PBL session 5

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)

1. What is IMC and what does it mean for a company to follow IMC? (Is it a strategic or an operational tool?)

Before we go to the more reliable sources, let's have a quick look at what Wikipedia tells us:

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the use of marketing strategies to optimise the communication of a consistent message of the company's brands to stakeholders. Coupling methods together improves communication as it harnesses the benefits of each channel, which when combined together builds a clearer and vaster impact than if used individually. IMC requires marketers to identify the boundaries around the promotional mix elements and to consider the effectiveness of the campaign's message. 

Some other definitions:

• Business dictionary: an approach to achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign, through a well coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce each other.
• According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, IMC recognizes the value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines, advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion and combines them to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact
• Multimedia: at its most basic level, IMC means integrating all the promotional tools so that they work together in harmony. Promotion is one of the four P's in the marketing mix. Promotion has its own mix of communication tools. Alle of these communications tools work better if they work together in harmony rather than in isolation. Their sum is greater than their parts - providing they speak consistently with one voice all the time, every time.

What can we see in all these definitions?

• It's about using different promotional tools together
• The sum of all the tools is worth more than all the ones individually
• All the tools need to tell the same message
• It's about a variety of communication disciplines (advertising, public relations, personal selling...)

I also found several pdf's of books on google scholar about IMC, which I will use for this and the next questions:

• The Marketing Book, chapter 17 - Integrated Marketing Communication (Tony Yeshin)
• Integrated Marketing Communications (2nd edition) - Pickton and Broderick
• Chapter 6 - Rachel Baker

Besides the pfd's, I also used the book Marketing Communications (6th edition) from Chris Fill for these questions. Chapter 10 is dedicated to IMC.

Pickton and Broderick present the Integrated Marketing Communications Framework, which looks like this. The entire book is build around these models:

They also say that there's more to marketing than the loose set of marketing activities. It's the way a company integrates and co-ordinates all the different channels to deliver a clear and consistent message. As Kotler said: 

A way of looking at the whole marketing process from the viewpoint of the customer

In the most simple form, it can be defined as the management process of integrating all marketing communication activities across relevant audience points to achieve greater brand coherence.

And if you can't get enough of definitions, here you go:



All of the books say there's quite a debate on how exactly to define IMC, because it sometimes differs on the practical side. Some see it as a replacement for the traditional above-the-line and below-the-line, others see it as holistically.

Anyway, a lot of definitions, but the core is clear: integrate your marketing activities to give your audience a clear, cohesive message.

Doing this in a good way, will lead to a lot of benefits, for example:

• Creative integrity
• Consistent messages
• Cost savings
• Better use of media
• Easier working relations
• ...

I think this illustration summarises it easily:

2. Who are in charge of IMC? What are the roles of the company and the different agencies? (such as marketing/brand/communication/advertising/media/research agencies)

In their book, Pickton and Broderick present the IMC mix, which generally looks like this:

In this mix, they divide different fields:

• Public Relations: the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its public (between marketing and communications)
• Sponsorship: contribution to an activity by an organisation. You give something (usually money) and get something in return (usually exposure to prospects). It's part of PR.
• Advertising: the use of paid mass media, by an identified sponsor, to deliver marketing communications to target audiences
• Direct Marketing Communications: a marketing system based on an individual customer (personalised content)
• Sales Promotion: covers all types of promotional actions, excluding advertising, PR and personal selling. It's associated with free offers, price deals, premium offers, coupons and other merchandising.
• Packaging: the 'clothing' the product appears in. It combines functional protection as well as graphic design and product information.
• Exhibitions and trade shows: temporary events for the purpose of displaying and/or selling products, usually based around a particular theme, product category or customer grouping. 
• Personal Selling and Sales management: counter sales, customer service... every form of communication that's about a direct personal contact with the customer

We can find about the same categories in the other two pdf books I mentioned. One we can add is internet and all the digital aspects which come along with it. 

