and head of analytics. These four leaders will then “cast” teams from across the network based on client needs. Dentsu is positioning the model as a departure from traditional agency structures, with dedicated teams and labor-based commercial models. Instead, 360i will pull together specialists from across Dentsu's media, creative, data, and technology capabilities on a project basis. “It's not an agency and we aren’t building out a 150-person team,” Cotter said. “It's another door that you can come in to work with Dentsu” and get the “scale of a holdco but the speed of an indie agency.” 360i was founded in 1998 as a search marketing agency and was acquired by Dentsu in 2010. The brand was retired in 2022 with the formation of Dentsu Creative. Oreo, HBO, Coca-Cola, and Capital One were among its former clients. While 360i originally helped brands navigate the rise of search engines, the new iteration is focused on helping them compete in a time of social algorithms and AI recommendations. “I've worked in social my entire life. I remember 360i; I remember how innovative it was and how disruptive it was. It really was the gold star of what you want to do in social and who you want to partner with as a brand,” Cotter said. The new 360i offering spans social, influencer, creative and community, with AI embedded throughout. Central to the new proposition is speed. Cotter argues that brands increasingly need to respond to culture, social trends, and platform changes in days rather than weeks. It could take up to four weeks for a traditional agency to go from initial briefing to content delivery. Cotter claims that 360i can create concepts for review just days after receiving a brief. "We're coming up with new ideas and getting into the market a lot faster," she said. AI-native and fixed-fee The new 360i is among a new cohort of agencies calling themselves AI-native, despite the brand's launch nearly three decades ago. Cotter explained that AI is foundational to how the agency will work, not an add-on feature. 360i will tap into dentsu.Connect, dentsu’s AI operating system, for insights, idea development, content, creator activation, and measurement. “AI is not a layer on top of a system that already exists. We're fueling it in everything that we do,” Cotter said. “AI supports all of our thinking, all of our communications, all of our ways that we create content and go to market with creators.” 360i is relaunching with a fixed-fee model rather than labor based commercial terms. Cotter said the agency will be “outcomes based,” meaning that fee structures will be set around delivering on goals set out in a brief. “It's a mechanism to deliver on that agile model and speed and get rid of that back-and-forth that clutters the client-agency relationship,” she said. “Tell us what you need, we'll tell you how much it costs, and we will get to that outcome.” Cotter said that while some people will immediately understand why now is the right moment to bring back 360i, others may be less convinced. “We're not just bringing it back and saying, ‘It worked 10 years ago,’ but being really thoughtful about what it means now.”

Agencies

Dentsu Revives 360i With Lean Team and Fixed-Fee Model

Storied search agency returns as a lean, AI-focused "solution"

Hannah Bowler

Agencies

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