How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 20)

Using IMC to Make Relationships Work (part A)

by

Charles Lamson

Interest in relationship marketing coincided with the interest in integrated marketing communications (IMC). In fact, according to Northwestern professor Don Schultz, IMC is what makes relationship marketing possible.

The link is interdependence, the fundamental characteristic of all relationships. As former Drake University professor Lou Wolter points out, "IMC is the management of interdependence in the marketplace."

IMC: The Concept and the Process

Technology has enabled marketers to adopt flexible manufacturing, customizing products for customized markets. "Market driven" today means bundling more services together with products to create a "unique product experience." It means companies and customers working together to find solutions.

The counterpart to flexible manufacturing is flexible marketing---and integrated marketing communications---to reach customers at different levels in new and better ways.

IMC is both a concept and a process. The concept of integration is wholeness. Achieving this wholeness in communications creates synergy---the principle benefit of IMC---because each element of the communications mix reinforces the others for greater effect.

For example, when a Mountain Dew grocer runs an endcap promotion (a special display at the end of an aisle) alone, it might generate a 10 percent increase in volume. If he runs an ad for Dew with a coupon, that might deliver a 15 percent increase. But running both together might grow volume by 35 percent. That is synergy---because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Tom Duncan, director of the IMC program at the University of Denver, points out that IMC is also a process in which communication becomes the driving, integrating force in the marketing mix and throughout the organization.

The Evolution of the IMC Concept

With the phenomenal technological changes in the last two decades came a host of specialized media and the fragmentation of the mass market. At the same time we witnessed a flood of mergers and acquisitions, the ascension of the global marketplace, the escalation of competition between various internal departments and external suppliers, and the arrival of more sophisticated, critical, and demanding customers. Suddenly, companies faced costly redundancies and inefficiencies as company departments with different missions and agendas all sought to achieve their particular goals, often at odds with either corporate or customer needs. For efficiency, companies needed to coordinate the multiplicity of inconsistent company and product messages being issued.

Many companies initially took a narrow, inside-out view of IMC. They saw it as a way to coordinate and manage their marketing communications (advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, and direct marketing) to give the audience a consistent message about the company.

A broader, more sophisticated, outside-in perspective of IMC, sees customers as partners in an ongoing relationship, recognizes the references they use, acknowledges the importance of the whole communications system, and accepts the many ways customers come into contact with the company or the brand. Companies committed to IMC realize their biggest asset is not their products or their plants or even their employees, but their customers. Defined broadly:

Integrated marketing communications is the process of building and reinforcing mutually profitable relationships with employees, customers,  other stakeholders, and the general public by developing and coordinating a strategic communications program that enables them to have a constructive encounter with the company/brand through a variety of media or other contacts.

Whether a company employs the narrow view or the broad view depends to a great extent on its corporate culture. Some companies enjoyed rapid growth and strong customer relationships because they intuitively integrated and focused all corporate and marketing activities. Saturn, Apple, Honda, Nike, and Banana Republic are just a few.

Tom Duncan recognized four distinct levels of integration that companies use; unified image, consistent voice, good listener, and at the most integrated, world class citizen (see Exhibit 1). These levels demonstrate how IMC programs range from narrowly focused corporate monologues to broad, interactive dialogues, resulting in a corporate culture that permeates an organization and drives everything it does, internally and externally.

Lev-el	Name	Descriptions/Focus	Examples
1	Unified image	One look, one voice, strong brand image focus	3M
2	Consistent voice	Consistent tone and look, coordinated messages to various audiences [customers, trade, suppliers, etc.]	Coca-Cola Hallmark Wal-Mart
3	Good listener	Solicits two-way communication, enabling feedback through toll-free numbers, surveys, trade shows, etc., focus on long-term relationships	Dove Saturn
4	World-class citizen	Social, environmental consciousness; strong company culture; focus on wider community	Ben & Jerry’s Apple Google Honda

Exhibit 1 

Levels of integration.

How The Customer Sees Marketing Communications

To truly understand IMC, we have to look through the customer's eyes. In one study, consumers identified 102 different media as "advertising"---everything from TV to shopping bags to sponsored community events. Customers also develop perceptions of the company or brand through a variety of other sources: news reports, word of mouth, gossip, experts' opinions, financial reports, and even the CEO's personality.

All these communications or brand contacts, sponsored or not, create an integrated product in the consumer's mind. In other words, customers automatically integrate all the brand-related messages that emanate from the company or some other source. The way they integrate those messages determines their perception of the company. IMC gives companies a better opportunity to manage or influence those perceptions and create a superior relationship with those stakeholders.

The Four Sources of Brand Messages

To influence customers' perceptions, marketers must understand one of the basic premises of IMC: that everything we do (and do not do) sends a message. That is to say, every corporate activity has a message component. Duncan categorized four types of company/brand-related messages stakeholders receive: planned, product, service, and unplanned. Each of these influences a stakeholder's relationship decision, so marketers must know where these messages originate, what effect they have, and the costs to influence or control them.

1. Planned messages. These are the traditional marketing communication messages---advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, merchandising materials, publicity releases, event sponsorships. These often have the least impact because they are seen as self-serving. They may also include help-wanted or financial offering ads, engineering articles in professional journals, and new contract announcements.
2. Product messages. In IMC theory, every element of the marketing mix sends a message. Messages from the product, price, or distribution elements are typically referred to as product (or inferred) messages. For example, customers and other stakeholders receive one product message from a $2,500 Rolex watch and a totally different one from a $30 Timex. Product messages also include packaging, which communicates a lot about the product through the use of color, type fonts, imagery, design, and layout.
3. Service messages. Many messages result from employee interactions with customers. In many organizations, customer service people are supervised by operations, not marketing. Yet the service messages they send have greater marketing impact than the planned messages. With IMC, marketing people work with operations to minimize negative messages and maximize positive ones.
4. Unplanned messages. Companies have little or no control over the unplanned messages that emanate from employee gossip, unsought news stories, comments by the trade or competitors, word-of-mouth rumors, or major disasters. Unplanned messages may affect customers' attitudes dramatically but they can sometimes be anticipated and influenced, especially by managers experienced in public relations.

Exhibit 2

The integration triangle.

The Integration Triangle

The integration triangle developed by Duncan and Moriarty is a simple illustration of how perceptions are created from the various brand message sources (see Exhibit 2). Planned messages are say messages---what companies say about themselves. Product and service messages are do messages because they represent what a company does. Unplanned messages are confirm messages because that is what others say and confirm (or not) about what the company says and does. Constructive integration occurs when a brand does what its maker says it will do and then others confirm that it delivers on its promises.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 246-249*

Lev-el

Name

Descriptions/Focus

Examples

1

Unified image

One look, one voice,

strong brand image

focus

3M

2

Consistent voice

Consistent tone and look,

coordinated messages

to various audiences

[customers, trade, suppliers,

etc.]

Coca-Cola

Hallmark

Wal-Mart

3

Good listener

Solicits two-way communication,

enabling feedback through

toll-free numbers, surveys,

trade shows, etc., focus on

long-term relationships

Dove

Saturn

4

World-class citizen

Social, environmental

consciousness; strong

company culture; focus

on wider community

Ben & Jerry’s

Apple

Google

Honda

END