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8 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, marketing professionals are also viewing the gay and lesbian market as a significant market sector. In order to target the international market you need know everything about them – their buying habits and perceptions on business, sports and the media. At Ebony Marketing Research, we put you in touch with key ethnic populations. Our leading-edge multilingual research facilities in Manhattan offer you much more than just focus groups. • Focus Groups • Multi-Cultural Recruiting • Taste-Testing • Central Location Intercepting • Ethnographics • Medical Research • In-Depth Interviewing • Product Placement • International Research • Data Tabulation/Processing • Quantitative Research • Mobile Research™ KNOW YOUR MARKET Tel: 718.320.3220 • [email protected] www.ebonymktg.com 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]. NATION ● Shoe Shaq Chinese shoe co. signs NBA star M iami Heat All-Star Shaquille O’Neal has signed a five-year deal with China-based Li-Ning Company and announced the launch of the “Shaq Dunkman” series, a new line of basketball products featuring O’Neal’s new limited-edition shoe along with other merchandise. The new line will be available to fans in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. “This partnership is a completely new model for sports marketing of a China brand and introducing the Dunkman series will strengthen the competitiveness of the Li-Ning brand in China and around the world, says LiNing CEO Zhang Zhiyong. ” —The Associated Press