Why is there a need for this IMC? Well, according to the book Marketing Communications, there was the idea before that every medium had its specific goal (for example: sales promotion is to get immediate profit). A company always had to go to several agencies to complete their communication requirements with their various audience. Companies now have begun to re-orient their communications away from mass media approaches and want more interaction with the customers. That's why IMC is needed. You have to integrate all the different aspects and create one clear message instead of different messages created by different agencies.

So what has to be integrated?

• Communication tools: harmonise the messages by all the promotional tools (like design, colours, tag line)
• Messages: the theme and the set of core messages used in any campaign should first be determined and then deployed as an integrated whole across the communication mix (= synergy). It's the management's task to look for gaps and fix them. 
• Marketing mix: all the elements of the marketing mix should be integrated ad well (product, price, promotion, people, place)
• Branding: internally, organisations have to be sufficiently coordinated so that the brand is perceived externally as consistent and uniform. This becomes more challenging every day, since the audience shrinks and a brand cannot live from 1 target audience anymore. They need to appeal to different kind of people (chameleon brands)
• Strategy: IMC requires a deep understanding of how and where messages were created. IMC has its roots in the overall business strategy of an organisation. If you for example go for a low-cost strategy, your messages should have something about the price advantage in it. 
• Employees: you can't sustain IMC if it isn't supported by all customer-facing employees. All the employees should live the brand. This can be obtained by training or in-house documents. A change in culture will need more time.
• Technology: thanks to new technologies like databases, managers have a better overview of customer's behaviour, attitudes and feelings towards brands. This allows more precise and insightful communication. Technology shouldn't only be integrated in the information system, but also in the marketing strategies from companies. It can be very successful to develop an integrated framework of all the different communication methods.

As for agencies, there are 2 problems:

• Should the agency or the client lead the process of developing IMC? Usually, the answer is the client. 
• Most major brands operate with several agencies, each providing different skills (known as roster agencies). How to manage this integrative approach? One way is to appoint a lead agency that assumes responsibility for integration, another way is for the client to drive the programme forward and to involve the roster agencies.

3. How does/should the client company follow IMC? What are the roles of its different agencies?

This refers back to some things I mentioned in the previous question. The client company can either lead the process itself or make one of the roster companies a lead agency.

According to The Marketing Book, the task of developing IMC is not a one man's job. Usually, the marketeer will consult:

• An advertising agency
• A public relations consultancy
• A sales promotion company
• A media specialist

It's important that there's a feedback mechanism between all the elements. This doesn't mean that every copy or visual element should be the same. The most important part is that the story conveys the same message. Each element of a campaign needs to reinforce another one. 

Let's see how they did it in the trigger. Dawn Dishwashing Liquid wanted to convey the message that they bring you more value than some other (cheaper) brands and that especially for a new Hispanic target audience.

They combined several methods, which actually all conveyed this message:

• Advertisement: flyers, billboards, tv, radio...
• Event: eating/washing event
• Torture test

Let's look at another example (also watched this site) from feminine care brand Always: The brand wanted to target the enxt generation. The company noticed an opportunity to support girls as they transition from puberty to young women, according to a case study from Design and Art Direction (D&AD), a British charity that promotes excellence in design and advertising.

“We set out to champion the girls who were the future of the brand,” Judy John, CEO and chief creative officer of advertising firm Leo Burnett Canada, told D&AD. “Girls first come in contact with Always at puberty, a time when they are feeling awkward and unconfident-a pivotal time to show girls the brand’s purpose and champion their confidence.”

Research discovered that more than one-half of women claimed they experienced a decline in confidence at puberty. The Always creative team was drawn to the derogatory phrase “like a girl” and developed an integrated marketing campaign to transform it to a phrase of empowerment. The campaign uses television, print and social media, but the centerpiece of #LikeAGirl is a video created by documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield. It led to the following results, according to D&AD.

• The film generated more than 85 million views on YouTube from more than 150 countries.
• Prior to watching the film, 19 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds had a positive association toward “like a girl.” After watching, 76 percent no longer saw the phrase negatively.
• Two out of three men who watched the film said they’d now think twice before using “like a girl” as an insult.
• The campaign won D&AD awards across eight categories and generated considerable global awareness.