Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) needs to be updated to account for changes in the digital era. The consumer journey is now more complex, with many new touchpoints influencing consumers. Consistency across touchpoints is still important, but campaigns need to leverage each touchpoint's unique strengths rather than using the same execution everywhere. Successful campaigns now synchronize different creative executions across touchpoints, with media and creative planned together. They also allow two-way engagement with consumers to co-create the brand narrative. The new approach of "orchestrated marketing" coordinates all elements like an orchestra for maximum impact.
The document discusses how to calculate ROI for social media marketing by measuring metrics that are meaningful to business executives. It recommends speaking the language of sales, revenue, and costs. It also suggests aligning social media goals with the traditional sales funnel by viewing social media as adding three levels: exposure, influence, and engagement. The document provides specific metrics to measure at each level of the funnel depending on the marketer's goals of brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention.
How fluent are you in paid media? The vocabulary that was once exclusive to the advertising industry has become required learning for today's top PR professionals. This quick guide defines key paid media terms and explains why they matter to all communicators.
The document discusses the changing communications landscape and what agencies must do to succeed. Specifically:
- The marketing world has become more dynamic with new technologies and empowered consumers. Agencies must constantly adapt to remain relevant.
- Only the best agencies will survive as brands gain new capabilities. To thrive, agencies need tools to monitor real-time conversations, control broad communication channels, and efficiently produce quality content.
- Key factors for agency success include having measurement tools, owning publication relationships, and developing a newsroom or freelancer model to produce large volumes of responsive content.
Giving an overview of why Paid Owned and Earned Media (POEM) is more relevant than ever before. Understand the what the channels are; reason for growth; and how to approach it.
This document provides an overview of digital branding and marketing strategies. It defines digital branding and discusses concepts like pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and YouTube advertising. The document also discusses target markets and how different strategies are suited to different target markets. It provides examples of successful digital marketing campaigns by companies like Coca-Cola and Supercell. Finally, it argues that an integrated marketing campaign using multiple digital and traditional strategies together is the most effective approach.
The way we as the audience learn, share and consume across our digital world is shaping content and the brand – to sustain the new demand and successfully grow brand we will need to move to a Agile Creative.
The document discusses how to calculate ROI for social media marketing by measuring metrics that are meaningful to business executives. It recommends speaking the language of sales, revenue, and costs. It also suggests aligning social media goals with the traditional sales funnel by viewing social media as adding three levels: exposure, influence, and engagement. The document provides specific metrics to measure at each level of the funnel depending on the marketer's goals of brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention.
How fluent are you in paid media? The vocabulary that was once exclusive to the advertising industry has become required learning for today's top PR professionals. This quick guide defines key paid media terms and explains why they matter to all communicators.
The document discusses the changing communications landscape and what agencies must do to succeed. Specifically:
- The marketing world has become more dynamic with new technologies and empowered consumers. Agencies must constantly adapt to remain relevant.
- Only the best agencies will survive as brands gain new capabilities. To thrive, agencies need tools to monitor real-time conversations, control broad communication channels, and efficiently produce quality content.
- Key factors for agency success include having measurement tools, owning publication relationships, and developing a newsroom or freelancer model to produce large volumes of responsive content.
Giving an overview of why Paid Owned and Earned Media (POEM) is more relevant than ever before. Understand the what the channels are; reason for growth; and how to approach it.
This document provides an overview of digital branding and marketing strategies. It defines digital branding and discusses concepts like pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and YouTube advertising. The document also discusses target markets and how different strategies are suited to different target markets. It provides examples of successful digital marketing campaigns by companies like Coca-Cola and Supercell. Finally, it argues that an integrated marketing campaign using multiple digital and traditional strategies together is the most effective approach.
The way we as the audience learn, share and consume across our digital world is shaping content and the brand – to sustain the new demand and successfully grow brand we will need to move to a Agile Creative.
ZenithOptimedia is championing a new strategic approach to communications planning that sees a radical rethink of the way clients prioritise and allocate resources across paid, owned and earned media.
Relevance and accountability in the age of distractionTod Frincke
The document discusses the challenges facing advertising agencies in today's fragmented media landscape where consumers are distracted. It argues that to be successful, agencies must create experiential and social ideas that engage consumers rather than static ads. The key is focusing ideas around the consumer's relationship and behavioral journey with the brand. Successful agencies will reorient themselves to focus on clear goals, consumer behavior, and rapid collaboration to build winning experiential ideas that serve business objectives and transform consumer attitudes and behaviors.
