Integrated Marketing Communications
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a strategic approach that aligns and coordinates various marketing communication channels to deliver a consistent and unified message to target audiences. It aims to create a seamless and synergistic experience for consumers across different touchpoints, such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing, and digital media, to enhance brand awareness and engagement.
8 Key excerpts on "Integrated Marketing Communications"
eBook - ePub- Ian McDonnell, Malcolm Moir(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 5 Integrated marketing communication Learning outcomes After reading and discussing the contents of this chapter, students will be able to: • define and describe integrated marketing communication (IMC); • show an understanding of how IMC has evolved and the levels of integration; • outline reasons for the growth in the IMC approach and how sponsorship fits. Introduction Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is the term applied to the concept that all forms of communication and messaging are carefully linked together. At its most basic level, IMC means integrating all the marketing tools, so that they work together in harmony. Here is more detailed explanation (Moore 1992, p. 1): IMC is the strategic co-ordination of multiple communication voices. Its aim is to optimise the impact of persuasive communication on both consumer and non-consumer (e.g. trade, professional) audiences by co-ordinating such elements of the marketing mix as advertising, public relations, promotions, direct marketing and package design. While sponsorship is not included in Moor’s examples of the marketing mix, it could easily be listed as one of these elements. Marketing tools work more effectively if they work together in harmony rather than in isolation. The outcome is greater than it would be if the marketing tools were not used to speak consistently with one voice all the time. Background Before we explore IMC in more detail here is a bit of background (Holm 2006). IMC became a hot topic in 1990s in the field of marketing. Four stages of IMC have been identified, starting from tactical co-ordination to financial and strategic integration. Holm’s (2006) research suggests that the majority of firms have not progressed beyond the first stages and very few have moved to a strategic level...
eBook - ePubIntegrated Communication
Synergy of Persuasive Voices
- Esther Thorson, Jeri Moore(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Introduction Esther Thorson University of Missouri-Columbia Jeri Moore CCS Ltd. DOI: 10.4324/9780203773475-1 Integrated Marketing Communications are those messages that address multiple consumer and nonconsumer audiences and achieve synergy of messages and timing. The concept of integrated marketing communication (IMC) continues to produce both intense interest (e.g., “Ad Age,” 1993) and a violent negative response, generally along the lines of “Why do these people think they’ve invented something new? We’ve been doing integrated marketing for years?” (e.g., Duncan & Caywood, chapter 1, this volume). It is true, in fact, that many smaller advertising agencies have been using a variety of persuasive tools to market their clients’ brands (Gronstedt & Thorson, 1993), and that there are many examples of brand campaigns that have coordinated to one degree or another a number of persuasive tools. However, many—if not most—marketers that employ advertising, public relations, direct marketing, and promotions companies to produce multiple messages about the same brands do not fully integrate their communications in the sense used in this book. This brings us to the question of what, precisely, we mean by IMC. For us, IMC is the strategic coordination of multiple communication voices. Its aim is to optimize the impact of persuasive communication on both consumer and nonconsumer (e.g., trade, professional) audiences by coordinating such elements of the marketing mix as advertising, public relations, promotions, direct marketing, and package design. Although there are a number of important publications that have focused on this issue (e.g., Schultz, Tannenbaum, & Lauterborn, 1992 ; Wang & Petrison, 1991), there is thus far little attempt to discuss or research theory about how the persuasive voices work together. For us there appear to be at least three important issues that must be addressed within the concept of IMC...
eBook - ePub- Craig E. Carroll(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Clarke L. Caywood Clarke L. Caywood Caywood, Clarke L. Integrated Marketing Communications Integrated Marketing Communications 361 364 Integrated Marketing Communications Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the ethical process of managing all transparent sources of information about a product or service to which a consumer, prospective consumer, or stakeholder is exposed that truthfully and behaviorally moves the person toward a sustainable sale and/or relationship and maintains consumer or stakeholder loyalty. It combines advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact. More recent definitions of IMC expand on these topics to make the concept broader, more managerial, and less tactical, including concerns for ethics, transparency, cross-organizational collaboration, and multiple stakeholders. IMC broadens the fields of marketing, advertising, and public relations regarding the strategic challenge of branding and reputation management. This entry provides a brief history of the evolution of IMC, a description of its connection to other organizational communication functions, and its ties to corporate reputation management. History IMC represents the cooperation between advertising and public relations as taught from the beginning of the 20th century in schools of journalism. It was first developed as an academic and professional field at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Today, the field exists as a course in many schools of journalism and schools of communications and in a few business schools. Perhaps the most powerful strategic use of multiple channels began in the 19th century, with the intense use of buttons, flyers, stump speeches, newspaper quotes, pitching of news stories, and advertisements in political campaigns...
eBook - ePubIntegrated Marketing Communication
Advertising and Promotion in a Digital World
- Jerome M. Juska(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 What Is Integrated Marketing Communication? Learning Objectives To understand the value of IMC for brand marketing To describe the six major categories of IMC To examine the structure of the IMC industry To explain the IMC planning cycle Introduction Marketing has changed. There are no longer just a few limited choices for reaching customers. Today, there are multiple digital options with a unified system for planning, implementing, and measuring advertising and sales promotion for brands. It is called Integrated Marketing Communication, or IMC, which insures consistent consumer messages and coordinated media. This textbook is designed to help you prepare an IMC Plan. Information from each chapter can be used to organize and develop each section of an IMC Plan. As you proceed, important decisions are made about strategies, options, costs, and consequences. Programs, activities, events, and creative materials are developed. Brand messages are prepared for digital and traditional media, as well as public relations and sales promotion proposals. It is part of the process of applying research to design strategies for IMC. After completing the first chapter, you will have a much better understanding of the functions of IMC and what is involved in preparing an IMC Plan. This includes learning about the procedures to implement successful advertising, sales promotion, brand visibility, public relations, digital media, and personal contact campaigns. When finished, you will have a valuable IMC Plan for a brand, small business, community project, or organization. Definition of IMC The American Marketing Association defines IMC as a concept that “recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines…and that combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact” (American Marketing Association Dictionary)...
