Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is an expansion of modern and traditional marketing strategies, to optimise the communication of a consistent message conveying the company's brands to stakeholders. Coupling various methods together is added value in creating successful communication as it harnesses the individual benefits of each channel, which when combined together builds a clearer and vaster impact than if used individually. Achieving synergy and clarity amongst the elements is then able to construct a valuable comprehensibility amidst messages when addressing the audience in order to build relationships with them and foster short-, medium- and long-term profitability. Primarily the company has a concise plan detailing the campaigns intentions of what they want to achieve from the different media used. To be able to achieve success through IMC marketers will identify the boundaries around the promotional mix elements and how the effectiveness of the campaigns message will be grasped by the audience.

Integrated communications (IMC) was first defined by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's) in the early 1990s as "a comprehensive plan to further evaluate the strategic roles of a range of different communications disciplines". (Boundless, 2015) Examples includes; "general advertising, direct response, sales promotions and public relations, combining these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communications impact". (Belch, 2012) The development of IMC at this stage, focused around the need for organisations to offer more than just standard advertising to its consumers. (Integrated Marketing Communications, 2013)

In 1991, Don Schultz, a professor at the Emeritus Service, Northwestern University's Medill school proposed a new definition of IMC as "IMC is the process of all sources and information managed so a consumer or prospect is exposed which behaviorally moves the customer more towards a sale" (Kliatchko, 2005). This definition, however, leaves out the fact that IMC is also a concept and not just a process.

The faculty of Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University began the first ever research conducted on integrated marketing communications in 1991 (Shultz, 1997) furthermore the faculty opened the first graduate-level integrated marketing communications programme in the U.S. after consulting the director of marketing, schools advertising and also the public relations curricula (About Medill, 2015). The study of IMC focused around understanding the concept and the importance of IMC and also to analyse the extent in which IMC was practiced in all major U.S advertising agencies (Kliatchko, 2005). The study was then followed by many other organisations not only based in U.S, but all over the world, including; New Zealand, UK, USA, Australia, India, Thailand, South Africa and the Philippines, etc. The result from these studies concluded in the early definition of IMC to be "deleted" or "put aside" and a new definition was put in place (Kitchen, P.J. 2012).

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