In the advertising and marketing industries, the debate has raged for decades. Do high levels of creativity make advertising more effective? Or is creativity just irresponsible folly practiced by creative people looking to win their next award? The arguments of both advocates and cynics have until now been based on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. The Case for Creativity brings the debate to a conclusion, telling the story of two decades of international research into the link between creativity and business results.
This document discusses the importance of engagement marketing for B2B companies. Engagement marketing involves developing two-way dialogues between organizations and their markets to build brand value, customer loyalty, and drive revenue. It allows companies to participate in conversations occurring in the marketplace and treat customers as partners. While many marketers recognize the importance of customer engagement, few have defined engagement strategies. The document argues that engagement marketing will become increasingly important for B2B companies to remain competitive by listening to customers and turning them into brand advocates.
Building a Connected Brand: How Brands Become Publishers in a Real-Time Marke...Alisa Leonard
The document discusses how brands must evolve into "media machines" to connect with audiences in today's real-time marketing world. It argues that brands, media, and audiences now overlap and all are both content creators and distributors. To succeed, brands must become aware of constantly changing audience needs, agile in adapting content, and actively engage audiences through two-way conversations. Content and community are essential for brands to support audiences throughout their decision making and remain relevant. Connectedness, focusing on audiences through useful content and engagement, is key to marketing success in this environment.
Sharing Surplus: The Brand is a Social AnimalUwe Lucas
The document discusses the rise of social media and how it has changed the relationship between brands and consumers. It suggests that brands need to focus on sharing surplus, which is the social and economic value consumers get from sharing their experiences with brands. The opportunity for brands is to help consumers collect social rewards from their peers by associating with the brand. However, brands must understand the nature of their relationship with consumers and the type of social capital they can offer in order to develop an effective social media strategy.
2010 Outlook: Doom and Gloom for DTC? 10 Points for Winning with PatientsAdvanceMarketWoRx LLC
Now is the time to re-think DTC marketing in the 21st Century. With all of the new ways to engage with patients, here are 10 prescriptions that can help marketers improve their DTC efforts in 2010.
(As originally published in DTC Perspectives, December 2009)
Content strategy and earned media have huge potential to help brands better serve their customers, but many struggle to change old habits and ways of working. This book shares many of the things that we in the Brilliant Noise team have learned in recent years about developing and scaling a branded content organisation.
The consumer decision journey. McKinsey. Consumers are moving outside the purchasing funnel, changing the way they research and buy your products. If your marketing hasn’t changed in response, it should. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373
Digital has fundamentally changed the way brands behave, as well as the way they organize and optimize their marketing efforts. To be successful in connecting with people in the digital age, brands must adopt new habits and, in some cases, behave more like people themselves.
While the personalities of individual brands are varied and unique, there are commonalities across strong digital brands that can be identified as critical to success in the new marketing landscape. We looked at some of the most successful digital brands and idenfified seven shared traits across the board. Each day for the next week, we’ll uncover a new “habit” and explain its importance to brands.
This document provides an overview of social media marketing strategies and best practices. It discusses how to think strategically about social media by developing clear brand and messaging strategies. It emphasizes creating engaging content, interacting with audiences, and measuring results. The key goals of social media marketing are to increase brand awareness, influence, web visits, customer engagement, and residual sales. Tools like Radian6, Hootsuite, and Facebook analytics can help track metrics like traffic, interactions, sales, and leads to optimize social media performance.
The Brand in the Boardroom: Making the case for investment in brand by Joanna...Ogilvy
The Red Papers represent the marquee thought leadership from the Ogilvy & Mather network. Research into effectiveness shows that the more we tie individual marketing and advertising efforts to hard measures, the better that advertising performs. That is true on the much larger scale of the brand itself.
It has been challenging, however, to measure the real impact of a brand. Past brand assessments have been limited by an accounting bias and reflexive secrecy about methodology. There is a better way, described here, which has the potential to transform marketing.
The vision of Brand Valuation set forth in this paper can help us all make a better case for investment in brand even as it links our brand strategies to measurable financial outcomes—shareholder value included. That makes a powerful argument for introducing the brand into the boardroom conversation, where it can have a meaningful impact on the health of the whole enterprise.
