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Integrated marketing communications
Breakthrough, buzzword or a great big failure? by Paul Paquet APR Integrated marketing communications is changing advertising, public
relations and marketing. And it's making some people in those businesses mad as hell. IMC is a common-sense idea. Instead of dividing communications into several overlapping departments, organizations use one strategy
for everything, making every communication consistent with one message and one strategy. For example, once a company decides how it is uniquely able to meet a particular consumer need, every message is based on those
conclusions. Since there is one message, everyone from the receptionist to the CEO can be a salesperson for that message. This is certainly making some PR leaders nervous. The May 15 issue of Jack O'Dwyer's
influential PR newsletter says that "PR people fear the transformation of PR into advertising by corporate masters because there is more profit in advertising." O'Dwyer says that in IMC, "the PR person
is one member of a five- or six-member team [and] is often reduced to pitching the ad theme." Ironically, PR is already marching on marketing. "Relationship marketing" is based on keeping existing
customers by making them feel good about the supplier, rather than endlessly trying to win new customers with the raw imagery of advertising. Relationship marketing is PR. Total customer satisfaction is PR. PR people
should move the focus of IMC off customers. After all, customers are also voters, newspaper subscribers, shareholders, even employees. Ad agencies, meanwhile, are also having trouble with IMC. Many see IMC as a way to
steal clients from PR agencies. Some agencies eventually turn all IMC problems into advertising problems, perhaps because the creative department doesn't win industry awards for writing news releases. But while ads
have the advantage of persistence and control, PR-driven news coverage has greater credibility. Combining the two makes sense. It sounds to us as if the problem is one of having too many chefs and not enough cooks.
At the risk of blowing our own horn, at Cornerstone we always mix the best ideas from PR and marketing to create "words you can build your business on." Our media releases, for example, use direct-mail
principles. Perhaps IMC is simply easier to execute in small organizations than in large ones.
Cornerstone is a writing
and editing firm that uses marketing and PR principles to create "words you can build your business on." Call us from anywhere in the world for rush work.
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