Corporate Communications: An International Journal

Emerald Article: Integrated marketing communication and postmodernity: an odd couple? Lars Thger Christensen, Simon Torp, A. Fuat Firat

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To cite this document: Lars Thger Christensen, Simon Torp, A. Fuat Firat, (2005),"Integrated marketing communication and postmodernity: an odd couple?", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 10 Iss: 2 pp. 156 - 167 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13563280510596961 Downloaded on: 30-08-2012 References: This document contains references to 50 other documents Citations: This document has been cited by 13 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

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CCIJ 10,2

Integrated marketing communication and postmodernity: an odd couple?

Lars Thger Christensen, Simon Torp and A. Fuat Firat
The Department of Marketing, The University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, under conditions of postmodernity, the market is too complex to be responded to with an IMC-framework. While the desire of IMC scholars and practitioners to reinstate order and predictability in an increasingly disordered and fragmented world is understandable, such a mission may be misguided. The paper seeks to discuss the possibility that such attempts instead precipitate the production of complexity of an even more unpredictable nature. Design/methodology/approach The paper proceeds through a critical juxtaposition of postmodernity and IMC, arguing that the latter with its ambition to impose order and control fails to understand important dimensions of contemporary markets. Findings Rather than imposing a monological and hegemonic identity on markets and organizations an identity that will unavoidably be challenged by consumers and employees contemporary marketers and managers need to realize that organizational change and adaptability presuppose openness to variety, difference and polyphony. Research limitations/implications Although organizations, just like individuals, need a coherent narrative, polyphony promotes shared understandings and involvement and permits a kind of collective ownership that cannot be attained through the simple application of one-way managerial models that claim consistency and coherence without founding it in the life-world of the receiver. Originality/value Postmodern communication cannot adhere tightly to principles of IMC. Instead, openness towards uidity and a certain degree of indeterminacy must be nurtured if organizations wish to cope with the postmodern world. Along with tolerance toward variety, organizations need to develop a tolerance for meanings negotiated together with consumer communities, such as brand communities, in the market. Keywords Integrated marketing communications, Postmodernism Paper type Conceptual paper

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Corporate Communications: An International Journal Vol. 10 No. 2, 2005 pp. 156-167 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1356-3289 DOI 10.1108/13563280510596961

Introduction Having been a salient issue within social theory for almost three decades, it wasnt till the 1990 s that the eld of marketing explicitly acknowledged postmodernism as an important descriptor of the current social condition (e.g. Ogilvy, 1990; Brown, 1993a; Firat and Venkatesh, 1993, 1997; Cova, 1996). Although the sub-eld of marketing communications, with a few exceptions, hasnt yet embraced the notion, lately its younger cousin, integrated marketing communications (IMC), has been chiming in. The specic and increasingly complex conditions of postmodernity, we are told by IMC scholars, necessitate an integrated approach to the management of the growing eld of marketing communications (e.g. Proctor and Kitchen, 2002; see also De Pelsmacker et al., 2001). Postmodernism, in other words, calls for integrated marketing communication solutions. But is this really the case? Is IMC and postmodernism a

