What is it? Why so many words? Why should companies be concerned about it? Well, I guess it really is a mouthful to say, but when it comes down to it, IMC is a fairly simple concept that all businesses need to implement in their marketing efforts. This post is to shed some light about my passion and what I am about to obtain a degree in from Illinois State University: Integrated Marketing Communication.
American Marketing Association describes IMC as "a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time." Dr. Linda Showers, who helped develop and serves as Team Leader for the IMC Sequence in Marketing at Illinois State University, explains IMC to be "the area of Marketing that includes advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, professional selling, publicity, public relations, event marketing, support strategies, digital and eMarketing."
Now more than ever, companies need to reach, inform, engage, interact with, and go above and beyond satisfying their customers. In a world with constantly changing and evolving technology, businesses need to understand and participate in IMC.
So what does IMC look like when successfully implemented? Here are some perfect examples (click each word for a link to Old Spice's web site, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and a print advertisement respectively). Old Spice does a perfect job of integrating their message to their target market across various media channels. The consumers they are trying to reach will receive the same, relevant, consistent message over time.
I hope this was a helpful post for all of you out there! I just thought that it would be an essential part of this blog to describe my passion that I have been studying for the past 4 years at Illinois State University. Stay tuned for some more posts regarding marketing news, trends, and efforts.
