Kaitlin Simpson

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is:

“the process of unifying a brand’s messaging to make it consistent across all media platforms that the brand uses to reach its target market”

“a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time”

But again, what does that even mean?

Let’s break it down.

There are four basic marketing levels where integration is required and they build upon each other:

1) The Marketing Mix Level

This covers your fundamentals: product, price, place, and promotion. The product, price, and place of a product or service really cover the ‘tangibles’ if you will, the concrete pieces on which you build your promotions. If these elements are out of whack, you’re going to create cognitive dissonance within your target market and any communications built upon those elements are going further that.

Product:

• What PROBLEM is your product solving?
• Who is your target market?
• How does your product solve the customer’s needs?
• What does your product offer that your competitor’s product does not?

Price:

• What do competing products cost?
• How much are your customers willing to spend?
• Can your product have multiple price points?
• What does your product cost to create?

Place:

• Where does your target customer purchase similar products?
• Where is your customer located?
• Is your product business or consumer-focused?
• Where are your competitors selling their products or services?

Getting to the why of your product can help you to figure out your brand’s purpose and with that, you can build your brand.

2) The Brand Level

To achieve brand integration within your marketing mix, it is essential to establish distinctive brand elements that set your brand apart in the market and resonate with your overall marketing strategy. These elements will be highlighted in all your packaging, communications, promotions, and products going forward.

Brand Purpose:

• What is the brand’s purpose and dream? (Use elements from Marketing Mix to answer)
• What is the contribution you want your brand to make to the world?
• What is the impact you want the world to experience because of your contribution?

Values:

• What values would you stand by even when it’s hard to do so? (Use a word or phrase and then describe that value)
• What instrumental values do you want your brand to hold?

Value Proposition:

• What can the user/customer expect to experience?

Positioning:

• What is the perception of your brand in the mind of the target market?
• What is the perception of your brand against your competitors?

Logo:

• What symbols or imagery can you use to capture your value proposition?
• What logo would be memorable within your product category?

Tagline:

• What short snippet really defines your value proposition?
• Is it memorable, likable, and related to the brand?

Fonts And Colors & Other Brand Associations :

• What colors can help convey the overall feeling of the brand?
• What tone of communication do you want to use with your customer?
• What fonts (silly, modern, traditional, serious) might help convey the tone of your brand?
• What mythos might you want to associate with?
• How does your brand look, smell, sound, feel, and taste?

3) The Creative Level

When you wrap up the prior levels into one concise package, this builds your Creative Brief. Once you have your Creative Brief, you must decide on the communication objectives that need to be achieved deciding on a message strategy method for achieving the communication objectives that consistently deliver your brand’s message. This is your Creative Strategy. Here are the Creative Strategy methods that layer on top of the Creative Brief.

Communication Objectives:

Do you want to increase:

• Awareness?
• Knowledge?
• Liking?
• Preference?
• Trial Rate?
• Purchase Intent?

Be specific, by how much and in what timeframe? Understand that you may not achieve 100% on anything and that these objectives should be informed from the one above it. You do not need to capture every objective in one campaign either.

Message Strategy Methods:

Using the Communication Objectives, decide how you will accomplish it

• Awareness – repetition of brand elements
• Knowledge – repetition of value proposition
• Liking – use of humor, feel-good, sex appeal, music, or imagery
• Preference – providing reason why, demonstrations, testimonials, comparisons, infomercials, fear-appeal, induce social anxiety, transformational ads, slice-of-life ads
• Trial Rate – reduce risk, call now ads, click-through ads, price appeal
• Purchase Intent – how to streamline process to purchase and call to action

Sample Creative Executions:

Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish and how you want to do it, what does that look like? These will help you figure out how you are going to execute your communications going forward.

• Wireframe website
• Storyboard video
• Outline script

4) The Communication Channels Level

Once you have your Creative Strategy, you can implement it across all the relevant channels that your target market uses to create promotions. One communication channel is hardly ever enough to reach your entire target market nor breakthrough the media clutter. You will need multiple repetitive, unified messages to be able to succeed in your communication objectives.

Here are some of the media channels you might want to use:

Traditional Media:

• TV
• Radio
• Newspapers/Magazines

Digital Media:

• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Streaming Video
• Streaming Audio
• Email Marketing

Out of Home Media:

• Billboards
• Posters & Flyers
• Sandwich Boards
• Transit Media
• Aerial Media

You can use content built for one channel and break it up for other media channels in order to optimize and fully integrate your promotional material.

So, to come full-circle, does it make sense now?

IMC is the foundation for you to use to create messaging that is consistent across your communications and media channels.

If a brand can reach its intended consumer multiple times, across various channels, they begin to resonate with its audience. If the various channels do a good job of communicating the brand and message consistently, then the person is even more likely to recognize and trust the brand. IMC makes this consistent delivery possible. Without this consistency, the audience receives a disjointed brand experience, and it becomes less likely that the intended message will be received. Integrated Marketing Communications helps build recognition, trust, and a coherent picture of your brand in the customers’ minds.