Communication silos don’t work
After 14 years of practicing integrated marketing communications (IMC), I never thought I’d write a post about it.
I guess there was an assumption on my part that after all these years that most marketers were already integrating their efforts…until I saw this comment on David Mullen’s blog post:
“I’ve heard many people in our industry scoff at the idea of integrated marketing communications. It was always great in theory, but hard and messy in practice.”
Scoff? Hard? Messy?
The definition of IMC on Wikipedia:
“a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.”
Sounds easy to me…
In their book “Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting it all Together and Making it Work” (1993), Don Schultz and Stanley Tannebaum state that IMC is also about “talking to people who buy or don’t buy based on what they see, hear, feel, and so on, not just about your product or service.”
What’s the problem? Why is IMC such a struggle? My first thought was to wonder how many agencies and corporations still exist with information silos. Perhaps a lot and maybe that’s the problem?
According to “Developing a Creative and Innovative Integrated Marketing Communications Plan“ by James R. Ogden, one insight might be:
“The problem with the integration of the marketing concept into today’s businesses and organizations is that many top executives learned different methods of management. The old adage ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ may be one of the stumbling blocks to the adoption of a customer orientation.”
The book then goes on to state:
“Many businesses are organized around departments, which are set up to specialize in given tasks. With this system, companies and organizations build fences around their duties. They become territorial in nature and want no part of corporate overlapping. Each territory needs to be protected by departmental managers, who may fear for their jobs. Because of these organizational structures, it has been hard to sell the marketing concept to many businesses and organizations, but without it there are decreased sales and profits.”
James Ogden wrote his book in 1998. Here is it 16 years since both books were written and it seems that businesses are still struggling with moving towards customer-oriented communications.
Back in the day, IMC referred to all the traditional marketing goodies: direct mail, PR, advertising, e-mail marketing, sales promotions, Internet marketing, etc.
But today, simply put, communication silos don’t work because marketers cannot silo how audiences & communities string together & respond to all the communications they receive. ( “Dear Customer: This message is from PR. That message is from Advertising. And the other message is from E-Marketing. Please don’t confuse the three as they serve different purposes, contain different messages and you must react to each separately so we can tell our VP of Marketing that our individual campaigns worked.”)
Like I said, I’ve been fortunate to have always been doing IMC, so I can’t comment on what the challenges are today. But I’d really like to gain some insights in to the mindset that David describes. If you are working in an agency or corporation that has not embraced IMC, would you be willing to share with us your insights, challenges and experiences?
And one final thought… what happens when we add social media to the mix? Will social media finally force companies out of their communication silos?
If you are a marketer interested in learning more about IMC, check out Amazon’s selection of books on IMC. Medill also offers the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications.
NOTE: Integrated Marketing Communications was pioneered at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. However, other than a Digital Marketing course that covers social networking, it doesn’t appear that social media has been added to the curriculum.
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Great Post, Beth!
It really does take a village to raise a child – for sake of this imagery, we’ll call an external communications effort a ‘child.’
NOW…our ‘children’ need to have a variety of influences to make it well-rounded individuals. We can’t just have our kids pigeonholing themselves into just one area – it may give them a ‘specialty’ or intense focus; but they will lose out on being able to ‘interact’ other kids in the playground. Some of these ‘kids’ going by the names of
* advertising
* guerilla marketing
* public relations
* social media
* etc.
PLUS, you’re shortening the lifespan of your kids when you keep em’ away from playing with others.
Almost sounds cruel when you think about it.
But, opening up your ‘kids’ to
* play with others
* learn from others
* share with others
is as important as anything you can do for em.’
Narciso Tovar, Big Noise Communications’s last blog post..The Tao of Rocky Balboa: It Ain’t About How Hard You Hit…
“Integrated Marketing Communications was pioneered at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. However, other than a Digital Marketing course that covers social networking, it doesn’t appear that social media has been added to the curriculum.”
The second IMC program in the country was started at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1992. I was in that program and received my Masters in 1993.
We had the opportunity to be part of social media at its earliest stages. Apple had a media research lab in Boulder so as one of our electives we could take an Internet/digital media course there.
Our course involved meeting weekly with the Apple staff and discussing how the Internet was going to serve the needs of the news community, advertisers, and readers.
