Paper: Unlocking the Power of Integrated Marketing Communications: How Integrated is
Your IMC Program? – Kevin Lane Keller
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00913367.2016.1204967?needAccess=true
This article describes 7 integrated marketing communications (IMC) choice criteria that
marketer can use to judge how effectively and efficiently they have assembled their IMC
programs. The article also outlines 5 priority areas for future research to help further guide
the successful design and implementation of IMC programs.
Marketing communications are one of the most difficult but crucially important components
of modern marketing. In recent years this challenge has been made even more complicated
by the explosion of new digital media options. With so many different new and traditional
communication options available, marketers struggle with how to make good marketing
communication decisions. A crucial ingredient for many of the communication success
stories is a well-developed integrated marketing communications program. One of the most
important topics concerning the future of advertising is how marketers should design,
execute, and evaluate IMC programs. Despite all the progress agency steps have made
toward the goal of more effective and efficient IMC programs, marketers still face a
fundamental problem, as demonstrated by the following hypothetical scenario:
Assume that the marketers of a well-known brand have carefully conducted a series of
research activities to gain a deeper understanding of their target consumer, the market-
place, competition, and so on. Assume too that they have crafted a thoughtful, imaginative
marketing strategy, uncovering a potentially powerful new brand positioning in the process.
The marketers of the brand use this new strategy to write a tight communications brief that
goes to their full-service communications agency with the mandate to develop a thoroughly
integrated marketing communications program to help the brand achieve the desired new
positioning. Their long-time agency works diligently and, after a certain period of time,
unveils its proposed IMC program with a dazzling display of video, color, and graphics in a
tour de force presentation.
Now what? For all the agency’s well-intentioned bravado, how do the marketers of the brand
judge the communication program as to whether it actually is well integrated and offers the
most effective and efficient solution to their communications challenge? Although there will
always be uncertainty as to the fate of any marketing activity—and certainly with marketing
communications—how do marketers make the right decisions to at least improve their odds
and increase their likelihood of market- place success?
What marketers need is a set of well-grounded, comprehensive criteria by which any
proposed IMC program can be systematically and thoroughly judged.
To provide some clarity and assistance for marketers to help them judge how integrated their
marketing communications programs are, this article outlines a comprehensive, cohesive set
of seven IMC choice criteria that can be called the Seven C’s.
Understanding the communications challenge
The new communications environment
Empowered consumers are meeting equally empowered firms as both groups now have
access to seemingly limitless information on just about anything or anyone. As a result,
,consumer can choose to become as engaged as they want with a brand. Similarly, firms can
choose to become as involved as they wish with consumers. What consumers and firms can
do in this new communications environment, however, does not necessarily equate with
what they should do or will do.
Communication options and objectives
One popular distinction made by many
marketers and academic researchers is
between communications which appear in
paid media, owned media and earned
media. Our focus here is on paid and owned
media.
Consumer heterogeneity: Just because consumers have an opportunity to engage with a
brand does not mean they also have the motivation and ability to do so. Moreover, too often
digital branding guidelines and principles are stated in terms of the consumer as if so much
homogeneity existed in the marketplace that consumers could be treated as one group. The
reality is: only some of the consumers want to get involved with only some of their brands
and, even then, only some of the time. Central to that view is a realization that customers
can be highly heterogeneous in how they think, feel and act toward brands. As appealing as
efforts in personalization might sound, they may also make it harder to create a strong brand
community with shared brand beliefs and attitudes across consumers. The fact also remains
that many consumers will not necessarily want to engage with the brand. The key for
marketers is to ensure that they understand, literally, the shape and dynamics of their brand
engagement pyramid.
Conceptual foundations
Marketers must first have a clear understanding of how all of these different types of
marketing communications work, as well as how consumers and their customers make
buying decisions.
Understand how consumers process communications
One useful type of model in that regard is an information processing model (IPMCE) of
communication effectiveness. IPMCE begin by considering antecedent factors related to
characteristics of the consumer and the content of the communication itself, as well as the
surrounding context of message reception and how those factors influence consumers’ MAO
to process a communication. Three key questions are asked:
1. How much do consumers want to process a communication?
2. Do they also have the right kinds of knowledge to be able to process it?
3. Will they even have a change to do so, or are there factors preventing or inhibiting
what they can do?