suitable match? In this paper we argue that this is not the case, that clinging to an idea of control of meanings solely by the author of the text is exhibiting a modernist impulse in the advent of a postmodern turn. Without question, the classical marketing approach of assessing and adapting to the needs and wants of customers is being challenged in todays social environment in which such needs and wants are unclear or highly uid, and in which the lifestyles of consumers exhibit disconnectedness or fragmentation (Bauman, 2000). Under such circumstances, the rational desire of to uncover and incorporate an unequivocal notion of the consumer is doomed to fail. Whether we refer to postmodernity or prefer other terms for this condition of late modernity, the market of today is fraught with complexity and calls for sophisticated approaches to marketing and communication. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that the integration of marketing communications is the proper solution to a fragmented market, however, we suggest taking a closer look at the phenomena in this equation postmodernity and IMC. Modernity instilled the desire to control and order the world in order to complete a project; that of controlling nature through scientic technologies to build a grand future for humanity (Angus, 1989). Accomplishing such a unied, grand goal did, indeed, require a rational ordering of the world that would allow the most efcient progress towards the achievement of the goal. Such a project could not be completed under conditions of disorder or chaos. It is understandable, therefore, that modern systems and processes would emphasize control over phenomena in order to impose a reasoned and organized, efcient progress toward uniform goals. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that postmodernity is far too complex to be responded to with a singularly ordered system; and in postmodernity, the market is too complex to be responded to with an IMC-framework. The desire of IMC scholars and practitioners to reinstate order and predictability in an increasingly disordered and fragmented world is very understandable, but may be misguided. We are concerned that such attempts may, instead, precipitate the production of complexity of an even more unpredictable nature. The paper proceeds through a critical juxtaposition of postmodernity and IMC, arguing that the latter with its ambition to impose order and control fails to understand important dimensions of contemporary markets. Rather than providing an extensive account of postmodernity as a social condition, we will concentrate our discussion on a few signicant features relevant to marketing and marketing communications in particular. To rebut what we see as a reductionist control perspective of IMC a perspective with potential for counter-productive implications for contemporary organizations we suggest using a perspective that not only acknowledges complexity, but is able to match it accordingly. The postmodern challenge Put succinctly, postmodernity designates a social condition of profound doubt in the grand project of modernity the project of progress, development and emancipation. Against the modern belief in a universal science based on reason and objective information as the foundation of this project, postmodern writers contend that this foundation is shaking and that the project, as a consequence, has lost its directive force (Lyotard, 1984). While the principles of reason and objective information have been employed in the service of totalitarian and essentially anti-modern projects, modern science has itself most notably through developments in twentieth century physics

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contributed to the erosion of a universal and privileged point of reference (Greene, 2000). At the same time that the natural sciences demonstrated that the universe has no centre and that observations are always relative to the observer, philosophers began questioning the foundation of our knowledge (e.g. Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). In addition to philosophy, today we nd traces of this questioning in a variety of disciplines and social practices, including art, architecture, literature, literary criticism, history and social theory (Rosenau, 1992). Within these different domains, the erosion of an authoritative point of reference has stimulated new modes of expression that at once challenge our notion of a single reality and suggest alternative ways to combine styles, genres and worldviews. Marketing is one of the social practices in which the postmodern condition manifests itself most conspicuously (e.g. Brown, 1993b; Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). Although marketing theory is still largely modern in its outlook, its mode of analysis and its strategic approach, the nature of the market and the behaviour of consumers have become far too complex to be encompassed within the logocentric perspective of modern marketing. Without a universal point of reference, our notions of truth, objectivity and authority are constantly challenged by alternative interpretations and worldviews (Bauman, 1992). In the context of the market, this challenge manifests itself as a lack of commitment to universal or totalizing ideas, a distrust of planned and pre-packaged images and general propensity to play around with signs and modes of signication (Cova, 1996). As a consequence, the postmodern market is characterized by hyperreality, fragmentation and a tendency for production and consumption to become reversed (Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). Hyperreality implies that the hype or the simulation is seen as, and becomes, more real than the reality it allegedly represents. With the erosion of a shared foundation for meaning, signiers become autonomized and only ephemerally linked to their original referents. Thus, for example, the intertextual association between and among advertising messages is often more pronounced than the link between the message and the product (Christensen, 2001). The image is not only seen as the primary essence, as Boorstin (1961) pointed out many years ago, but is often taken to represent nothing but itself. In fact, postmodern writers contend that there is nothing hidden behind the facade, that appearances are our true reality (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994). ` -vis their referents and often replacing these as With signiers oating freely vis-a our primary point of orientation, the social life becomes fragmented in a series of disjointed experiences and images. When fragmentation is predominant, different styles and genres are combined in novel and previously unthinkable ways. Thus, we have the pastiche as a quintessential postmodern phenomenon. And, since there is no universal authority to guide the signication process, we nd today a paradoxical coexistence or juxtaposition of ideas, terms and principles that used to be thought of as contradictory or even antagonistic. We observe such juxtaposition of opposites primarily in architecture, art and advertising where the play with signiers and the ability to redene the meaning of terms, ideas and images are valued most explicitly (Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). With the possibility of resignifying the ideas and messages of others, it becomes clear that consumption, rather than being a passive act of unpacking and discovering the meaning intended by the producer, is an active and creative process through which consumers continuously produce and reproduce their own identity (e.g. Gabriel and