This was pre-Netscape, so we were pioneers of a sort, trying to anticipate what the Internet would mean for the average online user.
[...] @ 1:56 pm Tags: Marketing, planning, Creative, strategy, agency, Partner I was reading a blog today (the Harte of Marketing) about the importance of integrated [...]
I agree with your post. However, your blog left out the other cause of failure to integrate: clients that look for pieces/parts solutions.
Typically, clients like these refuse to allow integration because they don’t trust that anyone could possibly have their best interests at heart.
Your post prompted my own: http://marketingmangamusic.com
If you don’t trust your agency to do what’s right for YOU, fire them and find someone new.
Great post. I’m a 2005 graduate of Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business – MSM program.
Hopkins has a course designed specifically for integrated marketing communications and I recently spoke to participants in that class about adding social media channels as part of an overall campaign. It’s important that we, as communications professionals – whether it be marketing, PR or even the business lines directly – pay attention to what channels lend themselves to our products and services and how we communicate with both customers and potential customers.
Great post bringing the attention to fundamentals.
Thanks!
Enjoyed your post, Beth. As a fellow integrated brand marketer and adjunct professor, I agree its dangerous to assume the implementation of integrated marketing.
Far too many agencies, businesses—and yes, academic institutions—talk integration but truly haven’t. The rise of social media marketing brings a fresh spotlight.
Silos and walls—and departments—remain in the way. Between advertising and promotion. Social media and public relations. Between online and offline. The issue is often on my mind and I recently blogged about the impact of these silos (URL at the end of this comment. Read, if you like).
As you say, consumers don’t see or communicate with departments. They communicate with brands. Marketers are wise to recognize this and break down the walls that interfere with their customer relationships.
Like you, I’ve been lucky to have this perspective from the outset, continually bringing the “break down the walls” message. Sometimes successfully. Sometimes not. My students know the importance I place on integrating communications around all points of contact with the customer. Which makes them, I hope, just that little bit better prepared.
Yet we need renewed effort on this front. Or we’re likely to see social media find its way into another media-oriented communications department. For that not to happen, we’ll all have to be even more persuasive about the customer point of view.
Thanks, Beth.
http://brandcontact.blogspot.com/2009/01/silosgood-for-grain-not-for-marketing.html
Paul Hydzik’s last blog post..Obstacles Are Only In Your Mind
[...] by swcellura Yes, I’m cheating. I read this fabulous post by Beth Harte titled, “Communication Silos Don’t Work“. She talks about integrated marketing [...]
Great post Beth. Thanks for shining the light on integrated marketing.
It’s amazing that brands still struggle with IMC. Unfortunately I think too many see integrated only as the ability to be consistent. This only scratches the surface and totally dismisses the importance of being relevant.
I believe the key to building integrated marketing communications (IMC) platforms is threefold:
1. Do your homework to find the appropriate idea / concept that is both relevant and sticky to build your platform
2. Determine the right mix of traditional + social media.
3. Distribute the appropriate spend in each medium in order to reach the RIGHT3 . . the right people . . . in the right places . . . . at the right times.
I’ve written a post on how IMC has evolved from 1.0 to 2.0. Be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
http://9inchmarketing.com/2009/04/06/what-is-integrated-marketing-communications/
Best,
Stan
@9inchmarketing
Great post Beth. I agree that social media really shines a whole new light in IMC.
Craig Wilson’s last blog post..GetSticky is the new name for web design in Newcastle
Silos are the bane of the association world too, and part of the reason why it takes so much time and energy (and frustration) to get anything innovative to happen for the members’ or association’s benefit.
Here’s a question. I saw an article about SunChips new compostable bags (and read it for some reason), and at the end, this paragraph got my attention:
“The packaging campaign is being launched with the support of multiple partners: Juniper Park (advertising), Hornall Anderson (packaging), OMD (media buying), The Marketing Arm (in-store), Ketchum (public relations) and the Zocalo Group (word of mouth).”
Wow. That’s a lot of different silos, not even in the same building. I know this is not exactly what you’re talking about, but what do you think when you see such a collection of agencies working on one campaign? Is that changing? Should it?
Deirdre Reid’s last blog post..The Natives Are Restless – How Do You Respond?
