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Chapter 16: IMC Management

Chapter 16

IMC MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER CONTENT

KEY OBJECTIVES

1. Discuss the eight key IMC concepts and explain why they are important.

2. Outline the key parts of an IMC campaign plan.

3. Identify the strategic decisions that underlie effective international marketing

communication.

4. Explain what we mean by 360-degree communication program planning.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

This chapter will bring together the basic IMC principles, many of which were introduced

in previous chapters. Then it will describe the formalities planning for an IMC campaign,

followed by an introduction to the challenges of managing a comprehensive, integrated

communication program.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

KEY IMC CONCEPTS

Integrated marketing communication is an important business concept as well as a set of

principles and practices. This chapter begins with key concepts that separate IMC plans

and programs from more traditional advertising and other marketing communication

areas.

Stakeholders and Brand Relationships

 A customer focus is critical in most IMC strategies. Although we use the word

‘customer,’ we are really referring to all stakeholders who impact on that customer

relationship. Relationship marketing, a concept that originated with public relations,

 Principle: Interactive communication is the glue that joins brands and their

stakeholders in respectful long-term relationships.

 All stakeholders are critical in relationship marketing because they are communicators

who can send either positive or negative messages about the brand. While it is

important to keep in contact with them, it is even more important to set up relationship

programs that invite two-way communication and let them initiate messages.

Chapter 16: IMC Management

 Principle: Brand relationships drive brand value.

 Principle: Stakeholders overlap and so do their messages.

 Relevant messages delivered through media that drive positive experiences create

value for consumers. This value adds up over time and emerges as loyalty – the

 Although we talk about stakeholders as if they were independent groups, in fact, they

may overlap. It is important that a brand not say one thing to one stakeholder group

and something opposite or contradictory to another, especially in this time of instant

internet communication.

Total Communication

 Older views of IMC focused primarily on coordinating marketing communication,

but we also believe that the entire marketing mix delivers messages. The most

important factor in integrated communication is a coherent brand concept that is

expressed at every point of contact.

 Remember that everything a brand does, and sometimes does not do, can send a

message. You can’t not communicate. Unintentional messages can arise from

carelessly delivered brand experiences. That’s why it’s necessary to monitor all

marketing elements from a communication perspective.

 Principle: Remember that everything a brand does, but also what it does not do, can

send a message. You can’t NOT communicate.

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Moving from Channels to Contact Points

 The concept of contact points has redefined and broadened our understanding of

media as a message delivery system. Contact points are the various ways a consumer

comes in contact with a brand. This view of media moves from traditional advertising

media and the media of various marketing communication functions to experiential

contacts that in previous advertising-dominated media plans weren’t generally

considered to be media, such as word-of-mouth and customer service.

 These opportunities are found in a huge variety of vehicles. The list is endless and

can only be identified by studying the lives of customers to spot the points where

they come in contact with a brand or an opportunity for a brand experience or brand

conversation.

 A brand touch point is a brand experience that delivers a message that touches

emotions leading to positive and negative judgments. It has a more emotional impact

that a regular contact point. A critical touch point is one that connects the brand and

customer on an emotional level and leads to a yes or no decision about a brand

relationship.

 Principle: IMC planning is designed to maximize and leverage the good contact

points and minimize the bad ones.

 Principle: Touchpoints are contact points that touch our emotions.

Message Synergy

 When you combine stakeholders and contact points – all the messages delivered

through all the possible media to all key stakeholders – you have a bundle of

messages. How do you manage all of the meanings and points where inconsistency

or confusion might arise? And why does that matter?

 The point is that brand communication is not about single messages but rather about

the impact of various impressions and brand meanings that evolve as the messages

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 At every point of contact with every stakeholder, the essence of the brand should be

the same. Strategic consistency drives synergy and synergy drives the brand

impression. Therefore, brand stewards and IMC planners are insistent on strategic

consistency – the core or essence of the brand is clear in every message if messages

are tailored to the particular interests of various stakeholders.

A Brand is an Integrated Perception

 Message synergy is the basis for seeing a brand as an integrated perception. People

automatically integrate brand messages and experiences as part of the natural process

of perception formulation. Brand impressions are created as a stew of information and

images that comes together as an integrated perception.

Unified Brand Vision

 There is an art and a science to IMC management. A successful brand is a product of

both science – a complex system of planned and managed activities – and art – the

vision of the essence of the brand in which all of the pieces and parts fit together

perfectly in a coherent brand perception.

Internal Integration

 Brand management involves creating and monitoring a complex set of philosophies

and activities. A brand cannot be integrated externally if it is not integrated internally.

Cross-functional management across department lines delivers unity of vision,

which is the foundation for the consumer’s integrated brand perception.

 Principle: You cannot be integrated externally if you are not integrated internally.