Lang, 1995). In their construction of identities and life styles, consumers draw from a growing pool of symbols and signs that are constantly recongured and recombined in a bricolage-manner to t each specic situation. Thus, consumption, in a sense, becomes production. Although consumption operates within a space delineated by the system of production, it is not reduced to this system and transgresses it in a number of signicant ways (du Gay, 1996). Postmodern consumers interpret and use the products and messages differently from their original purpose, reshape and adapt them to personal use, and modify and sometimes pervert their meanings in ways not imagined by their creators (Cova, 1996). From a marketing perspective, one of the most important implications of postmodernity is the loss of control, consistency and predictability. The postmodern consumer is, according to Ogilvy (1990, p. 15) a semiotic eld of mixed messages, conicting meanings and inconsistent impulses. Thus, whereas modern marketing is founded on the principles of analysis, planning, implementation, and control (e.g. Kotler, 2003), marketers of today need to realize that they are no longer masters of meaning, that their products and messages are creations with a life of their own, and that their intended receivers are not passive targets but creative partners in the production of experiences and identities. To regard consumers as partners in the process of creating meaning, however, is not the same as assuming that they are generally interested in establishing relations with the producer. As Cova (1996) points out, the postmodern consumer prefers to create and maintain relations with other consumers, not necessarily with a brand or a company behind the brand. The mistake of many marketing approaches to the postmodern condition is, according to Cova, their notion that the erosion of a universal and shared perspective of meaning must be compensated for by the consumption of corporate images and symbols. While images and symbols obviously play a central role in the creation of individual identities, it is their linking value their ability to link people with likeminded individuals which is of interest to the consumer, says Cova, not their reference to a virtual community of consumers designed and managed by corporations (see also, Christensen and Cheney, 2000; Davidson, 1998; Morgan, 1999). Organizations that embark on grand reorganizing projects designed to sell the company behind the brand, tend to ignore this signicant difference as well as other central aspects of postmodernity. Integrated marketing communications is one such project. Integrated marketing communications Over the past decade, integrated marketing communications (IMC) has become a powerful idea within the marketing eld and beyond. While leading marketing scholars have described IMC as a paradigmatic revolution with extensive implications for contemporary management and communication practice (e.g. Schultz et al., 1994; Schultz and Kitchen, 2000), increasingly marketing practitioners have adopted the language of integration when approaching the expanding eld of market-related communications (see, Cornelissen, 2001). Although the growing managerial endorsement of IMC does not reect the actual implementation of the idea in practice (Cornelissen, 2001, 2003), the language of IMC and its implied notion of aligning and coordinating all communications has gradually become shared currency among marketers and advertisers.

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What is IMC, then? While marketing scholars continue to debate formal denitions of IMC, many discussions take their point of departure in the denition provided in 1989 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA). The 4As denition states that IMC is:
A concept of marketing communication planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines for example, general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and PR and combines them to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact through the seamless integration discrete messages.