eBook - ePubIntegrated Marketing Communication
Advertising and Promotion in a Digital World
- Jerome M. Juska(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This involves collecting and analyzing consumer, product, and market research and then, using the information to make decisions involving strategies, budgets, and specific programs, activities, and events. The primary goal is to combine effective creative concepts with efficient media delivery methods. Another way to describe IMC is getting the right message to the right people in the right place at the right time for the right reason with measurable results. The IMC industry consists of four major groups: advertisers, agencies, media companies, and suppliers. Advertisers have the most control over planning, developing, and implementing IMC strategies, because they decide and approve budgets. Agencies are hired by advertisers to make creative and media recommendations. After the plans are approved, the agency, along with suppliers, produces the IMC materials and buys the media. As an important marketing variable, IMC uses methods from six basic strategic categories: advertising, sales promotion, brand visibility, public relations, digital media, and personal contact. Advertising generates brand name awareness and preference, while sales promotion motivates people to buy products and services by offering a variety of financial and reward incentives. Brand visibility includes anything that helps people to recognize and remember the brand. Public relations is responsible for the publication of product news and information in multiple forms of media without the expenses involved in placing advertising. However, the content is controlled by publishers. Digital media include the entire spectrum of online communication, from websites and social media to streaming video and mobile apps...
eBook - ePub- Philip J. Kitchen, Ebru Uzunoglu(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...Coordinated marketing communications associates “integrated” with “coordination”. This refers to the coordination of all tools, such as, for example, advertising, public relations, and direct marketing. The goal is to produce campaigns that achieve synergy (i.e., to develop awareness and build brand image) and at the same time evoke behavioural responses from target audiences (Nowak and Phelps, 1994). This unifying view requires that various communication tools designed to appeal to audiences in different stages of the buying process converge to maximize the impact of communications. Unlike the one-voice view, the coordinated view recognizes that multiple-brand positioning strategy is necessary for different customer groups in the target market. There is empirical evidence that this view is embraced by IMC practitioners. In practical terms, companies apply IMC by identifying multiple customer groups in the market, and directing differentiated communications efforts to each of them (Nowak and Siraj, 1996 as cited in Lee and Park, 2007). Thus, well-coordinated marketing communications campaigns create awareness, images, or beliefs as well as boost behavioural responses of diverse customer groups (Lee and Park, 2007). Notably, this identification approach would work well internationally or globally by adapting messages and media where necessary in relation to target audiences or markets. Another nascent global conceptualization was suggested by Cathey and Schumann (1996, as cited in Lee and Park, 2007). They identified three important aspects of IMC which are: integration of messages and media, audience orientation, and assessment of impact. They emphasized the importance of coordination of messages and media to create the most positive communications experiences for consumers who may be at different stages in the buying process...
eBook - ePub- Chris Fill, Graham Hughes(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The term has been used to refer to the strategic use of marketing communications and, as the real focus of this module is operational, the term ‘co-ordinated marketing communications’ (CMC) has been adopted. The CMC refers to a harmonized, planned and synchronous use of promotional and media mixes. Issues relating to IMC are explored in the Professional postgraduate diploma in marketing. Butterfield (1999) identifies several more Cs in considering successful ‘total’ brand communications – clarity, coherence, consistency, control, commitment, contact and customer-driven. He suggests that these factors might be considered ‘obvious’, but they are often ignored as companies fail to understand the nature of branding as being a holistic, longer-term process and not, as exemplified in many cases, as a series of short-term, TV advertising-driven executions. Advertising Advertising is one of the most influential forms of communications within the promotional mix, and the one that perhaps has the most impact upon our everyday lives...
eBook - ePub- Lynne Eagle, Barbara Czarnecka, Stephan Dahl, Jenny Lloyd(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...At the same time, there was an increasing awareness that most markets were not homogeneous, but rather made up of distinct segments with diverse interests, attitudes and media usage habits. 10 Concerns were raised regarding the impact of clutter within mass media, i.e., many advertisements competing for a share of attention 11 and attempts to stand out from competitors and rise above the clutter which, to some observers, seemed to lead to less emphasis on product or service attributes, and more on providing entertainment, at the risk of being different rather than relevant to the consumer. 12 Unsurprisingly, a greater emphasis on determining the return on investment from marketing activity also occurred, leading to a focus on the measurement of the impact of marketing communications activity which continues in the current era. 13 These pressures lead to considerable interest in the way in which marketing communications activity occurred and the way in which synergies could maximise their individual and combined efforts under the banner of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). This inevitably led to considerable debate as to whether IMC was merely a management fad, 14 whether it offered anything new or merely reflected best practice and calls for a precise definition as to what IMC actually was. 15 One of the most widespread definitions is: a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communications disciplines, e.g. general advertising, direct response, sales promotion and public relations – and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact. (American Association of Advertising Agencies quoted in Duncan and Everett) 15 (p...