Jio created ripples in the market by announcing the launch of their advertising agency. We, at Wolfzhowl, believe that leaving it only as another advertising agency is wrong. Jio Creative Labs can become much more than just that. While they threaten the existence of big & small agencies alike, they can become incubators for brands that are in an aggressive growth phase.
We believe Jio Creative Labs can usher Marketing 3.0 for India. Read and tell us your thoughts!
- Media buyers and planners are increasingly including alternative media like guerrilla marketing in their plans due to the recession and slowing growth in traditional media.
- A survey found that over 2/3 of media professionals believe spending on alternative media will increase this year compared to last.
- The whitepaper argues that experiential/guerrilla marketing techniques are effective at connecting with customers in memorable ways and driving emotional responses, unlike traditional advertising which people avoid.
The document discusses best practices for social media strategy and marketing. It states that social media tactics alone do not equal a full strategy, and that social marketing aims to engage followers and spark conversations. Effective social strategies consider owned, earned, and paid social media, and use the right channels to suit content goals. The document advocates treating social media as part of an integrated digital experience and focusing on long-term engagement through multiple touchpoints and stories.
This document provides an overview of integrated marketing communications (IMC). It defines IMC as a strategic process that manages all interactions with customers to influence brand perception. The key aspects of IMC include being present at all customer touchpoints and ensuring communications present a consistent brand message. IMC utilizes various marketing components like advertising, public relations, sales promotion, etc. in an integrated way. Factors like media fragmentation, empowered customers, and increased accountability have led to the rise of IMC. For IMC to be effective, communications must have a single voice, be customer-focused, and foster two-way dialogue.
This document discusses new brand management techniques, focusing on measuring relationships between consumers and brands. It describes Millward Brown's Brand Dynamics model, which measures consumer attitudes, opinions, and beliefs about brands over time to observe how marketing activities impact the brand-consumer relationship. Content marketing is also discussed, noting that today consumers generate content and brands communicate directly with consumers through their own channels on social media. The importance of engagement programs is explained, noting they allow brands to build communities and reward loyal customers with memorable experiences.
Building a Connected Brand: How Brands Become Publishers in a Real-Time Marke...iCrossing
Brands, media, and audiences used to have distinct roles in the marketing relationship. Today those roles overlap, creating new opportunities and expectations. People are now their own publishers of opinions, experiences, and preferences. They share those sentiments with each other in social spaces. Media properties are now playing host to serious conversations, with readers functioning as active contributors to the story. Brands are realizing that audiences are demanding more of them than simply shouting about their products and services — they are now expected to share back. As these forces blur together, the roles and expectations for brands, media and audiences will continue to change. Find out more at http://www.icrossing.com
Brands As Publishers - Digital Brand Strategy at iCrossing, a Hearst CompanyRob Garner
The document discusses how brands must evolve into media platforms and adopt an always-on marketing approach to succeed in today's connected world. It emphasizes that brands need to focus on listening to audiences, creating engaging content, and continuously measuring their performance. The document provides a framework called "The Connected Marketing Playbook" that guides brands through essential activities like creating a customer listening program to understand audiences and engaging audiences through content and community.
The document discusses how brands must evolve into "media machines" to connect with audiences in today's real-time marketing world. It argues that brands, media, and audiences now overlap and all are both content creators and distributors. To succeed, brands must become aware of constantly changing audience needs, agile in adapting content, and actively engage audiences through two-way conversations. Content and community are essential for brands to support audiences throughout their decision making and remain relevant. Connectedness, focusing on audiences through useful content and engagement, is key to marketing success in this new environment.
ZenithOptimedia is championing a new strategic approach to communications planning that sees a radical rethink of the way clients prioritise and allocate resources across paid, owned and earned media.
Relevance and accountability in the age of distractionTod Frincke
The document discusses the challenges facing advertising agencies in today's fragmented media landscape where consumers are distracted. It argues that to be successful, agencies must create experiential and social ideas that engage consumers rather than static ads. The key is focusing ideas around the consumer's relationship and behavioral journey with the brand. Successful agencies will reorient themselves to focus on clear goals, consumer behavior, and rapid collaboration to build winning experiential ideas that serve business objectives and transform consumer attitudes and behaviors.
In the advertising and marketing industries, the debate has raged for decades. Do high levels of creativity make advertising more effective? Or is creativity just irresponsible folly practiced by creative people looking to win their next award? The arguments of both advocates and cynics have until now been based on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. The Case for Creativity brings the debate to a conclusion, telling the story of two decades of international research into the link between creativity and business results.