Great post, Beth. Integrated marketing communications is essential to the success of businesses today. Silos just do not work and are never in the best interest of the customer. In addition to really understanding the customers’ wants and needs integrated marketers need to make data-driven decisions – before and after any campaign.
I’m a student in Medill’s graduate IMC program and we’ve been looking at how social media comes into play in this mix. Right now we’re working on a project for a CPG on how to extend their CRM practices to social media.
Another great resource on IMC from Medill is the Vitamin IMC blog: vitaminimc.blogspot.com
You can also follow us on Twittter (@VitaminIMC).
Stacy Cohen’s last blog post..Mickey Mouse Adds English Teacher To His Resume
Beth – I’m glad you picked up on that in my post and brought it out here front-and-center to talk about.
First, you should know that I’ve only worked on the agency side, which limits my view. Two were PR-only agencies and two were/are full-service agencies.
I can only speak from my own experience, but here are the challenges to creating truly integrated campaigns that I’ve seen, a couple of which you’ve hit on here:
1. Mindset – It’s really hard for people who’ve been in the business a while to change the way they do business. It’s hard for traditional-thinking advertisers to see/admit that PR doesn’t just stand for Press Release. It’s hard for traditional-thinking PR people to stop saying the “earned media is more valuable than paid media” mantra. Etc. Etc. So they have internal walls set up in their heads that they can’t get past.
2. Departmental thinking, as you noted, is a challenge for many reasons. It completely changes the way people within departments work together. Agency departments have their own revenue goals, which I believe often leads to department leaders fighting for every scrap of client budget they can get instead of allocating the budget across the touch points that provide the best opportunity for success.
In the PR-only agencies I worked for, we had absolutely no idea what our clients were doing from an advertising, direct, media, interactive standpoint. For that matter, our clients in the PR department didn’t know either because their own internal departments didn’t communicate with each other. We surely missed out on some great initiatives that PR could have helped support.
The truth is that far too many people hold bias about which discipline in the marketing mix is best and, surprisingly, it’s usually the discipline in which they have the most background. We need more discipline-agnostic people in the field who focus more on delivering solutions than on tribal wars.
David Mullen’s last blog post..3 Keys to Communications Planning
Beth,
I currently serve as Chair of Medill’s IMC program, and found your posting interesting. Stacy Cohen, one of our current students, and an active blogger on VITAMIN IMC, also forwarded a comment.
I merely wanted to clarify a post you made that indicated that our curricula didn’t appear to cover social media.
Actually, this is quite far from the truth. Three years ago, we pioneered a class called “Communities”, and have taught it ever since. We have another course, “Communications and Persuasive Messages” in which student assignments include writing for social media environments. This quarter, in the Marketing PR class, students are working on a live, sponsored project with the head of Social Media for Southwest Airlines.
Andy Sernovitz, the founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and current head of the Blog Council, is an member of the adjunct faculty.
Some of our faculty are doing some interesting research in the area as well.
Is social media a fundemental sea change for marketers or another important channel of interactive communications between brands and stakeholders?
I look forward to more of your posts on this topic.
As usual, you are spot on. At the beginning of EACH marketing class I teach, I define integrated marcom and state up-front that I will not teach “pure” methods for each comm channel. This usually ticks off students right from the start, but it is better they know this in the classroom than wait until their first job. This is what happened to me. It took some time to rid myself of the chip on my shoulder!
Currently, my full-time job is in federal government where silos were born! The “Dear Customer” section in your post is what I encounter each day. It is all about the glory and not about the customer. I will not stop trying to teach an old dog new tricks…I am nothing if not persistent, but it will take education from the ground-up for cultural evolution leading to true marcom integration.
Beth. I love it, love it, love it!
It is the only marketing I know. There are several fantastic quotes here but the one that resonates so well with me is
“talking to people who buy or don’t buy based on what they see, hear, feel, and so on, not just about your product or service.”
The word “Integrated” pulls the rest together.
Fantastic.
Alasdair Munn’s last blog post..The Politics of Followers
“Will social media finally force companies out of their communication silos? ”
It might just expand the silos to choose from…
Mark’s last blog post..It’s Your Brand Too
Ugh. Information silos and hierarchy are barriers to efficiency and innovation whether we’re talking about marketing or any other function within an organization.
