CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The
need for an organization to properly coordinate its marketing
communications strategies in order to deliver a clear, consistent,
credible and competitive message about itself and its product has become
a challenge today for every result oriented firm. Effective marketing
communications should therefore be an integral part of every efficient
and result driven organization. How innovative and creative marketing
communications practitioners are inappropriately combining, coordinating
and efficiently using marketing communication tools will have great
impact on their companies’ products/services and by extension, on such
products’ market share. This again could pose serious challenge to
competing companies across markets in the country.
The
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) approach believes that a
company must leave no chance for error, no patience for
miscommunication, and no time for confusion. Picton and Broderick,
(2005). The IMC approach placed much premium on the consistency of
messages, that by this, it posits that communications effort of a
company through its different products must project a unified voice.
Business (companies) must be able to deliver the right message in the
right medium to elicit the right results. Schultz and Kitchen, (1997).
A
simple argument for IMC is that there are financial, competitive and
effective benefits to be achieved through the synergy afforded by the
process of integration Peltier and Schult, (2003); Smith, (2002); Shultz
and Kitchen, (2000); Thomas, (2001); Picton and Hartley, (1998).
Rather
than being considered as a revolution in marketing thought, IMC is
gradually emerging as a natural evolution in marketing communications
brought about by drastic changes in at least three main areas, which
are:
(i). The market place;
(ii). The media and communications;
(iii).
The consumers. These changes have been driven primarily by advancement
in information technology; and have caused a major shift from the mass
marketing, product centred theories of marketing popularized in the
1950s and 1960s to the more customer cantered, database-driven
interactive and measurable approaches of integrated communications,
Schultz, (2003).
The
development of IMC can be traced to the early 1980s when many Americans
advertising agencies started to feel threatened by their clients’
attempt to save money through direct media buying and patronage and
creative boutique operations. Added to these forces were the
inclinations of many advertisers to shift money from advertising to more
immediate and effective aspect of marketing. These developments came to
a climax towards the early part of 1990s when advertising agencies
started to offer more than their traditional functions of just producing
and placing advertising in the media.
The
advertising agencies then saw that their survival in the turbulent
decade of the 1980s depended on providing integrated strategies. The
question one might ask here is “were advertising agencies not adding
value to their clients’ programmes before IMC?” Of course, they were but
not in ‘an integrated sense’. In this respect, Kliatchko (2005) opined
that value added services need not start and end in only advertising
messages and strategies. But now, in an expanded view of advertising,
advertising agencies must positively evolve specific promotional mix to
provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact.
In
a similar vein, a number of scholars observed that coordination is a
powerful element of an integrated communication strategy. And that many
companies might find integration difficult to adopt due or owing to
tough battles on how to allocate resources and reluctance to invest in
the needed database. They also observed that different departments were
responsible for different elements in the communication strategy (i.e.
an advertising department; direct mail department; and a trade show or
an event management department). In many of these cases, they are
usually reluctant to give-up control over their respective area and
fight each other for a piece of the marketing budget. The result will be
that the communication strategy will be fragmented rather than
integrated. What happens when interactions with customers are
fragmented? Belch and Belch (2004) opined that if customers are
fragmented then, they would get annoyed because different parts of the
company don’t know what others are saying. Consumers might feel that
they are talking to many different companies instead of one, which is
not the way to build relationship.
In
the opinion of Akande, (2001) he raised the concern that marketing has
moved from customer acquisition (winning new customers) through
‘customer relations’ (keeping customers for life) towards customers’
deselection (dumping unprofitable customers while selectively seeking
and keeping the profitable ones). He listed other forms of marketing
communication strategies which are media; proliferation, audience
fragmentation, advancement of information technology and the internet,
consumer empowerment, increased advertising, cluster, shift in channel
power and the desire for more accountability. All these underpin the
driving forces leading toward integrated marketing communications.
