Evolution & barriers of IMC

DR. Hisham Ali Abd El Moati

AHMED MAGDY HATATA

ASSIGNMENT # 1

28/6/2019

Articles summary:

INTRODUCTION

marketing communications was a rather simple managerial task. Most marketing communication
investments were being made in only four areas: advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing
and public relations, and those were generally classified as above-the-line or below-the-line, with
advertising being the lead element. Thus, the manager's integrating task was perceived to be
aligning and coordinating messages and incentives delivered through those four functional areas
so they presented a clear, cohesive and comprehensible whole that moved customers along the
communication and purchasing continuum. In this rather simple, outbound, mass communication
approach, the marketer was generally in control of the system. Thus, the marketing organization
and the marketing.

according to (Schultz, Tannenbaum, and Lauterborn 1993) they stated that The world, consumers,
communications systems and the study of IMC have all changed dramatically in the last dozen
years. When the IMC concept first entered the scene, through the text Integrated marketing
communication: Pulling it together and making it work.

Evolution of IMC as a concept

Integration and consistent message across all the promotional mix elements always was an
important topic and tool for organizational success and this even during the mid-twentieth
century , late twentieth and early twenty first century , all organizations and researchers believed
that coordination and integration of different marketing messages to illustrate or clarify to
stakeholders group ( employees , suppliers , mangers , customers and society ) has become vital
but more difficult to achieve . The first study on IMC was conducted by Caywood, Schultz, and
Wang (1991b) at the end of the 1980s, while the first ‘‘conceptual ideas’’ were published in the
book ‘‘Integrated Marketing Communications’’ by Schultz, Tannenbaum, and Lauterborn (1993).

(Kitchen et al., 2004a; Schultz, 1993f) stated that the Technology can affect IMC from two sides,
that is, from the marketing and consumer perspectives, according to (Kitchen et al., 2004a;
Schultz, 1996b) integration is needed owing to globalization and the resulting interdependence
between countries and marketplaces. all this point of views of researchers did not mean that
organizations or brands should use one single message for their communication with stockholders,
it means the consistency and coordination of actions and integrating the elements of their brands
promotional mix .

(McGrath, 2005a; Edelman, 2004; Gonring, 1994; Nowak and Phelps, 1994) stated that technology
can enhance marketing communication strategies, that is, both traditional advertising techniques and
also new, unconventional marketing practices may be applied, such as database marketing, one-to-
one communication, or marketing Public relations. in today’s dynamic world and with the everyday
new comer to the market, an integrated consistent message is vital for reaching target customers more
precisely.

Philip J. Kitchen and Inga Burgmann the authors of this article collected many IMC concept
definitions since 1991 till 2007 in the following table to elaborate how the concept changed over
time within its importance and changing in the market.

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I totally agree with Philip J. Kitchen and Inga Burgmann for choosing Schultz (2004b) and
American Marketing Association (2007) definition as the most convenient one as it described the
importance of IMC concept in both sides internally and externally and acknowledges IMC’s
importance as a business process and long-term brand focus that needs an evaluation and
measurement.

While many researchers argued that it may not be possible to agree upon a universal IMC
definition but after a critical review of previous definitions of IMC and an assessment of current
IMC literature, (Kitchen et al., 2004a; Low, 2000) came up with five crucial attributes that must
be available for effective IMC:

1. The communication effort should be directed at consumers in order to affect behavior.

2. An outside-in approach should be utilized, that is, start with the customer first when
developing a communication strategy.

3. A well-established relationship between the company and the customer is necessary.

4. To deliver a message correctly all communication activities should be included with

contact points integrated into the strategy.

5. To create a competitive brand, coordination between the communication disciplines is

needed.

They stated that customer comes first and all the communication activities , outside in approach
for the brand should start from target customers before developing the communication strategy
which do make sense to know who you are communicating with and how your strategy should
be and they also focus on a well long term relationship with the target customers to leave an
open line of communication with them to deep understand their needs and how they perceive
your message .

The last two points focus on the communication strategy itself describing that integration and
coordination between all promotional mix is needed to create an effective IMC delivered clear to
your target audience.

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A contemporary perspective of IMC.

Under this title the authors discussed the evolution of marketing starting from the production
concept after World War II till customer centric era that we live right now, they stated that The
customer of today makes informed decisions and will make demands and influence
advertisements or any other information received.

Marketers must respond to these changes and the marketer needs to develop communication plans
with the consumer as the starting point later working back toward the product or service in order
to design effective communication strategies.

They focused on two main important points outcomes of IMC which are 1- all communication
mix tools, at least on the company’s side, are integrated and support each other, resulting in
synergy effects.

2- Another major driving force behind IMC is the demassification of markets. Many mass
markets of the twentieth century have separated into diverse and smaller markets splintering into
more specific customer segments, which is very important point that change the perspective of
many organizations from mass marketing to concentrated one .

Benefits of IMC

Since first the marketing tends to focus on the customer needs not the product itself the IMC
became a central importance in the mind of all organizations and this is due to its benefits in
combining and coordinating the marketing activities all in one message and great a synergy
between all the promotional mix to ensure reaching the target customer.

the central discussion here is the contact points and message integration which is the idea of
incorporating different communication disciplines into one marketing communication campaign
with the aim of achieving outcomes desirable to the company. many brand mangers argued that
different messages will be understand by customers by the vast amount of it from all contact
points but the authors here point out an important contradiction which is different messages are
not delivered in unison, it may lead to an incoherent brand image, which can negatively influence
consumer buying and recall behavior (McGrath, 2005b; Stammerjohan et al., 2005; Stewart,
1996; Schultz, 1993e).

