Integrated marketing

Getting it together

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It is now a simple fact of life that business operates in an age where people and organisations have access to an increasing variety of media. Not only has the Web opened up access to a huge range of different market segments, it has also influenced the expansion of print titles targeted at these groups. But as media vehicles multiply, the marketing communications process becomes more complex and getting your message through, more difficult. In such a climate the way you market your organisation needs to be more strategic and carefully planned.

It would therefore seem to make sense for organisations – particularly SMEs with limited budgets – to think about ways in which they might integrate their marketing communications in order to maximise the value of their efforts. But it is crucial to recognise that true integration will not only impact on the marketing processes but also on the wider organisational and business processes of an organisation. What can be further identified with the implementation of integrated marketing communications is a recognition of the value and need for adopting a genuinely strategy-based approach to marketing.

So why is it that it is only in the past fifteen years or so that the question of integrated marketing communications has moved up the business agenda?

Quite simply, this can be related to the technologically driven changes in organisational and management structures and business processes that were such a defining characteristic of the late 80s and 90s. Business process re-engineering, downsizing, outsourcing, delayering of management, all had one thing in common: a drive for more efficient and accountable organisations which were focused on meeting the needs of the customer rather than with sustaining and perpetuating themselves as organisations per se.

The structural changes brought about in business processes as a result of the introduction of technology were given further impetus by the recession of the early 90s. The incidence of down-sizing increased as organisations of all types and sizes looked to become even more efficient.

The combined effect of these changes also led to the challenging of departmental, ‘silo mentalities’ that so often prevented the flow of information within an organisation and consequently with its customers.

Marketing has not been – and there is no reason why it should have been – isolated from these changes. In fact, with the emphasis on meeting the needs of customers and the market, marketing practitioners should be in the vanguard of bringing about market-driven changes in business and management processes.

What is now obvious is that with the pressure from corporate managers and clients looking for cost savings and greater efficiencies increasing, the drive towards the integration of marketing communications is becoming irresistible.

As if all this wasn’t enough, greater levels of audience communications literacy, media cost inflation, media and audience fragmentation, information overload, increased competitiveness and low levels of brand differentiation, is further making the case for adopting a more strategic, integrated approach to the whole issue of marketing.

As a process, the development of integrated marketing communications is an acknowledgement that different media will channel messages in particular ways. It is also tacit recognition that communication is a relative and multi-vocal activity operating at a number of levels. According to this model, mass advertising might best be used as a means of sounding and communicating brand values which tend to operate more on the emotive, sub-conscious level. Marketing PR might then be used to position the brand and enhance reputation by means of more rational appeals at a conscious level. Sales promotions, direct marketing and web-based activities might then be constructed to elicit particular responses. To be successful integration needs to be concerted, consistent and add synergy to the marketing effort.

Implementing integrated marketing communications ‘solutions’ requires a more holistic and strategic approach that does not lend itself to quick fixes or simple, formulaic approaches. What it does is provide a more balanced approach and an acknowledgement of the dynamic complexity of the communications process.

Organisations of all kinds are now faced with what has become a fundamental paradox of modern communications strategy. While the technology might be making it easier to get our messages out into the market place, it is necessary to work harder and – to use a contemporary advertising cliché – smarter, to make them effective and to ensure they make their mark. The experience of many dotcoms at the turn of the Millennium was testimony to the consequences of not heeding the lessons of this modern communications paradox. If we simply add to the overloaded communications channels without taking a measured view of what we are trying to achieve we will be wasting our money.
Glyn Fry

(An earlier version of this article first appeared in the Spring 2001 edition of Business Direction)