Number 22: Spring 2003

 

 

Integrated Marketing: creation of a belief system

By Angus Matthew

Editor's comment: Marketing has traditionally been viewed as a discpline, albeit a very important one, within a company’s overall operation. Integrated Marketing takes the practice into a whole new area by stressing that marketing is at the heart of a company’s operation and a discipline that binds the company together and propels it forwards.

Marketing, for so long the solution, is now part of the problem. A not unreasonable fact in light of the demands now placed on companies by a host of expectant stakeholders.

Marketers are accustomed to new ideas, but what the concept of integrated marketing does is to make marketing utterly central to any business and its future development. IM’s influence stretches to other silos of corporate activity, and consequently for marketers, takes as its start point a much broader array of skills and mindsets, some of which run counter to the way most marketing departments have traditionally operated. To some a very new set of objectives and approaches, to others just good marketing, albeit with a broader focus. Most of the constituent elements of IM have been with us for some time, but what is starting to emerge now is a practioner's framework.

Integrated marketing is a concept that has gathered much momentum in recent years but no one; neither academics nor practioners alike, have formulated any kind of rationale. This is rapidly changing with some of the UK’s leading companies sponsoring its advancement. This will surely have a profound impact on the future development of marketing and its fractionated service industries, as its effect will be felt in functional areas as distinct as marketing, PR, R&D, organisational development, HR, corporate affairs and IT.

What integrated marketing is, as distinct from integrated marketing communications, is an antidote to disintegrated, silo-based and toxic organisations that disempower people, create inefficiencies and destroy customer value. Indeed it has at its heart a desire to maximise the mutuality of value exchanged, whether transaction or information based, at every opportunity and in a host of emerging business relations. It is about instilling a purpose, a unifying theme that permeates a whole organisation and behind which it is possible to align a firm’s value added activities to converge on a single point of customer value. It is a big idea that organises and is accessible through its meaning to all relevant stakeholders whether employee, investor, customer, supplier etc. A clear statement and importantly, a demonstration of corporate purpose and vision. A unifying theme that is both attainable and realistic, and re-affirmed, even developed, through all channels, media or corporate activity. A truth that is present within a firm's products, services, brand, organisation and culture, even its past and to which the organisation is committed by seeking to align brand image and culture, internal and external messages, brand promise and organizational strategy. A commitment that needs to include all the people that count, and that is surely everyone.

Stakeholders all have specific informational needs and so it goes that integrated marketing communications to employees, customers etc should reflect their differing agendas and preferences. Indeed it is puzzling why most marketing campaigns don’t have as their start point those persons who are the embodiment of a corporations promise and its main creators of customer value: its employees.

IM aligns internal structures that are wholly focused on delivering value to customers, over and above any short-termism which may act against this corporate vision. For one such successful energy company that customer vision became the basis for its brand promise. Customers take their individual experiences as elements of the whole and use this to read the nature of the whole brand or organization. Customers do not share our fractionated corporate view of the world, they do not evaluate communication by the criteria we set. They form a perception built on their total experiences and as consumers increasingly judge your company on its marketing approach and your corporation's reputation. For that matter, customers are also now participants in the wider brand organisation and its identity, and sometimes major participants. Some companies have sought to break down the traditional barriers between buyers and sellers with consumers becoming an active part of the production process itself.

So much of marketing today is a statement about what divides not what unites, the distinction between segments and customer communities are just such an example. Harley Davidson has captured this perfectly and its members or ‘customer tribes’ are mobilized behind the brand as willing contributors, investing more, to get more. We need to know what unites consumers as well being able to respect individual needs and situations in one-to-one communication.  

Integrated marketing pulls together many strands of existing and emerging best practice and can best be defined as a creative, human and business discipline that is concerned with the brand being appropriately present and effectively communicating at all the important times in a customer's life. Not exactly rocket science but in combination it constitutes a fresh vision of a united organization with active ‘partners’ and ‘members’ who are united by purpose to a common vision and willing to contribute in mutual accommodation for mutual gain. Organisations are inherently relational, and those relationships are only as strong as the natural alignment between the identities of the participants inside and out. The consequence of this is that organisations are most productive for those who need them in return.

A trip to any supermarket will reveal that the brand as an organising idea is nothing new but brands as a recruiting agent for future wealth creating win-wins, is a very different notion to brands as explicit selling messages. Research has shown that customers tend to coalesce around brands that share with them specific values as well value, such mobilizing brands, through IM, can transmit such a proposition.

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