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As Duncan and Caywood (1996) point out, this denition highlights the advantages of combining different media, but ignores the receiver end of the communication process. To compensate for this, Duncan and Caywood promote a set of broader denitions that draw attention, in various ways, to issues like multiple audiences, sources of information, consumer behaviour, stakeholder relationships, and brand loyalty. With their emphasis on differences, however, such denitional exercises fail to provide a clear understanding of what IMC across denitional nuances implies to the organizational setting. From a managerial perspective, the development of new denitions of IMC over the last decade may in fact be less signicant than the qualities these denitions have in common. Across their differences, the denitions of IMC all converge around the notion of control. While Schultz et al. (1994) at Northwestern Universitys Integrated Marketing Communication program, for example, focus on the management of the sources of information to which customers are exposed, Duncan (1993) talks about controlling or inuencing all messages which customers and other stakeholders use in forming an image of, and maintaining a relationship with, an organization. And while the purpose of such control measures varies from issues of sales and brand value (e.g. Keegan et al., 1992) over predictability (Proctor and Kitchen, 2002) to protable relationships with customers and other stakeholders, the promise of IMC is to provide the overarching perspective and tool for a synchronization and coordination of all corporate messages. Although some IMC-scholars emphasize that the role of the corporate communication department is to counsel, mediate, support, and add value to the business units, not to police them (Gronstedt, 1996), IMC is rst and foremost a marketing-inspired vision on inspection, regulation, and control. In fact, it may be argued, along with Cornelissen (2001), that the reason why the IMC discourse appeals to managers is because it legitimizes the organization and control of all communication functions. Even the literature that claims to take its point of departure in the perspective of the consumer is shaped by such control philosophy. Schultz et al. (1994, p. 5), for example, who contend that the integration serves to adapt communications to customer perceptions, argue that while decentralization may be desirable in order to push decision making as close to the customer as possible, the need for integration calls for centralized jurisdiction: Integration cannot be accomplished by middle managers or from those in the lower levels of the organization. It must come from the top, and it cant be just a memo or a directive . . . There must be a commitment from top management to integrate and to remove the barriers which prevent integration. Emphasizing the need for consistency across all media forms and across customer groups, Schultz et al. (1994) even suggest the establishment of a communications czar endowed with the power to regulate and control communications across the

organizational setting. Likewise, van Riel (1995), who stresses the importance of a receiver-oriented perspective on integrated marketing communications, promotes a sender-oriented approach focused on careful coordination, planning and control. And lately, Proctor and Kitchen (2002, p. 148), who explicitly emphasize the need for sensitivity to the postmodern condition, end up endorsing a modernist approach to the market. They write: Communicators need to have access to extensive and ongoing data gathering and information services in order to provide a degree of predictability as to which messages to deploy to inuence which customers, and stakeholders via which contact points. While the need for market intelligence is as critical as ever, such conventional attempts to reinstall predictability through the control of contact points miss the observation that consumers in todays market pick and choose among available signiers, twist and manipulate them to t individual purposes and regard attempts to control their interpretations with suspicion and ridicule (e.g. Firat et al., 1995). Across different denitions and aspirations, IMC is embedded in the grand modern project of controlling nature through reason and objective information. Obviously, the vision of control depends on the scope of the integration project. From the relatively limited notion of integrated communication as we nd, for example, in corporate design programs or in the classical marketing perspective of aligning the 4 Ps, over the more ambitious pursuit of creating and maintaining a coherent and shared corporate culture, to the integration of business partners, customers and other stakeholders, integrated marketing communications has developed from a rather bounded and specialized activity to an organization-wide issue and concern. In other words, where notions like coordination, orchestration, consistency, speaking with one voice, etc. used have fairly limited organizational implications, today they suggest an extensive managerial undertaking that presumes to cover all communicative dimensions of an organizations life. Thus, Aberg (1990) talks about total communications as a practice that involves both market-related communications , e.g. marketing communications, product communications, image and proling activities and internally directed activities such as work instructions, internal marketing, training programs, etc. To these activities, writers on corporate communications add customer relations, public affairs, crisis communications, issues management, technical communications, labor relations, nancial relations, sponsorship, business-to-business communication, lobbying and government relations as indispensable dimensions of the total integration package (e.g. Dolphin, 1999; Goodman, 1994). While it may not be feasible in practice to control all these dimensions within one consistent voice, the ambition of IMC is unmistakably to expand the range of control to still more dimensions of the organizations internal and external affairs. Given the uncertainties of operating in a postmodern world, this ambition is understandable. Whether such an approach is able to match the complexity and uncertainty of postmodernity, however, is questionable. Retaining organizational complexity Organizations can handle environmental complexity in several ways, but not all of these are equally adequate. Weick (1979, p. 188) cites Buckley to the fact that only variety can regulate variety. Buckely points out that the variety within a system must be at least as great as at the environmental variety against which it is attempting to

