Talk:Integrated marketing communications/Archives/2017

Lengthy additional information from Marketing communications - should be added here
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a communication process that entails the planning, creation, integration, and implementation of diverse forms of marketing communications. IMC unifies and coordinates the organizations marketing communications to promote a consistent brand message (Shimp, 2010). Coordinating the brands communications makes the brand seem more trustworthy and sound as it is seen as a ‘whole’ rather than a mixture of different messages being sent out (Duncan, 2002). The IMC perspective looks at the ‘big picture’ in marketing, advertising and promotions. Traditionally the different marketing communications in businesses such as advertising, promotion, sales, public relations, and display have been divided into separate practices or teams within the organization. With integrated communications it ensures that a cohesive message is being sent through all of the channels. Reluctance to change from inside the business occurs when staff may think that there may be budget cutbacks in their departments or and reductions in their authority or power. Resistance from outside the business comes from advertising, promotion and public relations agencies reluctance to broaden their function. Recently more advertising agencies have been expanding by merging with other marketing companies (Shimp, 2010). Using multiple communication tools in conjunction with one another can produce greater results than tools used individually without coordination. By combining multiple methods there is a synergistic effect and companies can focus on the ultimate objective to affect consumers behavior (Shimp, 2010) Integrated marking communications emerged as a new concept in the 21st century but now there is reason to believe that the definition of IMC has changed since then (Luck & Moffatt, 2009). Old definition of IMC– "IMC is the concept and process of strategically managing audience focused, channel centric, and results driven brand communications over time" (Shimp, 2010). New definition of IMC- "IMC is the audience driven business process of strategically managing stakeholders, content, channel and results of brand communication programs" (Shimp, 2010). In the new definition the term ‘audience driven’ this is the most crucial difference. The IMC starts with the customer/ prospect, customers have increasing control of marketing communications due to social media. There is importance for a deep understanding of the target audiences trends, wants and behavior. The relationship development with the customer is key in all business processes. Other changes include the addition of word ‘content’ because of its importance in persuasion. Customers also create highly powerful content themselves that effects other consumers. The word ‘business process’, IMC looks at the business as a whole (Shimp, 2010). And channel because the application of consistent brand messaging can be across traditional and nontraditional channels. All channels must be considered. Picking the correct channel must be relevant for the consumer and a preferred source of information/ media (Shimp, 2010). IMC considers all touch points and sources of contact that the customer or prospect has with the brand. Using nontraditional or traditional channels so that the different promotional methods to reinforce each other. Communication is the process of conveying information between two or more people. A communication process is the notion of steps a sender takes in order to achieve a successful communication. To understand how organisations create and maintain ongoing dialogues with target audiences, and equally, how individuals interpret brand meaning, it is necessary to study the communication process. The communication process consists of several components that include a sender, receiver, channel, encoding, decoding, noise and the last element response & feedback. All of these aspects contribute to the communication process of any advertising or marketing programs. A successful communication should start with a marketer selecting an appropriate source, developing an effective message or appeal that is encoded properly, and then selecting the channels or media that will best reach the target audience so that the message can be effectively decoded and delivered. A sender is the party that sends a message and the receiver is the person(s) with whom the sender shares thoughts or information.
 * Pickton, D., & Broderick, A. (2001). Integrated marketing communications. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
 * Burnett, J., & Moriarty, S. E. (1998). Introduction to marketing communication: An integrated approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
 * Luck, E., & Moffatt, J. (2009). IMC: Has anything really changed? A new perspective on an old definition. Journal of Marketing Communications, 15(5), 311-325. Retrieved from, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14385/1/14385.pdf

Suggested Structure
1. Integrated Marketing Communications: Definitions 2. IMC's role in the marketing plan
 * ✅ Done (12/11/17)

3. The communications process
 * * use a diagram showing relationship between sender, receiver, channels, message, noise etc.
 * * reduce current verbiage by emphasising relationships between elements and implications for strategy (rather than describing elements, let diagram take care of much of the description)
 * * need to discuss shift from one-way, disruptive models to two-way, real-time, dialogue models

4.The marketing communications mix
 * * Brief coverage of all marcomms elements emphasising aims/ objectives of each and special challenges/opportunities of each element in the mix (keep it focused and brief):
 * Advertising
 * Public relations (PR)
 * Personal selling
 * Direct marketing
 * Sponsorship
 * Product placement
 * Sales promotion / merchandising/ point-of-sale displays
 * Event marketing
 * Exhibitions/trade fairs
 * Sampling
 * Internal marketing communications

5.0 Integration: types of integration
 * ✅ Done (12/11/17)
 * discuss types of integration namely,
 * 5.1 Image integration
 * 5.2 Functional integration
 * 5.3 Coordinated integration
 * 5.4 Stakeholder integration
 * 5.5. Relationship integration