This document discusses the importance of engagement marketing for B2B companies. Engagement marketing involves developing two-way dialogues between organizations and their markets to build brand value, customer loyalty, and drive revenue. It allows companies to participate in conversations occurring in the marketplace and treat customers as partners. While many marketers recognize the importance of customer engagement, few have defined engagement strategies. The document argues that engagement marketing will become increasingly important for B2B companies to remain competitive by listening to customers and turning them into brand advocates.
Building a Connected Brand: How Brands Become Publishers in a Real-Time Marke...Alisa Leonard
The document discusses how brands must evolve into "media machines" to connect with audiences in today's real-time marketing world. It argues that brands, media, and audiences now overlap and all are both content creators and distributors. To succeed, brands must become aware of constantly changing audience needs, agile in adapting content, and actively engage audiences through two-way conversations. Content and community are essential for brands to support audiences throughout their decision making and remain relevant. Connectedness, focusing on audiences through useful content and engagement, is key to marketing success in this environment.
Sharing Surplus: The Brand is a Social AnimalUwe Lucas
The document discusses the rise of social media and how it has changed the relationship between brands and consumers. It suggests that brands need to focus on sharing surplus, which is the social and economic value consumers get from sharing their experiences with brands. The opportunity for brands is to help consumers collect social rewards from their peers by associating with the brand. However, brands must understand the nature of their relationship with consumers and the type of social capital they can offer in order to develop an effective social media strategy.
2010 Outlook: Doom and Gloom for DTC? 10 Points for Winning with PatientsAdvanceMarketWoRx LLC
Now is the time to re-think DTC marketing in the 21st Century. With all of the new ways to engage with patients, here are 10 prescriptions that can help marketers improve their DTC efforts in 2010.
(As originally published in DTC Perspectives, December 2009)
Content strategy and earned media have huge potential to help brands better serve their customers, but many struggle to change old habits and ways of working. This book shares many of the things that we in the Brilliant Noise team have learned in recent years about developing and scaling a branded content organisation.
The consumer decision journey. McKinsey. Consumers are moving outside the purchasing funnel, changing the way they research and buy your products. If your marketing hasn’t changed in response, it should. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373
Digital has fundamentally changed the way brands behave, as well as the way they organize and optimize their marketing efforts. To be successful in connecting with people in the digital age, brands must adopt new habits and, in some cases, behave more like people themselves.
While the personalities of individual brands are varied and unique, there are commonalities across strong digital brands that can be identified as critical to success in the new marketing landscape. We looked at some of the most successful digital brands and idenfified seven shared traits across the board. Each day for the next week, we’ll uncover a new “habit” and explain its importance to brands.
This document provides an overview of social media marketing strategies and best practices. It discusses how to think strategically about social media by developing clear brand and messaging strategies. It emphasizes creating engaging content, interacting with audiences, and measuring results. The key goals of social media marketing are to increase brand awareness, influence, web visits, customer engagement, and residual sales. Tools like Radian6, Hootsuite, and Facebook analytics can help track metrics like traffic, interactions, sales, and leads to optimize social media performance.
The Brand in the Boardroom: Making the case for investment in brand by Joanna...Ogilvy
The Red Papers represent the marquee thought leadership from the Ogilvy & Mather network. Research into effectiveness shows that the more we tie individual marketing and advertising efforts to hard measures, the better that advertising performs. That is true on the much larger scale of the brand itself.
It has been challenging, however, to measure the real impact of a brand. Past brand assessments have been limited by an accounting bias and reflexive secrecy about methodology. There is a better way, described here, which has the potential to transform marketing.
The vision of Brand Valuation set forth in this paper can help us all make a better case for investment in brand even as it links our brand strategies to measurable financial outcomes—shareholder value included. That makes a powerful argument for introducing the brand into the boardroom conversation, where it can have a meaningful impact on the health of the whole enterprise.
Jio created ripples in the market by announcing the launch of their advertising agency. We, at Wolfzhowl, believe that leaving it only as another advertising agency is wrong. Jio Creative Labs can become much more than just that. While they threaten the existence of big & small agencies alike, they can become incubators for brands that are in an aggressive growth phase.
We believe Jio Creative Labs can usher Marketing 3.0 for India. Read and tell us your thoughts!