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regulate itself. This is the law of requisite variety (Conant and Ashby, 1970). Applied to corporations, the law of requisite variety states that the organization needs to retain sufcient diversity internally in order to discern accurately the variety in its surroundings. The organizational processes that are applied to complex and equivocal inputs must, in other words, themselves be complex and equivocal. Following this observation, Weick (1979) points out that if a simple process, nonetheless, is applied to such complex and equivocal inputs, only a minor part of the input will be registered, attended to and understood. The continuous application of simplistic models on complex behaviour, thus, prevents organizations from knowing their environment and learning new adaptive capabilities. If organizations are unable and unwilling to tolerate equivocal inputs, they produce failure and isolation from reality. Moreover, Weick says, the unwillingness of organizations to disrupt the well-known order makes it impossible for them to create order in new situations. Equivocality, in other words, persists. In line with Weick, system theorists have shown that attempts to steer and control a living system toward one coherent unity runs the risk of reducing the complexity of the system and thus its chances of survival (Morin, 1992). This point is radicalized by some postmodern writers who contend that the application of simple control systems on complex phenomena not only mean that certain inputs escape attention but also that complexity is markedly increased. In his book Fatal Strategies Baudrillard (1990), for example, argues that social systems trying to predict and prevent catastrophes often end up producing side-effects that are potentially more destructive than the events they were trying to evade. Beyond catastrophic circumstances, attempts to impose systems of order and predictability on changes in the organizations environment may instead precipitate such changes and thus produce disorder and unpredictability. This is not an apologia for lack of action on the part of leaders and decision makers, but it is a cautionary note on the desire to impose well-known schema of order and control on phenomena of an equivocal nature. To sense equivocality accurately, says Weick, a system needs many elements able to operate as independently of one another as possible. Whereas the number of elements helps the system register different kinds of inputs, the independence of elements prevents them from being affected too much by the activities of one another. Both features stimulate sensitivity to and perceptiveness of the object of attention. By contrast, a smaller number of mutually dependent elements are able to record fewer inputs and are more likely to have their registrations inuenced by the perceptions and registrations of one another. As a consequence, while such systems may experience lots of consensus and integration, they are less likely to notice changes of importance for the survival of the system. Even if we acknowledge the ability of organizations to enact their own environments, or parts thereof, (another Weickian observation, 1979, 1995) their capacity to operate subsequently within this more or less self-projected universe still depends on their ability to observe and attend to differences. Accordingly, attempts to bring the highly varied, fragmented and uid desires and playful activities of consumers in the postmodern market, to an integrated focus will backre and will be resented, thus diminish consumer interest in the organizations offerings. The postmodern response to this postmodern condition is not to try and control the meanings linked to the organizations products or brands, but to playfully

engage (with) the consumers in constructing and navigating experiences that are produced by and produce the meanings negotiated, as we will discuss in conclusion. One way to facilitate the ability to observe and attend to differences in the market is to establish a one-to-one correspondence between the variety of the environment and the variety of the organization. Obviously, this all-encompassing solution is not only extremely costly but also requires elaborate coordination activities able to piece the many different observations together into one coherent and manageable whole. Instead, Weick suggests complicating the organization. Complicated observers, Weick notes, take in more input and are able to perceive and utilize subtle variations and nuances that other observers miss. Just as an individual can sensitize him or herself to observe distinctions in, say, opera or in painting, organizations can learn to observe and attend to variations that they didnt recognize previously. The intentionally complicated organization, according to Weick, not only increases its perceptive abilities quantitatively but also qualitatively. Rather than being attentive to everything that goes on in its environment, it learns to select more insightfully the dimensions of the environment which are most susceptible to change and to which it needs, ` -vis this sub-environment, the organization accordingly, to pay most attention. Vis-a needs to bring all its perceptive abilities into play, to utilize all its variety of attention, interpretation and organizing. While the approach of complicating the observer is time-consuming and difcult to implement, especially since the required openness to equivocality and variation may paralyze action, it holds signicant advantages to other approaches primarily because it stimulates openness, creates insight and produces adaptation. Still, many organizations choose to reduce environmental variety. While a few powerful organizations are able to simplify their environments by engaging in interorganizational collaboration (networks, cartels, monopolies or agreements), most organizations seek to do that by imposing management models, fads or other organizing measures that are sanctioned or approved by the management community. Total quality management and business process reengineering programs are examples of such models and measures that, in different ways, promise to reduce environmental complexity and variety by restoring order and predictability. As we have seen, the same can be said about IMC. The problem with such measures, Weick points out, is that they not only simplify the environment but also the organizations employing the measures. As a consequence, they reproduce the problem of requisite variety again. Following Weick, the question should be: Is IMC, as a principle of organizing, able to match the call for complexity of a postmodern marketplace? In other words, is IMC sophisticated enough to allow for the nuances, the variety and the inconsistencies of postmodern consumption? Hardly. Although the eld describes itself as a truly outside-in approach to the market (e.g. Proctor and Kitchen, 2002; Schultz et al., 1994), it is possible to claim that its relentless pre-occupation with issues of order, predictability, regulation and control makes it impossible for IMC to observe and acknowledge problems and developments that cannot be encompassed within its own domain of clarity, consistency, coherence and continuity. Implications Postmodernity holds signicant challenges for marketers and managers in terms of enabling their organisations to deal with increased complexity. Although