You ask an interesting question about what happens when you add social media into the integrated marketing mix. From what I’ve learned as someone tasked with integrating social media inside an organization is that it touches everything. This is because rather than a simple marketing tool, social media is a communications tool that can also be used for marketing — like the telephone, or email or the Internet at large.
Even in an organization with an integrated marketing approach, once they bring in social media, they quickly learn that the integration needs to spread beyond the confines of marketing to include HR, operations, IT, customer service… the list goes on.
So, if people are still struggling with the idea of integrated marketing, adding social media will blow their freakin’ minds!
Shannon Paul’s last blog post..Fear and Loathing in the Stock Market and Social Media
@NarcisoTovar, you get the gold star! What a great analogy.
@SuzanneLainson, that’s for the sharing that, I was unaware of the University of Colorado’s program…assuming it still exists, I’ll check out their program. Apple…I can’t think of a better company to have worked with at that time.
@K.Oliver-Kreft, that is an excellent point!! If a company wants to hire multiple agencies, the key is to have someone on the marketing team that does understand why integration is important. I have had up to 2-3 agencies working on one campaign…but it was well-orchestrated and they all had access to each other, if necessary.
@LahneMattas, thanks for letting us know about Johns Hopkins!
@PaulHydik, “As you say, consumers don’t see or communicate with departments. They communicate with brands.” Well, what’s going to make social media a challenge for companies that haven’t integrated is that now with social media customers don’t want to talk to departments OR brands…they want to talk to people!
@StanPhelps, love the concept! I’ll hop over and read your post (apologies for the delay in doing so!)
@DeirdreReid, WOW! That is crazy… Looks like a whole bunch of people looking for pats on the back to me.
@StacyCohen, thanks for bringing up a very important aspect of IMC…data. In social media there’s a tendency to not refer to people as “target audiences,” but communities, data is still important. The difference is unfiltered primary information is easier to get because communities are usually vocal.
Looking forward to reading the Vitamin IMC blog and following you on Twitter!
@DavidMullen, thanks for shedding some light from an agency perspective, it’s much appreciated. Even if agencies are siloed, it’s incumbent upon the corporate marketer to make sure all agencies work together to achieve the corporate goals. I think where it gets really messy and convoluted is when you have siloed departments hiring siloed agencies. I wonder how often that is indeed the case…
@TomCollinger, thanks for stopping by and giving us the facts. To be fair, I made my assessment based off of the curriculum listed on your website. I didn’t see anything other than what I mentioned.
“Is social media a fundamental sea change for marketers or another important channel of interactive communications between brands and stakeholders?”
I think it’s both. Marketers need to realize that one-way message pushing campaigns don’t always work, that the fate of their brand lies in other people’s hands and that there is a new way to communicate interactively. I think the biggest shift for marketers will be to understand that social media as an interactive communications channel might not fall in their domain (it’s that letting go of control thing again).
@LaurenVargas, as you and I have discussed, I have run into this too. I think one of the issues is that PR folks are usually journalism, communications or English majors and have little exposure to business classes while marketers are business majors and have little exposure to communications and PR. As you know, they are typically totally different departments and some curriculums don’t allow for cross-over. I always teach my PR students that they are actually in marketing (one of the four Ps) and as you mentioned, they don’t always agree or like it. That’s why I am a big fan of the IMC programs.
@ShannonPaul, gee, your example involves teamwork and putting the customer first….I’d don’t know Shannon, that’s a lot to ask don’t you think?! (a bit of sarcasm there.)
A quality product combined with quality customer service and social media marketing is a perfect internet network marketing lead generation tactic to earn the trust and respect of your customers, build relationships that would fuel business growth and reach potential customers anywhere in the world. Just imagine the social media profits you can have in being able to recruit people from different places and convert them into buyers.
I love this post and have been referring to it frequently. I work in social media and I think our concepts of audience marketing needs to be rethought.
As it is everyone is a consumer and we all use tools like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and we do not have to select if we are a business minded or consumer oriented person when using them. Also and in many situations a single person can be appealed to at a consumer level, business level and corporate responsibility level.