Brand Integrity

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IMC CAMPAIGN PLANNING

Stan Richards, founder of the Dallas-based Richards Group, explains the process his

agency goes through in planning an integrated campaign. He calls it spherical branding,

which means no matter what your angle of vision, the brand always looks the same. We

call this 360° planning. Richards’ brief outline that follows is a good starting point for

building a complete campaign plan.

 Three Part Positioning: Target audience? Competitors? Most meaning brand benefit?

What is a Campaign Plan?

 An IMC campaign is a complex set of interlocking, coordinated activities that has a

beginning and an end. It outlines the objectives and strategies for a series of different

but related marketing communication efforts that appear in different media, use

different marcom tools, and convey different but complimentary brand consistent

messages to a variety of stakeholders.

I. Situation Analysis

• Background research

• SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats

• Key communication problem(s) to be solved

II. Key Strategic Campaign Decisions

• Objectives

• Target and engaging stakeholders

• Brand positioning strategy

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III. Marcom Mix

• Platforms and objectives

• Synergy

IV. Message Strategy

• Key consumer and brand relationship insights

• Message direction

• Strategic consistency

V. IMC Media and Contact Points

• Multimedia and multichannel

• Multiplatform

• Contact points, touchpoints, and critical touchpoints

VI. Management and Campaign Controls

• Budgeting

• Evaluation of Effectiveness

Situation Analysis

 This first step in developing an IMC plan is backgrounding – researching and

reviewing the current state of the business that is relevant to the brand and gathering

SWOT Analysis

 The primary tool used to make sense of the information gathered and identify a key

problem is a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,

and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are internally focused and the opportunities

and threats lie in the external marketing environment.

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• The strengths of a business are its positive traits, conditions, and good situations.

For instance, being in a growth industry is a strength. Planners ask how they can

leverage this strength in the brand’s communication.

• The weaknesses of a business are traits, conditions, and situations that are

perceived as negatives. Losing market share is a weakness. If this is an important

weakness, then planners ask how they can address it with communication.

• A threat is a trend or development in the environment that will erode business

unless the company takes action. Competition and economic downturns are

common threats. Communication planners ask themselves how they can address a

threat if it is a critical factor affecting the success of the brand.

Key Communication Problems

 The key word in this section is analysis, or making sense of all of the data collected

and figuring out what the information means for the future success of the brand.

Planners must analyze the market situation for communication problems that affect

 IMC can solve only message-related problems such as image, attitude, perception,

and knowledge or information. It cannot solve problems related to the price of the

product, availability, or quality, although it can address the perception of these

marketing mix factors. A campaign works if it creates the desired brand impression,

influences people to respond, and separates the brand from the competition.

Campaign Strategy

 Once the situation has been analyzed and key problems are identified, planners decide

upon a general statement of strategy. The general strategy that guides a campaign can

be described in a number of ways. For example, a strategy can focus on branding,

positioning, countering the competition, or creating category dominance.

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 The important thing to remember is that planners have to first analyze the situation to

arrive at a great strategy before racing ahead to think about tactics. What’s the

difference between strategy and tactics? The decision to expand the market (strategy)

by increasing share of wallet (objective) is implemented through promotional tactics

(“buy four and get one free.”)

Objectives

 Given the huge amounts of money spent on brand communication, it is important for

marketers to know what to expect from a campaign. Although a rule of thumb for

advertising is that it should be single-minded, we also know that multiple effects are

often needed to create the desired impact, especially in IMC planning.

 Communication objectives may be important, even if they aren’t focused directly on a

sale.

 Every advertising campaign must be guided by specific, clear, and measurable

objectives. Effective campaigns use media to stimulate consumers and activate

their responses. Figure 16.1 in the textbook illustrates various types of impact

that innovative media plans can deliver and how they can reinforce one another

in an IMC plan.

 A specific effect that can be measured

 A time frame

 A baseline (where we are or where we begin)

 The goal

 Percentage change

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Targeting and Engaging Stakeholders

 The target in an IMC plan includes more than just consumers. The term stakeholder

refers to any group of people who have a stake in the success of a company or a

brand. These potential audiences include all of those who might influence the

purchase of products and the success of a company’s marketing program, as the table

in the textbook shows.

 Employees are particularly important and their support or “buy in” for marketing,

advertising, and marketing communication programs is managed through an activity

called internal marketing.

 The targeting or engagement strategy identifies the most important audience groups.

Research by account planners will help to flesh out the interests of these folks and

provide critical insights. Account planning, with its strong emphasis on insights, has

 The existence of overlapping membership complicates message strategy and demands

that there be a certain core level of consistency in all brand messages, both from the

company and also within stakeholder conversations.

Brand Strategy

 Message consistency needs a central concept around which various messages can be

unified. We refer to this concept as brand essence. It describes what makes the brand

different and distinctive from all other brands in its product category.

 There are times, however, when the brand position is adjusted for different markets.

