Emerging Issues
Integrated Marketing Communications
The concept of integrated marketing communications, or IMC, is relatively new. The
general idea – albeit with a lack of any standard definition – is that there are a wide array of
methods, media, and channels for communicating with those outside of an organization, and that
an organization needs to coordinate and centralize these activities over the long term in order to
be effective. By the mid-1990s, IMC was being described as an emerging concept and field, but
one with a lack of any generally accepted definition or process (cf., Beard, 1996; Hutton, 1996;
Phelps and Johnson, 1996; Schultz and Kitchen, 1997). Schultz and Kitchen noted that prior to
an unpublished 1991 study, there was little discussion or description of what has now come to be
called IMC, and the term was considered to be a mere buzzword by many (Beard, 1996).
Importantly, the Schultz and Kitchen (1997) survey of advertising practitioners found no
widespread agreement on defining what constitutes IMC. Although IMC is a term that is now
common in marketing management textbooks, it is a concept that still lacks a commonly accepted theoretical framework (Kim, Han, and Schultz, 2004).
The problem that we have been having in understanding IMC as a process appears toresult from a limited mind-set that both marketing academicians and marketing practitionershave placed upon themselves (cf., Hartley and Pickton, 1999). In devising marketing strategies,marketers tend to think compartmentally about functions that an organization can control, knownas the “marketing mix”: product design, pricing, distribution of the product, and promotion of theproduct and organization. The “promotion” element of that marketing mix is furthercompartmentalized into the “promotion mix” elements of advertising (e.g., a newspaper ad),publicity (e.g., a press release), personal selling (e.g., interactive communication between two humans), and sales promotion (e.g., a short term purchase incentive such as a cents-off coupon).
Lacking this compartmentalized way of thinking, some non-marketing people and organizations have been able to quickly adapt to newly evolving promotion tactics that do not fit neatly into these distinctly separated categories and processes. A group of Austrian monks obtained a recording contract with Universal Music to sing Gregorian chants as a result of a YouTube clip (BBC News, 2008). Unsigned bands - struggling musicians without a recording contract and often without an agent - have been using the social networking website MySpace to profile themselves, leading MySpace to start a new service that promises to allow these artists to sell music downloads, concert tickets, and merchandise through their profile pages (Veiga, 2008). College student chapters associated with the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama were trained by Facebook co-creator Chris Hughes to use the social networking website for outreach (Hefling, 2008). Online video clips and profiles on social networking websites and social media have enabled a form of marketing that doesn’t fit neatly into the more compartmentalized methods of promotion via an advertising agency or personal selling efforts of an agent.
Social Networking
The emergence and popularity of social networking websites and social media has made it just as easy for an individual to communicate in real time with thousands of total strangers as with a single close friend. Social networking websites have also been a great equalizer, making it just as easy for an individual to build or break a marketing brand as for a large corporation -- as well as making it easy for a large corporation to mimic a sincere "grassroots" individual who lacks corporate motives. A social networking website is defined here as "one that allows internet users the ability to add user-generated content such as: comments, feedback, ratings, or their own dedicated pages" (iProspect, 2007). Websites such as epinions.com, for example, allow product users to post ratings, comments, opinions, and full reviews about products. Wikipedia.com makes it possible for anyone to edit information about an organization or person, enabling a view that is not necessarily the official whitewashed company version. Importantly, social networking websites have made it easy for anyone to spoof a person or organization with a fake profile and fake messages with the objective of causing harm to the other party. Roncalli High School Dean of Students Tim Puntarelli sued Facebook, alleging that someone else had set up a fake profile of him and was posting “pictures and messages inappropriate for a dean of students to send to a student” (Associated Press, 2008). Facebook refused to provide the identity of the person who created the fake profile without a court order (Catholic News Agency, 2008). After the assassination of Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, news reporters were eager to obtain information and quotes from family members. Some news agencies printed quotes about Islam from what they presumed to be her son's Facebook profile. Had the profile not been quickly discovered to be fake, the inflammatory quotes could have had serious political implications (Maderazo, 2008).
Social networking websites also allow anonymous attacks on the character of named
persons or organizations. When an attorney working for Cisco, a computer networking business,
anonymously posted comments on a blog about a patent attorney, a civil lawsuit alleging libel
and slander was filed. The patent attorney had been on the opposing side of a patent lawsuit.
The Cisco attorney allegedly accused the patent attorney, another attorney, and a federal clerk of
conspiring to alter a document, and he claims to having made the blog post with the knowledge
and approval of his supervisor. He ultimately admitted his true identity after someone traced his
Internet address and threatened to expose him (LaRowe, 2008).
The damage to the reputation of the recipient of such an attack can be long lasting if such
posts are indexed and never deleted, yet the risk and the financial and reputation cost to the
anonymous party making them is nearly nil. The results of such attacks could also be long
lasting even if removed. Two students in a Quebec school deliberately provoked a teacher,
secretly video taped the result of the teacher's encounter with one of them, and then posted the
video on YouTube to embarrass the teacher. The young students were temporarily suspended
and the video was removed YouTube. The teacher with 32 years of experience, however, was so
embarrassed that he didn't immediately return work (CBC, 2006).
