Draft: Strategic and Tactical Integrated Marketing
Communications – Branding or Reputation Management? For Sage Encyclopedia of Reputation
Management 2015 entry on IMC.
Integrated
Marketing Communication (IMC) is “The ethical process of managing all
transparent sources of information about a product/service to which a consumer,
prospect, or stakeholder is exposed which truthfully and behaviorally moves
them toward a sustainable sale and/or relationship and maintains
consumer/stakeholder loyalty” (6). IMC exits at several levels of practice but
more important, IMC broadens the fields of marketing, advertising, public
relations regarding the strategic challenge of branding and reputation
management.
It might be
more accurate to call integrated marketing communications a newer strategy in
organizational communications. This academic and professional field has been
around as the acronym “IMC” for nearly a quarter of a century at Northwestern University’s
Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. (1)
(2) and at Colorado University – Boulder (3) (4). Today, the field exists as a course in many
schools of Journalism and Schools of Communications. Since the field of
communications is only taught strategically in less than a handful of business schools,
it represents the cooperation between advertising and public relations as
historically taught from the beginning of the 20th century in
schools of journalism.
The earliest
definition of IMC was for a 1991 report to the largest advertising association. The simplest definition from industry
(Association of National Advertisers and American Association of Advertising
Agencies) is that IMC is defined as “a concept of marketing communications planning
that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communications disciplines
such as general advertising, direct response, sales promotion and public
relations, and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and
maximum communications impact” (5). Each subsequent definition of IMC became
broader and more managerial rather than tactical. More advanced definitions of IMC are now
strategic, ethical, transparent, cross- organizational and concern many
stakeholders.
Perhaps the
most powerful strategic use of multiple channels began in the 19th
century, with the intense political campaign use of buttons, flyers, stump speeches,
newspaper quotes, stories and advertisements. In the early to late 20th century
there was a flood of political campaign network TV advertising, cable ads,
billboards, radio ads, newspaper stories and ads, websites, email fundraising,
flyers, campaign buttons, skywriting, door-to-door request for votes, mobile
sound systems on trucks and cars, events and much more (7). Today with the addition
of the Internet in communications for business, politics, government and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) we have the widest
range of choices to be used to reach, inform, persuade or simply notify voters,
audiences, publics or stakeholders.
Certainly
the Internet has allowed communications to explode as much as or more than the
invention of the printing press. The need for more accurate and powerful
methods to reach all critical stakeholders, not just consumers, is a strongest
reason for IMC. The stakeholder concept
is critical to the growth of IMC. In too
much of traditional marketing, the only stakeholder has been the consumer in
business-to-consumer marketing or the customer in business-to business marketing. While marketing is a broader strategic
process than communications, many intelligent observers agree with the
consulting firm Forrester, which states: “Marketing communications may be the
only controllable decision in marketing today.”
The momentum
of IMC was garnered in the beginning from the sometimes unfairly labelled
business of “junk mail.” While some of
the criticism was deserved, the realignment of direct mail within IMC created a
more strategic model that relied on evaluation and research. In the first
decade of IMC direct mail taught mainstream marketers that they could know
valuable information about their B2C consumer or B2B customer from sales order
history including seasonal timing, price sensitivity, product mixes,
subscriptions to lifestyle publications and trends in sales that could be
offered to consumers with similar profiles. While the word “direct” could be a
neutral term, it also became entangled in fraudulent offers of inferior
products, extra, unexpected fees and charges, catalogue image misrepresentation
in contests and offers sponsored by a formerly proud organization such as The Reader’s
Digest Association, that exploited the elderly and poor; and Publishers
Clearing House Sweepstakes, with the puffed promises that mislead millions.
Even the sale of tobacco related products sold to people on lists of smokers
and created by agencies such as Leo Burnett after tobacco advertising was
forbidden fouled the traditions of communications.
All the personal
data floating around and being consolidated in increasingly powerful and useful
computers would eventually lead to the use of so-called “big data” in 21st
century IMC. Big data could reach highly
specified audiences who might consider the communications to have value to them
rather than being “junk.” Such databases started with public and sometimes
secret government organizations that maintained large databases for the Patriot
Act, census, education, health, taxes and other precursors of data collection
in demographic categories. The mergers of companies included the mergers of
databases leading to stronger insights to the traits of consumers and all
stakeholders. Even as some direct mail
continued its invasive tactics, a more strategic IMC led to message delivery
via the Internet in the form of emails and precisely targeted banner messages
on the web. A more mature form of IMC
was evolving. At the same time traditional
advertising, which had exploded in marketing during the second half of the 20th
century because of television, lost much of its luster and impact as more
targeted tactics were devised. Certainly the growth of cable networks
contributed to opportunities for more integrated communications across
audiences known to view specific shows and categories of programming. However, the days of only 3 major networks
was dead and dying like other mass communications including newspapers and
large subscription magazines.
PR as an IMC
Leader – Outside-in Management
One of the
most significant beneficiaries from IMC in the professional field of
communications was the field of public relations. PR is defined as the
profitable integration of an organization’s new and continuing relationships
with stakeholders, including customers, by managing all communications contacts
with the organization which create and protect the brand and reputation of the
organization (8). Unlike advertising and
direct mail, public relations has depended on a very long list of strategies
and tactical communications to reach audiences beyond consumers. A unique
advantage of public relations or, less frequently, strategic communications, was
its power beyond marketing. This is
significant for organizations who had recognized that both marketing and communications
are strategic management functions that reach many more audiences than some
still traditional marketers tout as only the consumer. The term public, from public relations, has evolved
to become the term stakeholder and includes hundreds of possible communication targets
inside and outside an organization listed in the next section. Ray Ewing called this outside-in management,
necessary to manage an organization’s response to issues outside its direct
control by looking at the world of publics or stakeholders (9). Marketing was one powerful way to be outside
oriented but PR was far richer and earlier from this point of view.