- Media buyers and planners are increasingly including alternative media like guerrilla marketing in their plans due to the recession and slowing growth in traditional media.
- A survey found that over 2/3 of media professionals believe spending on alternative media will increase this year compared to last.
- The whitepaper argues that experiential/guerrilla marketing techniques are effective at connecting with customers in memorable ways and driving emotional responses, unlike traditional advertising which people avoid.
The document discusses best practices for social media strategy and marketing. It states that social media tactics alone do not equal a full strategy, and that social marketing aims to engage followers and spark conversations. Effective social strategies consider owned, earned, and paid social media, and use the right channels to suit content goals. The document advocates treating social media as part of an integrated digital experience and focusing on long-term engagement through multiple touchpoints and stories.
This document provides an overview of integrated marketing communications (IMC). It defines IMC as a strategic process that manages all interactions with customers to influence brand perception. The key aspects of IMC include being present at all customer touchpoints and ensuring communications present a consistent brand message. IMC utilizes various marketing components like advertising, public relations, sales promotion, etc. in an integrated way. Factors like media fragmentation, empowered customers, and increased accountability have led to the rise of IMC. For IMC to be effective, communications must have a single voice, be customer-focused, and foster two-way dialogue.
This document discusses new brand management techniques, focusing on measuring relationships between consumers and brands. It describes Millward Brown's Brand Dynamics model, which measures consumer attitudes, opinions, and beliefs about brands over time to observe how marketing activities impact the brand-consumer relationship. Content marketing is also discussed, noting that today consumers generate content and brands communicate directly with consumers through their own channels on social media. The importance of engagement programs is explained, noting they allow brands to build communities and reward loyal customers with memorable experiences.
Building a Connected Brand: How Brands Become Publishers in a Real-Time Marke...iCrossing
Brands, media, and audiences used to have distinct roles in the marketing relationship. Today those roles overlap, creating new opportunities and expectations. People are now their own publishers of opinions, experiences, and preferences. They share those sentiments with each other in social spaces. Media properties are now playing host to serious conversations, with readers functioning as active contributors to the story. Brands are realizing that audiences are demanding more of them than simply shouting about their products and services — they are now expected to share back. As these forces blur together, the roles and expectations for brands, media and audiences will continue to change. Find out more at http://www.icrossing.com
Brands As Publishers - Digital Brand Strategy at iCrossing, a Hearst CompanyRob Garner
The document discusses how brands must evolve into media platforms and adopt an always-on marketing approach to succeed in today's connected world. It emphasizes that brands need to focus on listening to audiences, creating engaging content, and continuously measuring their performance. The document provides a framework called "The Connected Marketing Playbook" that guides brands through essential activities like creating a customer listening program to understand audiences and engaging audiences through content and community.
The document discusses how brands must evolve into "media machines" to connect with audiences in today's real-time marketing world. It argues that brands, media, and audiences now overlap and all are both content creators and distributors. To succeed, brands must become aware of constantly changing audience needs, agile in adapting content, and actively engage audiences through two-way conversations. Content and community are essential for brands to support audiences throughout their decision making and remain relevant. Connectedness, focusing on audiences through useful content and engagement, is key to marketing success in this new environment.
Consumers, context, and a future for communications planningJames Caig
This document discusses the changing communications landscape and opportunities for communications planning agencies. It notes that while technological changes are rapid, human motivations remain constant. To thrive, communications planning must innovate in how it engages clients and matches insights about consumer needs and behaviors with flexible marketing approaches. By understanding context and focusing on utility rather than just selling what brands want, communications planning could lead brands successfully into the future by helping people get what they want.
Joanne Woo argues that while purpose-driven branding is important, the next step for CMOs is to activate their brand's purpose by creating movements with customers. This deepens customer connections and galvanizes action. To do so, brands must bring employees on the purpose journey, build communities rather than view customers passively, and authentically communicate actions and impacts with transparency. The CMO's role is to ensure purpose goes beyond marketing to influence accountability and stakeholder alignment internally. Creating spaces for customers to join movements bigger than the brand itself catalyzes purpose-driven action.
Integrated Marketing: What It Is and Why You Should Embrace It (part 1 of 3)Richard Hatheway
This article will provide an overview and will attempt to explain what integrated marketing is and why the use of integrated marketing is more important now than ever before. This is not an in-depth treatise on the topic, but will provide you with a solid foundation on the topic of integrated marketing.