What aspects of the communication draw attention and how many thoughts, feelings,
judgments, and other effects are evoked by those aspects?
,Understanding how consumers make buying decisions.
Mixing and matching communication options
The theme of our discussion is that in assembling an IMC program to build brand equity,
marketers should ‘mix and match’ communication options.
Mix. In developing the optimal IMC program, marketers should essentially be ‘media neutral’
and evaluate all communication options on the basis of effectiveness and efficiency. In many
cases different communication options are likely to create inherently different effects. Mixing
thus involves choosing multiple communication options on the basis of their different
capabilities and likely communication effects on sales and brand equity.
Match. By virtue of using multiple communication options, the opportunity for interaction
effects exist beyond the direct main effects derived from each individual communication
option. Any one communication option can have a number of different relationships with any
other communication options which are also being used; it can reinforce the meaning
conveyed by other communication options, complement that meaning, or enhance their
communication effects.
Developing the optimal IMC program
The marketer’s overriding goals is to create the most effective and efficient communication
program possible to maximize short-term sales and long-term brand equity by mixing and
matching communication options. Toward that goal, we provide seven relevant IMC choice
criteria:
The first two criteria, coverage and cost, are fundamental marketing criteria related to the
efficiency of an IMC program in terms of reaching as many members of the target audience
as possible at the lowest possible cost. The third criterion, contribution, is concerned with
the singular qualities of communications and how they work in isolation. The remaining four
criteria deal with different ways that communication options can potentially relate to one
another. Commonality is when a communication option is designed to create communication
effects and achieve communication objectives that are also the focus of other
communication options. Complementarity, is when a communication option addresses
communication effects and objectives not addressed by other communication options. Cross-
effects are when communication options are designed to explicitly work together such that
interaction or synergy occurs, and enhanced communication effects emerge as the result of
, exposure by consumers to both communication options. Conformability, occurs when a
communication option works well even if consumers have not been exposed to a
communication option designed to enhance its effects or even if consumers were not even
originally intended to see, hear, or experience it.
Coverage
Coverage captures the proportion of the target market reached by each communication
option, as well as how much overlap exists among communication options. If there is a little
audience overlap, communication effectiveness is largely driven by contribution and
complementarity. With little overlap, the communications program is really not integrated.
Communication program effects would be very much an additive process, and program
effectiveness would depend on whether the right communications were being sent to the
right audience and having the right effects. If overlap exists with an audience, however, many
more considerations come into play. Then, the relationship of the overlapping
communication options becomes critical in terms of commonality, complementarity, and
cross-effects. The sequencing of communications becomes critical too, and the
conformability of any communication option to the particular spot(s) in the sequences where
it is seen. Understanding the breadth and depth of coverage is thus critical to assessing the
likely success of a proposed IMC pro- gram. How many people are reached with
communications for the brand, how often, and in how many different ways?
Cost
Marketers must evaluate marketing communications on all of the other six criteria against
their cost to arrive at the most effective and most efficient communications program.
Contribution
Contribution describes the main effects of a marketing communication option in terms of
how it affects consumers’ processing of a communication and the outcomes which result.
Contribution needs to consider a number of different factors. The content of the
communication option and the context in which it is seen, heard, or experienced, for
example, are both critically important. The information processing model of communication
effectiveness, described previously, can be helpful in identifying and interpreting the relevant
motivation, ability, and opportunity factors that affect how consumers process any proposed
communication option. Similarly, the taxonomy of different types of communication
objectives provides additional benchmarks to assess communication effects that may emerge
at different stages of the consumer-decision journey.
Commonality
Is the extent to which info conveyed by different communication options shares meaning or
elicits similar effects across communication options. Information that is consistent in
meaning is more easily learned and recalled than unrelated information. With inconsistent
associations and a diffuse brand image, consumers may overlook some associations or,
because they are confused about the meaning of the brand, form less strong and/or less
favorable new associations. Therefore, in the long run, marketers often need to design
different communication options and coordinate their message appeals so that they work
effectively together to reinforce important, differentiating brand benefits and forge a
consistent and cohesive brand image.