Branding or
Reputation Management
To address
the issue of reputation management in IMC there are two distinct
approaches. For the most part the
classic field of advertising uses “branding” (graphics and font styles for a
name and image) as a symbol to represent a company or product as distinctive
from others. Branding has also developed
to represent a still narrow symbol of a company’s reputation. Branding is used widely
but it is most often a definition of the products’ or services’ reliability,
value, history and promised level of quality.
Again, showing
the distinctions between the founding disciplines of IMC, advertising, public relations
and direct marketing, the concept of “reputation” is more broadly defined in
the discipline of PR and IMC to address all the qualities of branding but as applied
to the entire organization and its leadership.
More importantly, rather than focusing on the important but limited
definition of a consumer or customer, PR professionals focus on all the
stakeholders relevant to the organization. For reputation management, public
relations has led in the use of word, voice and image tracking systems which
automatically read and report on hundreds to
billions of messages from all sources of media. These digital tracking
systems are extremely valuable because computers read, analyze and report what
is being written or said about a company, leader, product or stakeholder so
that crises can be anticipated and prevented (11) (9) (8).
What is
critical to the management of both reputation and branding is that senior
marketing and sales managers may take branding considerations into every
decision. However, to enhance and protect the larger reputation of their
organization and marketing brands, they must cooperate with general senior
management under the guidance of a Senior Vice President of Public Relations or
the Chief Communications Officer. The reputation concept is necessarily broader
since it addresses the value, quality, history and image of the organization
and its leadership from the viewpoint of the following selected stakeholders
which includes the reputation of the company in their industry and more
importantly in society (9) (12) (13):
-
Investors,
both individual and institutional
-
Employees,
past, present and future
-
Community,
in this case literally the community of families and people living near the
physical offices, factories and warehouses
-
Community
in the contemporary sense of social media communities
-
Government
leaders and institutions at the local, regional, state, federal and global levels
with policy or public influence
-
Suppliers
who provide staffing, product supplies for operation, computer systems and much
more
-
Universities
that provide technical support through research and graduating students
-
Labor
unions where relevant to the operations and goals of the organization
-
Non-governmental
organizations and other not-for-profits whose missions intersect
-
Political
parties and independent political organizations whose goals align or conflict
-
Trade
and professional associations
-
Other
highly specific and relevant organizations such as local school districts and
trade associations
In
conclusion, the concept of reputation as linked to the newer practice of IMC
demonstrates that market branding is not enough. While critical for the more narrow focus of
most marketing strategies and tactics, the concept of reputation, as demonstrated
throughout this book, relies on the critical and integrated mix of
communications-based professional fields such as public relations, advertising,
marketing and big data from many sources and newer data tracking systems
searching for emerging problems to predictively deal with the future. With the
help of IMC, reputation management is the charge of organizational leaders (9).
1. Caywood,
Clarke and Raymond Ewing (1991), “Integrated Marketing Communications: A
New Master’s Degree Concept,” Public
Relations Review, 17 (3), 237-244 Caywood, C.L., D.E. Schultz, and P. Wang
(1991), IMC: A Survey of Consumer Goods Advertisers. Northwestern University
Report.
2. Schultz,
Don E, Stanley Tannenbaum and Robert Lauterborn, (1994), Integrated Marketing Communications, NTC Books, Lincolnwood IL.
3. Duncan, T. and
C. Caywood (1996), The Concept, Process,
and Evolution of Integrated Marketing Communication, in Thorson, E. &
J. Moore, Integrated Communication: Synergy of Persuasive Voices.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 13–34.
4. Duncan, Tom and
Sandra Moriarty (1997) Driving
Brand Value: Using Integrated Marketing to Manage Profitable Stakeholder
Relationships,
McGraw-Hill, NY.
5. Caywood, Clarke, Don Schultz and Paul Wang (1991) Working Paper for the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
6. Caywood, Clarke
(2013) Conference talk for American Academy of Advertising, annual meeting.
Competitive session, Hawaii.
7. Caywood, Clarke L. and Gene R.
Laczniak, (1989) "The Marketing of Political Candidates: Current Tactics
and Future Strategies," in Social
Marketing, Seymour Fine, ed. Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
8. Ewing, Ray (1986) Managing the New Bottom Line – Issues
Management for Senior Executives, McGraw-Hill, NY.
9. Caywood, Clarke (2012) The Handbook of Strategic Public Relations
and Integrated Marketing Communications, McGraw-Hill, NY, and Caywood,
Clarke (1996) ed. The Handbook of Strategic Public Relations and Integrated
Communications, McGraw-Hill, NY.
10.
Englehart, Hud, “Crisis
Management – New Channels, Same Old Static” in Caywood (2012) The Handbook of Strategic Public Relations
and Integrated Marketing Communications, McGraw-Hill, NY.
12. Duncan,
Thomas R., Clarke Caywood and Doug Newsom (1993), Preparing Advertising and
Public Relations Students for the Communications Industry in the 21st Century:
A Report of the Task Force on Integrated Communications.
Clarke Caywood