1. The document discusses various frameworks for how advertising works, including the sales, persuasion, involvement, and salience frameworks. It explains concepts like using emotion, shock advertising, and developing brand awareness.
2. Strategic uses of advertising discussed include differentiating brands, reinforcing messages, and engaging customers. The FCB matrix combines involvement with rational/emotional thinking for ad strategies.
3. Case studies are provided on how companies like M&S, Sony Ericsson, Yellow Pages, and NesCafe have effectively used advertising frameworks and strategies.
This document provides an introduction and background on integrated marketing communication (IMC). IMC is defined as a customer-centric and data-driven approach to communicating with consumers using all available marketing tools in a coordinated way to maximize impact at minimal cost. The goal of IMC is to have advertising, sales promotion, public relations, digital marketing, and other communication efforts work together rather than separately. Several shifts in advertising and media have led marketers to adopt IMC as a primary strategy, such as moving from mass media to more specialized niche media and from general advertising to more data-driven personalized marketing. The introduction sets up the rest of the document to discuss IMC in more depth.
The document is a study on integrated marketing communications (IMC) conducted by Vidhi H Shah for her college course. It includes an introduction to IMC, definitions of IMC, the components and factors contributing to IMC, levels of integration, and a case study on how the entertainment industry uses IMC. The document provides an in-depth examination of the concepts, principles, process, evaluation and barriers of implementing an effective IMC strategy.
Media and-digital-predictions 2017-kantar-millward-brownFelipe San Juan
Brands will step up efforts to reach the emerging Gen Z consumer segment in 2017. Smart marketers know Gen Z presents an opportunity to transform their brand’s meaning and salience in digital. Content marketing will continue to gain traction, driving innovation and experimentation in content formats and technologies like 360 video and augmented reality. Programmatic targeting will focus on balancing brand affinity with behavior to identify the most receptive audiences. The online ad industry will more aggressively address ad blocking by adopting better ad formats and persuading audiences not to block ads. Synergies across channels will become more important, requiring creative synchronization and optimizing media duplication and phasing.
Kantar-millward-brown Media and-digital-predictions 2017Brian Crotty
Brands will step up efforts to connect with the emerging Gen Z consumer segment in 2017. Marketers will need to offer opportunities for Gen Z to interact and co-create with brands through digital platforms. Transparency about a brand's values and purpose will also be important to this demographic. Brands will also need to experiment with new formats like augmented reality and virtual reality to engage Gen Z in an imaginative and visual way. Consistency of brand experience across touchpoints will be another key focus area for marketers as consumers interact with brands through various channels. Content marketing techniques will continue to evolve through new technologies and more targeted, personalized creative content.
Marketing Plan For The Local Grocery Store EssayGina Alfaro
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts is a private hotel management company that manages high-end luxury hotels. It aims to increase profitability and customer lifetime value through branding. Significant amounts of money are invested in branding, marketing, and developing the company's lifestyle brand to attract loyal, high-spending customers. Strategic branding creates an emotional connection and feeling for customers rather than just focusing on the product. The efforts of branding and marketing have a significant impact on how consumers choose hotels and spend during their stays. Organizations have evolved their branding significantly over the past few decades to focus more on lifestyle brands that appeal to customers emotionally and build loyalty.
The document discusses Mazda's use of integrated marketing communications to successfully market the Mazda Protégé and Mazda 6 automobiles. Key elements of Mazda's IMC strategy included understanding the customer perspective, building customer relationships, and changing their advertising approach from traditional to targeting younger drivers interested in sporty features. This resulted in Mazda becoming more aggressive in their marketing strategies and increased production and sales.
An early definition of integrated marketing communications (IMC), A more current definition of integrated marketing communications (IMC), What importance of IMC is growing, The four stages model of integrated marketing communications (IMC)
Social media has become an important tool for advertising and marketing. Companies use social media to target large audiences, build relationships, and earn positive reviews that can be converted into sales. However, companies must communicate with audiences in a human voice and manage risks, content, and customer complaints professionally on social media. Measuring engagement, branding, and integrating marketing strategies across different social media platforms are important for achieving return on investment and cost avoidance through reputation management. Case studies show successes like Wendy's pretzel chicken campaign and failures like KFC's ill-advised hashtag challenge the importance of real-time response for social media strategies.