In
their work on marketing communications, Duncan and Everett (1993)
asserted that IMC is both a concept and a process. The IMC perspective
can be interpreted as “meaningful integrative” of “Holistic thinking"
i.e. looking at marketing communication in a way by which various
marketing communication tools are strategically employed in a
complementary fashion after a careful analysis of customer needs and
review of market situation. Schultz and Kitchen (2002) equally viewed
integrated marketing communication (IMC) as a strategic business process
used to plan, develop, execute and evaluate coordinated measurable
persuasive brand communication programmes over time with consumers,
prospects and other targeted relevant external and internal audience.
Duncan
(2002), in his contribution to the literature on evolution of IMC
believed that the above definition of IMC by Schultz and Kitchen,
forecasted the trend of the development of IMC in the future. He
therefore noted that this new definition indicates that IMC has moved
from (or has the potentiality to move from) a “marketing planning
process” to a “strategic business process”. Schimp (2000) summarized
five facts of IMC as:
(i). Aims to affect behaviour
(ii). Starts with customers or prospects
(iii). Uses any and all forms of contents
(iv). Achieves synergy and
(v). Builds relationships.
Low
(2000) opined that integrated marketing is simply a step further from
IMC or the highest stage of IMC by focusing on conveying unified
messages to customers via the correct blending of the promotional mix.
In
the Nigerian marketing environment today, many organizations have not
appreciated the importance of the strategic blending of the promotional
mix elements so as to produce cohesive, consistent, clear, precise and
efficient messages. The common explanation is that through IMC, a firm
or a manager can attain synergy between all the firm’s marketing
communications activities and decisions. This synergy in turn improves
performance.
With
the pace at which globalization is moving, there is need for Nigerian
Advertising Agencies to wake-up to a new reality in the marketing world.
Clients, world-over, now demand integrated solutions rather than
thinking in the old-style of above or below the line statement. Client
needs to create a sustainable competitive advantage to meet up with the
demands. This cannot be done with advertising alone with a seamless
marketing communication programme.
Many
clients (advertisers) are now asking themselves questions such as “How
do I allocate the marketing budget over a variety of promotional
tools”?. Here, many rely on the professional advice from advertising
agencies. Today some advertising agencies are trying to become marketing
consultants, independent media purchasers and multi-dimensional
communication practitioner – (Kallmeyer and Absatt, 2001). The words of
these scholars revealed the need for these advertising agencies to
become total marketing oriented professionals rather than just
advertising driven in order to convince clients that they can add value
to their marketing efforts.
The Growing Importance of IMC: The
move towards integrated marketing communications is one of the most
significant marketing developments that occurred during the 1990s and
this approach is growing daily as this new millennium continues to
advance. Belch and Belch (2004) believed that the IMC approach to
marketing communication planning and strategy is being adopted by both
large and small companies and has become popular among firms marketing
consumer products and services as well as business-to-business
marketers. Some of the reasons why marketers are adopting the IMC
approach according to Belch and Belch, (2004) are:
“The
understanding that the strategic integration of the various
communication functions rather than having them operate autonomously
would bring many added benefits to clients and customers. Advocates of
IMC believe that it will help company maximize returns on their
investments. The move towards IMC reflects an adaptation by marketers to
a changing environment with respect to consumer’s technology and the
media. Today many consumers are tired of being bombarded with different
sales messages.”
These
factors according to Belch and Belch, (2004) are capable of promoting
marketers towards the development of alternative ways to communicate
with target audience.
Another
reason responsible for the growth of IMC according to Belch and Belch
(2004) is the growth and development of database marketing. Many
companies are building database containing customers’ name, geographic,
demographic and psychographic profiles; purchase patterns; media
preferences etc. Advocates of this approach believed that database
marketing is critical to the development of effective use of IMC. A
shift of marketing dollars from media advertising to other forms of
promotions, particularly consumer – and trade-oriented sales promotions.
Many
marketers are also of the opinion that traditional media advertising
has become too expensive and not cost effective (Thomas, 2001).
Finally,
there is demand for greater accountability from advertising agencies
and changes in the way agencies are compensated. Many companies are
moving towards incentive- based system whereby compensation of their ad
agencies is based, at least in part on objectives measures such as
sales, market share and profitability. The rapid growth of the Internet
services, which is changing the very nature of how companies do business
and the interest with the consumer, could also be seen as a major
reason for the growing importance of IMC in today contemporary marketing
environments.
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