Integrated marketing communications Wikipedia. Integrated marketing communications IMC is the use of marketing strategies to optimise the communication of a consistent message of the companys brands to stakeholders. Coupling methods together improves communication as it harnesses the benefits of each channel, which when combined together builds a clearer and vaster impact than if used individually. IMC requires marketers to identify the boundaries around the promotional mix elements and to consider the effectiveness of the campaigns message. In the mid to late 1. Media proliferation, audience fragmentation, globalisation of markets, the advent of new communications technologies, the widespread use of databases meant that the old methods, and practices used in mass marketing were no longer relevant. Amongst practitioners and scholars, there was an increasing recognition that new approaches were required. That new approach would become known as integrated marketing communications. A number of empirical studies, carried out in the early 1. Join us at 2020 Customer Experience Summit, bringing together 250 global CX leaders sharing ideas insight to inspire customer journey transformations. IMC was far from a short lived managerial fad, but rather was a very clear reaction by advertisers and marketers to the changing external environment. Integrated marketing communications is a holistic planning process that focuses on integrating messages across communications disciplines, creative executions, media, timing and stakeholders. An integrated approach has emerged as the dominant approach used by companies to plan and execute their marketing communication programs 4 and has been described as a paradigm shift. HistoryeditThe impetus to rethink marketing communications came from a number of environmental changes that were becoming increasingly apparent throughout the mid to late 1. Media was proliferating and at the same time converging, audiences were fragmenting and many new communications disciplines were emerging. Few advertising agencies provided the full suite of services in terms of the varied communications disciplines. Companies were reliant on a multiplicity of service providers for assistance with advertising, public relations, branding, packaging, sales promotion, event organisers and other promotional activities. Each of these communications disciplines was treated as a silo with little thought to the synergies between them,with the result that many different stakeholders involved in presenting the companys external image throughout the breadth and length of a campaign. In that environment, both practitioners and theorists recognised the potential for confusing or inconsistent brand images to develop across media and across different communications disciplines. The fragmentation of audiences presented marketers with particular challenges. No longer were they able to communicate with mass markets via mass media instead they needed to communicate with increasingly tightly defined market segments, using highly specialist media and communications disciplines. New media and the use of databases were enabling marketers to communicate with customers on a one to one basis. The old methods and practices associated with mass communications were failing to serve the realities of the new era. The imperative to present a clear, coherent and unified narrative in both internal and external communications was becoming increasingly apparent by the late 1. In 1. 98. 9, two discrete events served to draw attention to the fact that industry attitudes to marketing communications were shifting. Active Directory User Account Enabled Attribute Definition. Firstly, the consulting firm, Shearson Lehman Hutton published a report on the subject of consumer advertising, signalling that a number of market place changes would force packaged goods marketers to adopt a more integrated approach to marketing communications. Their report also noted that high end manufacturers e. Secondly, the American Association of Advertising Agencies 4. Integrated marketing communications IMC is the use of marketing strategies to optimise the communication of a consistent message of the companys brands to. Since the national DoNotCall Registry took effect, many telemarketers have inundated unregistered consumers with outbound calls. And many call centers have. Marketing Metrics Digital Handbook' title='Marketing Metrics Digital Handbook' />As, instituted a task force to investigate integrated marketing communications IMC, with the result that the first official definition was published. The AAAA defined IMC as, a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines e. At this stage, the development of IMC, focused primarily on the need for organisations to offer more than just standard advertising and to integrate the various communications disciplines. The Medill School at Northwestern was the first university to teach course in integrated marketing communications. In 1. 99. 1, the faculty of Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in conjunction with the AAAA, began the first empirical research study designed to investigate how IMC was being used. The study focused around understanding the concept and the importance of IMC and also to analyse the extent in which IMC was practiced in all major U. S advertising agencies. This initial study was then replicated by other studies with a view to examining how IMC was being used in other countries New Zealand, UK, US, Australia, India, Thailand, South Africa and the Philippines, etc. The findings from these studies demonstrated that the new IMC was far from a short lived managerial fad but rather was a very clear reaction by advertising agencies and their clients as they are affected by a multitude of factors such as new forms of information technology including development and usage of databases, media fragmentation, client desires for interactionsynergy, and global and regional coordination. This was the second stage of IMCs development, where the focus shifted to documenting the practice of IMC as a global phenonenon. In other words, researchers were attempting to codify practices that had been used for some time. In 1. 99. 3, Don Schultz and his team published the first text book dedicated to IMC. Their work, simply entitled, Integrated Marketing Communications, described IMC as a totally new way of looking at the whole of marketing communications, rather than looking at each of the parts separately. And, in the same year, the Medill School at Northwestern University changed their curriculum to include a focus on this new idea of integrated marketing communications rather than the traditional program which had emphasised advertising. IMC emerged out of an academic department that, for several decades, had been recognized as the number one advertising program. Since the mid 1. Stephen Diorio, president of IMT Strategies, talks with SearchCRM about the impact that rapidly changing technology will have on sales and marketing strategy and. For example, marketing departments track metrics pertaining to the success of campaigns and statistics that characterize their reach sales teams monitor leads by. The role of the product manager is expanding due to the growing importance of data in decision making, an increased customer and design focus, and the evolution of. Mod Girl offers inbound marketing consulting services to growing companies in healthcare, technology, B2B, and more. View our list of marketing solutions. IMC in new editions of standard works. Collectively these books focus on the IMC planning processes and this represents the third distinct stage in the evolution of IMC an emphasis on managing and organising IMC. Over time, scholars have advanced different definitions of IMC, with each definition exhibiting a slightly different emphasis. Yet, in spite of the variety of definitions in circulation, there is general consensus that integrated marketing communications should be viewed as a planning process. Some scholars have pointed out that because IMC is both a process and a concept, it is exceedingly difficult to define. Some of the key definitions that have been advanced during IMCs evolution are outlined here IMC is the process of all sources and information managed so a consumer or prospect is exposed which behaviorally moves the customer more towards a sale.