For example, if a brand is moving into a new country and represents a category of

The IMC Mix

 The decision about which marcom tools to use in a campaign is based on an

analysis of their strengths and weaknesses as well as consumer insights to

determine how these functions can best be employed to meet the campaign’s

objectives. As explained in Chapter 8, certain tools are better at delivering

specific objectives.

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 A list in the textbook presents the main IMC areas in terms of their primary effects.

As you look over the list, think about what is required to launch a new product.

In that situation, which tools would you select as the most appropriate? That’s the

type of thinking planners use at this point to initially decide which marcom tools

would be most useful in meeting the campaign’s objectives.

Message Strategy

 Chapter 9 explored the ins and outs of message strategy. Those deliberations and their

conclusions are written into the campaign plan. The message strategies are also

matched to the different targeted stakeholders, based on insights into what moves

them.

 Good Big Ideas are valued because they may be enduring and they lend themselves

to extendibility, which means they ‘have legs.’ In other words, the idea is strong

enough to serve as an umbrella concept for a variety of executions or mini-

campaigns. The A Matter of Practice feature in this chapter explains how Frontier’s

animals can be endlessly extended.

 Strategic consistency comes from the creative theme and the consistent presentation

of the brand position and personality, even when the different stakeholder groups

receive different types of messages and interact with the brand in different ways.

Consistency is a standard built into a carefully designed multiplatform and

multimedia plan.

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IMC and Contact Points

 Media planning in an IMC context does more than just deliver target messages: media

also involve, engage, and connect consumers to the brand and to one another.

Multichannel and Multiplatform

 Media planning involves using media as planners have done for years – by employing

all different types of traditional media, a practice identified as multichannel or

multimedia. Media has become much more complex; one study estimated that there

are more than 200 options. It also estimated that what it calls omnichannel campaigns

may include on average six platforms and 32 channels.

 We described media plans in Chapter 15 and all the information described in that

chapter appears in an IMC campaign plan.

 An example of IMC multimedia planning comes from The Today Show, which

launched a new recipe website and mobile application in sponsorship with Unilever.

It consists of a website containing streaming video webisodes, as well as recipes,

cooking tips, and promotions from Unilever brands. The recipes can be downloaded

at home or to a mobile device and a smartphone app allows users to compile recipes

and build shopping lists. The partnership links mobile, online, and broadcast media.

Contact Point Management

 Another distinctive feature of IMC media plans is their emphasis on every important

contact point, which can include a variety of experiential media as well as

conventional media.

 In the textbook there is a case study of how one agency’s “Contact Point

Management” works. Dentsu, which is the world’s largest individual agency, has a

strong IMC orientation which shows up in the way Dentsu planners create IMC

media plans. Dentsu Contact Point Management is a section of its IMC 2.0 model that

identifies a wide diversity of contact points. Let’s take a closer look at it:

Chapter 16: IMC Management

 Media selection recognizes that 1) contact points that work well must differ

depending on the communication goal and 2) contact point effectiveness will

differ from product category to product category and from target to target.

 The various contact points considered are evaluated and ranked using a

proprietary contact point planning system called VALCON, and the final

decisions about media usage are based on the roles and effects of the various

media.

Cross Media Integration

 Media selection also considers message needs. This is where media planning and

message planning intersect.

 The challenge is to create cross-media integration, which means the various media

work together to create coherent brand communication. In traditional media, this

synergistic effect is sometimes called image transfer and refers to the way radio, in

particular, reinforces and recreates the message in a listener’s mind that was

originally delivered by other media, particularly television.

Management Campaign Controls

 To manage IMC, whether of a campaign or a program, a manager must keep up with

an incredibly complex set of tasks. Sometimes this task is performed by a brand

manager, and in other cases, by a consulting firm. The Inside Story feature in this

chapter describes how one consultant with a marketing communications background

views his job.

Budgeting and Scheduling

 How much should an organization spend on a campaign? It depends on the

organization, the area it serves, the time frame, the stakeholders to be reached, as well

as its need for big, expensive media.

Chapter 16: IMC Management

 Determining the total appropriation allocated to a campaign is not an easy task.

Typically, a dollar amount is budgeted for marketing communication during the

annual budget planning process. The big budgeting question at the marketing mix,

as well as marcom mix, level is: How much do we need to spend? Let’s examine

five common budgeting methods that are used to answer that question.

 Historical method. Historical information is the source for this common

budgeting method. A budget may simply be based on last year’s budget, with a

percentage increase for inflation or some other marketplace factor. This method,

although easy to calculate, has little to do with reaching brand objectives.

 Objective-task method. The objective-task method looks at the objectives for

each activity and determines the cost of accomplishing each objective. This

method’s advantage is that it develops the budget from the ground up so that

objectives are the starting point.

Evaluation

 Advertising and other marketing communication agencies are creating tools and

techniques to help marketers’ evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of

marketing communication expenditures. The issue of accountability is made more

complicated by the growing use of global marketing.

INTERNATIONAL IMC CAMPAIGNS