Got startegy in your IMC plan?

Congratulations to all the groups during week five for some great IMC presentations! It was interesting to see how we all took different routes to bring out the IMC plans of each organization we covered. One of my initial questions in this class was…does IMC have a template or some organizational format that needs to be followed when building an IMC plan? And I believe the answer was, “no,” but it was stated that there were some key elements that needed to be included, as was reflective of our team case studies.

Our text, Strategic Integrated Marketing communications, defined IMC back in Chapter 1, as: “a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines (e.g. general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations) and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact.”

When I reflect on my initial questions and then look at our individual analysis, it was because of each company’s strategies that the plan elements we decided to cover seemed so different – no two companies will ever have the same strategy. The difference in strategy is the result of the brand's IMC planning process, described in Ch. 11, which looks something like this:

1. Target audience objectives will need to be carefully considered. Because some markets have multiple target groups a brand generally needs more that one level of communication.
2. Decide how purchase decisions are made in the category, and then optimize message development to facilitate that process.
3. Establish positioning.
4. Setting communication objectives.
5. Decide how to deliver the message.

A brand's target audience or consumer will always dictate the startegy needed to reach them because communication with them is the end goal. So, I conclude that strategy seems to be the key element of any IMC plan. Without strategy, you will never have a unique message to offer your target audience and, as a result, your messaging will get lost in all the noise. To prevent losing your message, a well thought-out IMC plan can strategically integrate a brand's message and effectively place it in front of the right consumers at the right time, by the proper means necessary to “affect the four basic communications effects of: category need, brand awareness, brand attitude, and brand purchase,” as stated in Ch. 11.