Barriers to IMC
Despite its many benefits, Integrated Marketing Communications, or IMC, has many barriers.
In addition to the usual resistance to change and the special problems of communicating with a wide variety of target audiences, there are many other obstacles which restrict IMC. These include: Functional Silos; Stifled Creativity; Time Scale Conflicts and a lack of Management know-how.
Take functional silos. Rigid organisational structures are infested with managers who protect both their budgets and their power base.
Sadly, some organisational structures isolate communications, data, and even managers from each other. For example the PR department often doesn't report to marketing. The sales force rarely meet the advertising or sales promotion people and so on. Imagine what can happen when sales reps are not told about a new promotional offer!
And all of this can be aggravated by turf wars or internal power battles where specific managers resist having some of their decisions (and budgets) determined or even influenced by someone from another department.
Here are two difficult questions - What should a truly integrated marketing department look like? And how will it affect creativity?
It shouldn't matter whose creative idea it is, but often, it does. An advertising agency may not be so enthusiastic about developing a creative idea generated by, say, a PR or a direct marketing consultant.
IMC can restrict creativity. No more wild and wacky sales promotions unless they fit into the overall marketing communications strategy. The joy of rampant creativity may be stifled, but the creative challenge may be greater and ultimately more satisfying when operating within a tighter, integrated, creative brief.
Add different time scales into a creative brief and you'll see Time Horizons provide one more barrier to IMC. For example, image advertising, designed to nurture the brand over the longer term, may conflict with shorter term advertising or sales promotions designed to boost quarterly sales. However the two objectives can be accommodated within an overall IMC if carefully planned.
But this kind of planning is not common. A survey in 1995, revealed that most managers lack expertise in IMC. But its not just managers, but also agencies. There is a proliferation of single discipline agencies. There appear to be very few people who have real experience of all the marketing communications disciplines. This lack of know how is then compounded by a lack of commitment.
For now, understanding the barriers is the first step in successfully implementing IMC.
Communications Theory
How do we communicate? How do customers process information? There are many models and theories. Let's take a brief look at some of them.
Simple communications models show a sender sending a message to a receiver who receives and understands it. Real life is less simple - many messages are misunderstood, fail to arrive or, are simply ignored.
Thorough understanding of the audience's needs, emotions, interests and activities is essential to ensure the accuracy and relevance of any message.
Instead of loud 'buy now' advertisements, many messages are often designed or 'encoded' so that the hard sell becomes a more subtle soft sell. The sender creates or encodes the message in a form that can be easily understood or decoded by the receiver.
Clever encoding also helps a message to cut through the clutter of other advertisements and distractions, what is called 'noise'. If successful, the audience will spot the message and then decode or interpret it correctly. The marketer then looks for 'feedback' such as coupons returned from mailshots, to see if the audience has decoded the message correctly.
The single step model - with a receiver getting a message directly from a sender - is not a complete explanation.
Many messages are received indirectly through a friend or through an opinion leader.
Communications are in fact multifaceted, multi-step and multi-directional. Opinion leaders talk to each other. Customers talk to opinion leaders and they talk to each other.
Add in 'encode, decode, noise and feedback' and the process appears more complex still.
Understanding multiphase communications helps marketers communicate directly through mass media and indirectly through targeting opinion leaders, opinion formers, style leaders, innovators, and other influential people.
How messages are selected and processed within the minds of the target market is a vast and complex question. Although it is over seventy years old, rather simplistic and too hierarchical, a message model, like AIDA, attempts to map the mental processes through which a buyer passes en route to making a purchase.
There are many other models that attempt to identify each stage. In reality the process is not always a linear sequence. Buyers often loop backwards at various stages perhaps for more information. There are other much more complex models that attempt to map the inner workings of the mind.
In reality, marketers have to select communications tools that are most suitable for the stage which the target audience has reached. For example, advertising may be very good at raising awareness or developing interest, while free samples and sales promotions may be the way to generate trial. This is just a glimpse into some of the theory. Serious marketers read a lot more.