Yet most businesses silo that communication and messaging, to the point where they dedicate entire marketing operations as if we all experience the world as segmented groups of demographics.
I would love to see something that starts to look at audience interests and intentions over audience demographics. i.e. are you after product specs or do you want to learn about the company? Are you interested in if a product is green or are you simply interested in performance information.
Intentions and interests should trump demographics. If we could do that, we might see a break down of those many silos into small groups of marketing expertise…. I know I’m dreaming;-)
Bob Duffy’s last blog post..bobduffy: Listening to @joshprostar discuss communities strategy. Josh is extremely passionate. If you don’t know Josh, follow him now
[...] was reading a blog today (the Harte of Marketing) about the importance of integrated marketing. Photo by cwalker71 on [...]
Beth, I think this post hangs its hat on your line: “But today, simply put, communication silos don’t work because marketers cannot silo how audiences & communities string together & respond to all the communications they receive.”
Consumers are whole people with different facets to their lives and personalities. A single person might be a caregiver, an engineer, an aspiring writer, a single parent. They interact with some of the same brands in both their personal and professional lives. Brand equity can only be built through consistency (delivery, experience, quality, etc), and consistency can only be achieved through collaboration, communication, and customer lifecycle planning lest an opportunity be missed at understanding brand interaction (translating to off-messaging, relevancy, trust, oy vey).
I agree, it’s ridiculous that in some agencies (or even in-house departments), holistic planning is under-utilized, and likely due to a great many things, including lack of internal culture/”team” concept b/c fear for share of budget erosion. And unwillingness to change. And personal agendas. I’ll stop now.
Thanks as always, Beth. Another reason why you’re hot stuff.
Heather Rast’s last blog post..High Impact Culture Starts Today, and Begins With Us
[...] all in, not quite seeing the limitations…understanding, but not quite grasping the concept of breaking down silos, as Beth Harte would [...]
[...] ideals and [...]
[...] space is a mess of practices all mashed together. A while ago, Beth Harte wrote about how “Communication silos don’t work“. I couldn’t agree more. But now, it’s as if we’ve completely broke down [...]
[...] I think Beth references an interesting topic with integrated marketing communications in her post “Communication Silos Don’t Work”. One of the biggest complaints we continue to hear in our industry is communication breakdown. What [...]
[...] Communication silos don’t work (May 4, 2009, The Art of Marketing Blog) The definition of integrated marketing communications (IMC) on Wikipedia: “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.” Why is IMC such a struggle? My first thought was to wonder how many agencies and corporations still exist with information silos. Perhaps a lot and maybe that’s the problem? According to “Developing a Creative and Innovative Integrated Marketing Communications Plan“ by James R. Ogden, one insight might be: “Many businesses are organized around departments, which are set up to specialize in given tasks. With this system, companies and organizations build fences around their duties. They become territorial in nature and want no part of corporate overlapping. Each territory needs to be protected by departmental managers, who may fear for their jobs. Because of these organizational structures, it has been hard to sell the marketing concept to many businesses and organizations, but without it there are decreased sales and profits.” James Ogden wrote his book in 1998. Here’s more. http://www.theharteofmarketing.com/2009/05/communication-silos-dont-work.html [...]
But today, simply put, communication silos don’t work because marketers cannot silo how audiences & communities string together & respond to all the communications they receive. ( “Dear Customer: This message is from PR.
[...] often do you hear that communication silos don’t work? Quite often, right? We’ve probably read at least 10 posts on that over the last couple of years. [...]
[...] often do you hear that communication silos don’t work? Quite often, right? We’ve probably read at least 10 posts on that over the last couple of years. [...]
Great post, Beth!
I think part of the resistance to IMC is that companies simply don’t have the resources (or patience) to ensure messaging consistency (a by-product of IMC) across an entire organization. Interestingly, one place where I used to work brought someone in to do just that, and all the PR/marketing people considered her a thorn in their side. Go figure!
I still believe there is great value in IMC, despite the headaches associated with ensuring it works. It builds trust and makes things clear for your target audience(s).
I wrote a similar blog post about integrated messaging a few months ago – take a gander: http://lindseymccaffrey.com/consistent-messaging-how-integrated-marketing-communications-builds-trust/