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contemporary society still retains many of its modern features not all environmental complexity is postmodern it is a serious mistake to impose a clearly modern approach, as IMC is, on postmodern consumption phenomena. This is not to reject the relevance of IMC, but to question its general applicability as a response to new consumption practices. While some market developments clearly call for an integrated marketing approach, not all developments do and certainly not those labelled postmodern. In contrast to the monolithic one-voice perspective of IMC, Hazen (1993) points out that post-modern thinkers stress the importance of other discourses, other voices (see also, Boje and Dennehy, 1993; Rouleau and Clegg, 1992). Drawing on Bakhtins notion of heteroglossia, Hazen emphasize that differences are life giving and essential to change. Hazen (1993, p. 16) puts it this way:
When we bind our understanding about organization processes and change to monolithic, closed visual models, it does not occur to us to listen for and to the voices of all who are working together . . . If we conceive of organization as many dialogues occurring simultaneously and sequentially, as polyphony, we begin to hear differences and possibilities. We discover that each voice, each person, is his or her centre of any organization. And it is from each of these dynamic centres that change occurs.

Rather than imposing what Humphreys and Brown (2002) call a monological and hegemonic identity on markets and organizations an identity that will unavoidably be challenged by consumers and employees contemporary marketers and managers need to realize that organizational change and adaptability presupposes an openness to variety, difference and polyphony. Although organizations, just like individuals, need a coherent narrative (Czarniawska, 1997), polyphony promotes shared understandings and involvement and permits a kind of collective ownership that cannot be attained through the simple application of one-way managerial models that claim consistency and coherence without founding it in the life-world of the receiver. Conclusion Postmodern insights reveal that communication is not simply a means of relaying messages to others, but a process of constructing and recognizing the self (Christensen, 1997). As they communicate, both the organization and the consumers come to understand and discover themselves. Thus, communication is as much a process of discovery as it is transmission of messages and meanings. Thinking, therefore, in the modernist mode and hoping that the meaning of all that is authored can be determined by the author is merely an illusion (Fish, 1982). For this reason, postmodern communication cannot adhere tightly to principles of IMC. Instead, openness towards uidity and a certain degree of indeterminacy must be nurtured if organizations wish to cope with the postmodern world. Along with tolerance toward variety within the organization, as we discussed above, organizations need to develop a tolerance for meanings negotiated together with consumer communities, such as brand communities, in the market. That is, consumers must not be perceived simply as targets, but as collaborators or partners in generation of meanings for the organizations offerings. This requires not so much processes of integration and control, as in IMC, as it does processes of playful engagement, networking, and negotiation.

Does this mean a loss of control of the organizations offerings? Not at all! As we indicated earlier, insisting on single-handed control of the meanings linked to an organizations offerings, when the consumers in the postmodern market insist on being involved in the creation of life meanings and experiences is the sure way to lose control. Contemporary organizations must develop the knack to be playful, interact and engage in co-construction of communicated meanings. This will, some may think paradoxically, give them the ability to have as great a control as is possible and, maybe more importantly, the only possibility to maintain livelihood in the complex, uid, and highly dynamic postmodern markets.
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