integrated marketing communications

Communication silos don’t work

May 4th, 2009 | Author: Beth Harte

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.