Download Integration`s new role focuses on customers

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Sept. 15, 2006
Marketing News
Integration’s new role focuses on customers
The role that integration plays
in the firm’s marketing and
communications activities is
clearly changing. In the late
1980s, when the integrated
marketing communications
movement began, the purpose
By Don E. was fairly simple: Find a more
and, hopefully, effecSchultz efficient
tive method of delivering a
wide assortment of marketing and promotional activities to broadly identified audiences.
It was pretty straightforward. Marketers
controlled, or thought they controlled, the
marketplace. Using the four P’s mantra, the
organization decided what products to bring
to market, what price to set, what channels
to use and most of all, what outbound communication forms to use that they believed
would alert and, ideally, persuade customers
to buy the offerings they were making.
INTEGRATED
MARKETING
Thus the integration was fairly tactical:
Get the same logo, the same corporate color;
the same slogan or strap line; the same jingle
or musical signature in all forms of outbound
communications. The goal was to make the
organization look and feel the same to the
customer no matter where they encountered
the communications programs the marketer
had developed and delivered.
And that was the catch. The premise was
that the marketer “delivered” the messages,
promotions and materials. The consumer’s
job was to respond. The marketer controlled
an outbound, linear process based on the
investment made in various promotional
activities. It was push marketing during its
finest hour.
But with the introduction of the Internet
and the increasing assortment of electronic
and nonelectronic media forms, the marketplace changed. That was particularly apparent for the large marketing organizations
that had ridden the 30-second television
commercial to fame and fortune. Inexorably,
the consumer began to control the marketplace.
As more media forms became available,
the customer was free to pick and choose. As
more avoidance and pre-emptive technologies developed, such as remote controls,
TiVOs, DVDs and the like, cracks began to
appear in the marketer’s communication distribution systems. No longer were customers
and consumers dependent on, or even, in
many cases, interested in what the advertiser
had to say. There were so many new ways to
get information—Web sites, the Internet,
search engines and such—that delivered
whatever information the customer wanted
to know in 0.2 seconds. Simply making the
advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and public relations look, feel and sound
alike had little or no relevance. In a pull marketplace, the customer controls the exposure, not the marketing organization.
So is there any reason to worry about integration anymore? Is the concept as dead as
“television network road-blocking,” “effective frequency” or the multitude of other
concepts and methodologies that grew out
of the one-way, outbound-only, linear
approaches to marketing and communications that personified the golden age of
advertising and promotion?
As the IMC guy, I naturally think IMC is
important. But in a different way and for a
different reason.
My belief is integration has changed as the
concept has changed. In today’s multimedia-dominated, consumer-controlled, pull
marketplace, integration has a role. But that
role is not simply to help the consumer better
know your international market. inside, out.
Every year, minorities like Hispanics, African Americans
and Asians are becoming more prominent. In fact,
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At Ebony Marketing Research, we put you in touch with
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• Focus Groups
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• International Research • Data Tabulation/Processing
• Quantitative Research • Mobile Research™
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sort through what the marketer is saying.
Instead, the role of integration in a pull marketplace is to help the organization better
align its efforts to achieve something they
have long avoided because of the four P’s
approach: customer focus. The goal of integration today must be to help marketers
understand that customers are in control. To
recognize that the old-time, hit-them-overthe-head reach and frequency models of outbound communication no longer work, no
matter how much money is thrown into the
media mix. To help organizations understand that product differentiation is, at best,
fleeting and that all products and services
are headed for commoditization unless they
understand that it is the brand experience
delivered in a multitude of ways is likely the
only survival mode.
So the role of integration has changed. It
has, in the current vernacular, morphed into
customer focus and organizational alignment. It has become much more of a strategic approach to organizational management.
That’s because we are finally beginning to
understand it is the synergy among and
between marketing and communications
touchpoints that really matter, not just
whether the corporate color is the same on
everything we do.
Integration has changed because the marketplace and customers have changed. People and firms control the marketplace. They
control the amount, form and content of the
marketing information they access, take in,
process and use in making purchasing decisions. True, tactical integration still is useful,
but it is not strategically critical. The recognition that the pull marketplace has changed
all types, methods and approaches to marketing and communications is what’s important.
So integration is still important to the
marketing firm, just in a different way. The
players are the same, but the roles are different. Don E. Schultz is a professor (emeritus-in-service) of integrated marketing communications
at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He
can be reached at [email protected]
or at [email protected].
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iami Heat All-Star Shaquille
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The new line will be available to fans in
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“This partnership is a completely new model for sports marketing of a China brand and
introducing the Dunkman series will
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brand in China and around the world, says LiNing CEO Zhang Zhiyong. ” —The Associated Press