Social media has become an important tool for advertising and marketing. Companies use social media to target large audiences, build relationships, and earn positive reviews that can be converted into sales. However, companies must communicate with audiences in a human voice and manage risks, content, and customer complaints professionally on social media. Measuring engagement, branding, and integrating marketing strategies across different social media platforms are important for achieving return on investment and cost avoidance through reputation management. Case studies show successes like Wendy's pretzel chicken campaign and failures like KFC's "I Ate The Bones" hashtag illustrate lessons about considering audiences and maintaining positive interactions in real-time social media.
1. 1
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
needs some fine tuning
In recent years, with the explosion of
touchpoints, many marketers have realized the
need to create consistency across all possible
channels. A new buzz word became very
popular, “Integrated Marketing
Communication”.
IMC is defined by many Marketing Associations
as: - “ 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.” Usually this concept has been associated
with the execution and deployment of one single
advertising or marketing campaign. Although
this has been widely accepted as a good practice,
and a challenging one to execute, its concept
needs some fine tuning to accommodate how
consumers interact with brands in the new digital
era.
Consumer Journey is now a lot more complex
We used to live in a much more linear and
simpler world, where marketers could expect
consumers to follow certain patterns in their
journey… A consumer considering purchasing a
new car was expected to buy a specialized
magazine, search for different models of their
interest, get some technical information, discuss
it with friends, look at different price ranges,
ending up paying a long visit to car dealers. TV
Ads were designed to build awareness and
desire; Print to be informative, newspapers to
feature promotional attraction, and the dealership
salesmen to influence and close the sale. Digital
has changed and amplified this journey quite
significantly: The points of influence have
increased; There is much more influence from
unpaid/uncontrolled touchpoints; Much of the
process of filtering and assessing brand options
has moved online; The Internet is equipping
consumers to find better pricing and mobile
technology to locate dealerships with on the fly
information. In short, the many new touchpoints
has led to the empowered, connected consumer,
and this changes how integrated marketing
campaigns need to be planned. - There is not
only a need to be aware of new consumer paths,
but linking the touchpoints in a more cohesive
manner is also more important in the new world.
It is not about one single advertising execution
Consistency in brand communication has always
been an important practice, as we want to make
sure consumers are getting the same relevant
message from different touchpoints. The
problem is that this practice typically has been
associated with one single executional idea
and/or one campaign narrative. The choice of
touchpoints was like the Three Musketeers
commitment: “All for one, and one for all”. In
the new digital world, the idea of consistency
needs to expand in its meaning and application.
The brand’s core creative insight (The Big Idea)
remains the base, but marketers need to
understand that consistency is not about
homogenizing one execution and rolling it out to
be translated to other touchpoints. It is no longer
“all for one and one for all”. Advertisers who
insist on creating TV spots and just expecting the
Synchronize, orchestrate
and stay tuned!
Alan Mark Liberman
President Ipsos Connect Latin America
Ipsos
2. 2
creative to be adapted across all touchpoints in a
similar fashion are not leveraging the power of
each touchpoint, in the context of each exposure.
IMC needs to expand to allow for different
creative executions and different narrative to
leverage the context of each touchpoint, and to
recognize how consumers will interact with each.
Each touchpoint should be chosen for its own
unique strength and contribution. And it is the
collection of unique different contributions
which defines the total brand effect. Naturally,
these many different efforts need to be ‘on
strategy’ and expressing the brand in the way it
wishes/hopes.
Blending Media and Creative together
The media industry is under-going a deep
transformation which started over twenty years
ago with creative agencies losing the media
planning business to media agencies. There is
now quite a split between the two important
elements of communicating; creative planning vs
media planning. This was likely driven by
economic reasons, but without full appreciation
of the implications to the holistic concept of the
campaign. This separation of Media and
Creative makes even less sense in today’s world.
The Internet is merging and blurring the lines
between creative and media. It is also providing
for many new different contexts to express the
brand. In turn, we need Media and Creative
executives sitting together, side by side in the
same room, working as one, to give context to
the big Idea, and the creative in the context of the
touchpoint, for the unique strength of each
touchpoint. - The good news is that we are
seeing some great examples of highly creative
ideas that have aligned the media and creative
expression which best reflects the context in
which the consumer experiences (and hopefully
engages in) it.
