Integrated Brand Communications - American Marketing Association

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Integrated Brand Communications


	By Interbrand
	Interbrand was established in 1974 and is now the world's leading brand consultancy with 25 offices worldwide. Our Its disciplines include strategic consultancy, brand valuation, corporate and brand identity and market research.

	1. Introduction

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is to marketing communications what digital convergence is to the world of technology -- a revolutionary concept with great promise and hype, but one that leaves most executives wondering what is in it for them.

In theory, IMC is hard to debate. The principle of integration holds that all communications emanating from a single strategic platform will generate a significantly greater return on the communications investment than would be the case with traditional independent media executions.

The theoretical benefits are clear.

For the client, there is the potential for significant syner-gies and stronger connections with their customers. For the agency, there is the promise of a more complete partnership with the client that provides a greater share of the total mar-keting communications budget.

Practice has fallen far short of theory.

Three underlying currents have undermined the potential of IMC:

The very agencies that innovated the concept are constrained by media bias.
If an advertising agency is shaping an integrated marketing communications plan, it is a fair assumption that the plan will revolve around advertising.

While an important medium, advertising is not the end-all be-all of a successful integrated marketing plan. It is extremely difficult for organizations that earn their fees through media driven efforts to provide clients with unbiased integrated media plans.
Clients themselves are poorly structured to truly execute an integrated communications plan.
Most marketing communications organizations are structured around individual media with managers given a mandate to manage specific media budgets.

Within such a structure, integration and centralization equate to a loss of individual power and control over one's own destiny.
The integrated marketing communications begins too far down the value chain to be effective.
The current model features tactical communications plans managed by tactical specialists. These plans need to be shaped first on the strategic level for the benefits of integration to be fully realized.

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2001 MarketingPower.com Inc. Contents used by permission of the author.

Table of Contents

1.	Introduction
2.	Integrated Brand Communications
3.	The Process
4.	Completing the Process