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many researchers point out the benefit of IMC in ROI (return on investment) through making
profit after investing on a consistent IMC campaign for the brand.
Other benefits of IMC is that regarding the product life cycle customer loyalty have to be taken
into consideration as brands are so difficult to be damage due to the strong positioning in the
consumer’s minds that was created from a consistent idea over the years from the IMC giving
some examples for apple and Coca-Cola.

IMC is valuable in that it can better inform, influence, motivate, and enlighten consumers about
new and existing products because of its integrative nature and its strategic long-term focus on
the actual brand.

According to Kitchen, PJ in his article Integrated marketing communications. Evolution, current

status, future developments which published 2017 in the European Journal of Marketing he stated
a very important point regarding the evolution of IMC as In the first special issue on IMC
published in the Journal of Marketing Communications (1998), Don Schultz and his wife Heidi,
spoke of transitioning from old to new ways of communicating, based upon the needs associated
with the needs of the 21 century , the article asked an interesting question which is How does a
firm or brand move from their current location to where they need to be in the dynamic global
marketplace of the 21 century? The marketing was mainly focusing in the old days about the four
Ps which discuss what the company can offer to their target customers (the supply side) but how
to shift to the demand side of the market, what the customers need and how the companies can
satisfy those needs .

According to the article Kitchen, PJ stated that though the road toward IMC practice as found in
earlier texts and seen as the integration of promotional mix variables (or the ‘one voice’
phenomenon) reached its zenith, the journey toward integration from a consumer or corporate
perspective has scarcely begun. Don Schultz and I (2000) regarded as a four-stage process, for
the majority of companies, has – to all intents and purposes, many companies have an integrated
message but not necessary integrates with their target customers due to the lack of information
they have about even the marketplace or the target segments which is a core job of gathering
information through marketing research. another aspect which integrated brand marketing by is
the measuring the behavioral outcome for the brand in response to the marketing communication.
the lack of strategic and organizational integration is another aspect for effective IMC for most
firms in today’s market.

IMC now became a special and trending issue for most researchers and authors to talk about, this
interest in the topic of IMC summarize its important and impact on business success nowadays
and likely that it will shape the future of marketing for the next coming years.
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Kitchen, PJ in this article point out the harvest of many IMC papers and he stated their findings
as IMC inside the organization should be the core main point to focus on all the company’s
activities as it affect the consumers directly, small firms often lack resources and thus their brand
building activities may be poorer in terms of investment, or innovative by reason of resource
constraint. The findings show that brand orientation (not necessarily market orientation) is a
critical antecedent - moreover the brand - however defined is seen as an organizational asset
underpinned by ongoing analysis of the needs of served markets. this includes customer and
competitor information. Such information is fundamentally necessary to the development and
implementation of consistent integrated marketing communication.

In the new digital ERA and new marketing mindset the shift toward how companies relate to
customers and their ECHO-SYSTES, the aim is to lead to customer engagement and involvement
in terms of communications in use.

barriers of IMC

while IMC has gone through a long evolution and changes since last decade with detailed
explanation and highlighting it’s benefits and importance but implementing it is not piece of cake
or easy to do the IMC process need a uniform vision and steps to go through with a lot of creativity
from marketers nowadays because there are a lot of barriers that could prevent an effective
integrated marketing communication to happen.

With the increase of competition and the more the customers became sophisticated and savvy
nowadays the irrelevant communication messages became a noise and market nuisance.

The articles showed an important challenge for IMC today which is the combination between old
and new marketing (traditional and digital), the message must be parallel and consistence between
the two sides and all the marketing activities must measure the results.

Many articles contradicted that IMC is not a new issue to focus upon while other argued that IMC
is a new brand concept for the emerging digitalized market.

Schultz and Kitchen (2000a) argued, based on the empirical findings from their research with
advertising agencies which develop and implement marketing communication plans for their
clients, that the majority of firms are anchored in either stage 1 or stage 2 scenarios. Some are
moving into stage 3, but very few (a handful in today’s world) have moved to stage 4

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This figure describes the barrier to IMC which is cross-disciplinary managerial skills which mean
the four groups of potential barriers starting from tactical coordination which need a high level
degree of cross functional communication between the departments internally and externally. the
second barrier is the kind and degree of information collected by the business about the target
customers and how these information will be effective for the company to implement IMC and
the level of alignment with the external agencies when the company implement the
communication through it.

how much the company know about their customers and how much data the business can convert
to valuable knowledge about their target customers to hit the right message. Lack of evaluation
for each served segment and focusing on the ROI is one of the most dangerous barrier and mistake
the companies do.

According to a research paper of University of Latvia, Aspazijas boulevard 5, Riga, LV-1015,

Latvia about Barriers to integrated marketing communications: the case of Latvia (small markets)
and according to their findings for the research the paper conclude some important findings for
barriers to IMC which are the lack of knowledge between the parent company/ group strategy
and followed in designing marketing communication tactics and plan .

Implementing marketing communication without a specific and special strategy and the integrity
is not consistent also the excessive control of the enterprise management over the marketing
processes can be a big barrier for the IMC with the lack of the strategic vision .
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Conclusion

A main conclusion we can draw from this articles summary is that those who have strategic and
tactic responsibility for IMC live in separate educational, cultural, intellectual and empirical
spheres. Those responsible for strategic management decisions possess, at the best, strategic
management ability but lack insight and awareness concerning communication theory and
method. And those professionally skilled in communication lack relevant skills concerning
strategic management, theoretically and empirically. If we imagine these two spheres as areas,
we can easily notice that the intersection field is very small.

The primary goal of IMC is to affect the perception of value and behavior through directed
communication. The development and diffusion of IMC is closely associated with fast
technological advancement and of a rapidly globalizing and deregulations of markets and
individualization of consumption patterns. This has emphasized the need to adjust objectives and
strategies to changing marketing and communication realities.