6. Developing the marcomms plan
 * need to discuss research for marcomms planning
 * need to link marcomms activity to overall marketing plan (stress importance of working towards achieving corporate vision and remaining consistent with corporate values)
 * 6.1. Setting marcomms budgets (focus on methods e.g. % of sales, objective approach, competitive parity etc)
 * 6.2. Determining the marcomms objectives
 * need to discuss different types of campaign objective e.g. brand comms, corporate comms, educational campaigns, etc
 * 6.3 Determining the target audience(s) for marketing communications
 * * need to distinguish b/w target audience and target market (no need to discuss mkt segmentation but can link to that article)
 * 6.4 Devising the message strategy (aka creative strategy)
 * 6.4.1 Outline of different types of creative strategy - informational/ transformational - comparative, USP, product benefit, brand image etc
 * 6.4.2 Creative elements of advertisements - TV ads and Print layouts
 * 6.4.3 Brochure and flyer design elements
 * 6.4.4 Types of Online Ads (where possible link to other relevant Wiki pages, rather than invent new content)
 * 6.4.5 Direct Response Ads (focus on types and attention tactics)
 * 6.4.6 Web design and layout/ criteria for good web design (focus on creative elements rather than technical aspects)
 * 6.5 Devising the media/ channel strategy
 * 6.5.1 Determining the reach and frequency objectives
 * 6.5.2 Evaluating media alternatives ( brief discussion of advs and disadvs of main media print, broadcast, digital, other)
 * 6.5.3 Determining media activity schedules (flighting, continuity, pulsing)

7. Measuring marcomms effects
 * 7.1. Measuring advertising effects (Pre-testing, post-testing and tracking methods)
 * 7.2. Measuring PR
 * 7.3 Measuring online and digital
 * 7.4. Measuring social influence
 * 7.5 General measures of communications effects (e.g. advertising ROI)

8. Special types of marcomms
 * 8.1 Pro-social marketing campaigns (educational campaigns)
 * 8.2 Not for profit promotion (especially focus on challenges associated with small budgets and multiple stakeholders)
 * 8.3 Community service promotions

9. Briefing advertising agencies/ marketing communications agencies

10. Trends in marketing communications (consider both creative trends, media trends)
 * 10.1 Audience fragmentation and media fragmentation
 * 10.2 Reduced promotional budgets
 * 10.3 Managerial accountability
 * 10.3 Rise of new media and changes in adspend/ media mix
 * 10.4 Changing role of advertising agencies (becoming more integrated marcomms agencies)
 * 10.5 Rise of in-house agencies
 * 10.6 New types of advertising e.g. behavioural targeting
 * 10.7 Implications of mass-customisation (i.e. conflation of production, communications and consumption)
 * 10.8 Changes to audience behaviour especially adblocking and zapping
 * 10.9 Other trends (open section where users can add trends they have noted in the literature)

This is a suggestion only. Other ideas would be welcome. If we can agree, more or less, on a proposed structure, it would help with merging the two articles (marketing communications and integrated marketing communications) and would provide editors with a sense of mission and purpose in terms of developing the revised article. This suggestion is relatively basic - and there is nothing to say that other headings could not be added at some point in the future.

BronHiggs (talk) 21:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Partial restructure and overhaul
I have had a bit of a go at overhauling this article. The section on "History" has been totally overhauled. It had to be done because much of it was lifted directly from Kliatcho's 2005 paper, but in spite of the obvious cut and paste, the article still managed to get some basic facts wrong. This has all been cleaned up. In addition, a new section on the "Meaning of integration" has been added to the article.

I have added two tags to the article:
 * 1. The section heading entitled "Integrated Marketing communication" appears to canvass ideas and content very similar to the history section. The heading is questionable, since the entire article is supposed to be about IMC. I really have no idea what to do with this section. I am reluctant to delete content unless is is factually incorrect or contains errors of interpretation.
 * 2. The section headed "The difference between Internet marketing communications and traditional marketing communications" appears to loose its focus entirely and instead of discussing IMC, it veers off to a more generalised discussion of online communications. This section is very confusing and very poorly explained. My feeling is that it could be deleted entirely with no real loss of value to the overall piece.

The section, entitled "origins" also replicates ideas and content canvassed in the "history" section. I have not tagged this section for the moment. But it is really questionable as to whether an article needs three different sections devoted to the concept's history or origins. This level of repetition is really tedious for readers - and as we could see, prior to the cleanup, unnecessary repetition introduces the potential for internal inconsistencies. (Prior to cleanup, we had different dating schemes for the AAAA's definition of IMC in each of the sections)

Other problems with the article include the inconsistent and sporadic use of references. Even when refs are used, they are often vague (e.g. Laurie & Mortimer, 2011; Speights, 2006) inline references without any further details in the reference list or bibliography. Wherever possible, I have tried to track down the original source and added it to the artilce. However, in the absence of an article title or other identifying details, it is impossible to verify the accuracy of the associated content and work on improving the meaning.

Finally, the section on "Removing barriers" is overly long, waffly and unfocussed. It does not appear to address the issues raised in the preceding section which identified the "barriers" to implementation. My preference would be that the article at least attempts to connect the ideas of barriers and strategies for their removal. Either this section could be reworked with a much tigher focus or it could be collapsed into the section on barriers - so that section could read as a problem-solution format. Once again, I really do not know what to do with this section?

Do people have any ideas about how this article could be made more relevant, succinct and useful to users? BronHiggs (talk) 11:19, 12 November 2017 (UTC)