Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is related with the use of marketing strategies to cultivate the communication of any brand of company with the stakeholders. IMC need the marketers to understand the boundaries and thereby consider the effectiveness of the campaign’s message.
It all first started in the mid of late 1980, when marketing environment was undergoing considerable changes due to association with marketing communications. Practitioners and scholars started working in the field of new innovations or approaches which further became known as Integrated Marketing Communications.
In 1991, it was the faculty of Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University associated with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s or AAAA) who started the first empirical research study to explore the field of IMC or how IMC was being used.Their study concentrated on understanding and analyzing the concept of IMC including its importance and also focused on how all the major U.S advertising agencies or companies were practicing the strategies & up to what extent. The initial observations were then duplicated by another researchers and they started focusing or studying how IMC was being used in another countries such as New Zealand, UK, US, Australia, India, Thailand, South Africa and the Philippines, etc.The results showed that the new strategies of IMC were not short-lived implications rather it included the factors such as new and innovative methods of information technology like development and usage of databases, interaction with media or media fragmentation for advertising the products and services, interaction with clients, and global and regional coordination. These results or observations got their shift towards the practices of IMC globally and it became a global phenomenon.
Integrated Marketing Communication Assignment Help focuses on the marketing techniques and its collaboration with the different mediums to enhance the marketing strategies and reach to the customers and thereby have effective sale of that particular product being marketed. The marketing and advertising literature put forth different kinds of integration:
Functional Integration
Functional integration includes the working capacity of different promotional tools and delivering a blend or coherent message.It is dependent on the weaknesses or strengths of each communicational disciplines (including advertising, PR, personal selling, sales promotion etc.) that how they create such effective messages and creation of effectiveness in the actual sale as well. The fact is just that to create such an effective advertising or sale, a blend of tools work behind the strategy. And it thereby arise question that how one’s strength can overcome another’s weaknesses. In other words, each communication discipline works together to have a functional and effective message.
Message Integration
Message integration focuses on the whole work starting from advertising to direct mail to packaging posters to business cards or to office stationaries i.e. it just not concentrates on a particular message creation but concentrates on each and every piece of promotional strategy which could infer that each promotion is associated with that particular company or authority. And that is why message integration is also known as image integration or creative integration that is associated with the creativeness and uniqueness of such promotional activities.Thus, having consistency in executions within and across the different marketing communications is a basic or key factor taken under IMC. Message Integration works on “Look and Feel” strategies. People or consumers links the look of that particular brand’s marketing communication with the brand itself and the consistency in the uniqueness of the products being into sale creates a feel for the consumers to get attracted towards that brand. For example, a cosmetic company advertising its product with the unique features and the model of the product just attracts the customers but the feel to have its purchase works when there is also uniqueness in the use or the quality of that product. Thus message integration works for the identification of any brand that create visual feel which is more effective to attract the customers.
Media Integration
In this type of communication is made through media channels. It coordinates with the media channels for the marketing strategies and effectiveness of such marketing programs. Media channels operating through both aids i.e. audio and visual and if there is a consistency in the brand and the advertising strategies, the media channels mutually works for the consumer engagement.
Research studies have shown that the consumers are attracted more towards any brand or company when they are advertised through different media channels. For instance, promotion of any cosmetic product like eye-liner when advertised via media; on one hand it provides identification of that brand and on other hand when it is advertised through different media channels it creates opportunity for the customer’s to purchase it or grabs the attention of customer’s. And the rest depends on the product’s quality.
Integration of Timing
Integration of timing refers to the timing messages, for example, any juice product or soft drinks like Coca Cola are advertised more in summers, the beverages including coffee and soup are advertised more during winters and during snow fall period, the products that could help people to cop-up with such weather, are advertised that would further create opportunity for the customers- readiness to buy.