Speed, Reaction, and Collaboration have grown in
importance
With the popularity of social networks, the high
degree of consumer connectedness and the state
of being “always on”, the manner of running
brand communications has changed. Marketers
have to closely monitor, make changes, and
respond to market situations in order to stay in
control of their brand expression. It is unwise to
let consumers own and co-create themselves
without the brand leading/guiding the desired
direction. The Abercrombie & Fitch fiasco with
consumers manipulating the brand story is an
example of the new world. More than ever,
brands need to take control of the brand
expression by being right on top of things in real-
time, with quick course corrections. This type
of immediacy and dialogue with consumers is a
new dimension in IMC.
Fine tuning IMC: Synchronize or.. Orchestrate
it!
So the old buzz word “integrated” has become
too small and frankly not best suited to
accommodate the new consumer journey nor the
new world of touchpoints. IMC needs a better
and more appropriate definition. Some advanced
leaders are starting to use the term
“Synchronized Marketing” or a “Synchronized
campaign”. Synchronization combines the
concept of deploying a long term Big Idea by
understanding the different roles and strengths of
the individual touchpoints, connecting them in
the best possible meticulous way, allowing space
for dialogue and fine tuning. Beyond integration
of marketing efforts, synchronized marketing
connects and tunes the various different
elements/platforms – making the whole a log
bigger than the sum of the parts.
It is very much like an orchestra: all of the
different musicians orchestrate their moves
simultaneously to create a much more powerful
music than any individual effort. Each
contributes a part and not necessarily each
playing the full tune (just their selected role). A
well conducted orchestra provides impressive
and moving music, with the conductor (the
brand) synchronizing and modifying the
musicians in real time. Perhaps the more
appropriate evolution of the IMC term should be
“orchestrated marketing”!
3. 3
It is not a mindless journey; the need for
inspiration
Perhaps marketers can no longer fully control
their brand narrative in the new digital era.
Perhaps this is concerning to some. Certainly
there are risks of consumers dictating part of the
brand narrative, but there is also a lot of benefit
owing to the power of (positive) word-of-mouth.
Frankly, generating consumer-to-consumer
retransmission of the brand narrative is often an
important benefit for the brand, and should be
part of the orchestrated, synchronized campaign.
But clearly, the brand needs to act as the
conductor in the metaphor of our orchestra. And
like a good musical score, the brand conductor
needs the right creative Big Idea.
Orchestrated Campaign: How do we get there?
So the big question now is: - What are the things
we can do to leverage our big Idea and
synchronize our campaign? The 5 key common
elements based on observations of great
campaigns are:
1. They have a Big Idea. And it is built on a
powerful human insight. Make sure you work on
it!
2. They make the best use of each individual
Touchpoint. One of the great outcomes of our
online, digital, multi-media world is the ability to
micro-target, and customizes each touchpoint,
for the right objectives, to the best target.
Advertisers need to select the right touchpoints
for the best roles they can each play, and then
align the creative to leverage the context of the
touchpoint (for the objective/role it is intended to
play). Understanding effects of the different
touchpoints and overall brand effect are
becoming critical.
3. The creative and the exposure are one
synchronized and powerful (synergistic) effort.
Creative planning and media planning need to
happen in the same room, at the same time. We
can see an emerging trend of powerful
campaigns where media and creative play
together to build a much more powerful
campaign! As with the orchestra, each musician
practices together and not in isolation in their
respective homes.
4. They connect multiple platforms. The silos
between traditional media can no longer exist.
All touchpoints feed each other, and become
connected in a continuous conversation, and in
no controlled order.
5. And finally, they allow consumers to engage and
co-create with the Brand. These advertisers listen
to their consumers! Not only to understand
where they are going but from where they are
coming from! (Validating TP connections). They
might be using social media to make their
campaign stronger by fine tuning while still on
air! As I hear recently from a senior executive: -
Plan and guide; don’t be afraid to lose control; be
afraid to lose engagement!
In summary… a successful orchestrated
campaign starts with an inspired insight which
transforms into a brand idea that is able to strike
the right consumer chords; then, when these
chords are put together, they can create songs
that truly connect consumers to the brands.
Finally, when well executed it is pretty much like
a good orchestra: - the music is just beautiful!
The examples of orchestrated campaigns are
increasing; this is a sign of maturity. Leading
brands are learning to uncover more powerful
ideas and connecting the touchpoints in their
own terms, maximizing the message and
boosting results. Besides it is becoming more
democratic: the low variable costs per exposure
associated with the new emerging media are
allowing all size companies (and budgets) to
play!
Stay and be tuned: Results will be music for your
ears! ◙