Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting It Together & Making It Work

Integrated Marketing Communications challenges business to confront a fundamental dilemma in today's marketing--the fact that mass media advertising, by itself, no longer works. This landmark book reveals that strategies long used to deliver selling messages to a mass culture through a single medium are now obsolete--and shows marketers how to get back on track.

The answer lies in customer-focused marketing, a key planning tool that can--in today's diverse, fragmented marketplace--explain the lifestyles, attitudes, and motivations of distinct buyer groups and predict their likely buying behaviors in the future. Schultz, Tannenbaum, and Lauterborn explain how, by beginning with detailed consumer information, marketers can build a synchronized, multi-channel communications strategy that reaches every market segment with a single, unified message.

This book also shows how to put an integrated program into practice, with expert guidance on planning, coordinating, and controlling the entire communications process. Along the way, the authors tackle those critical questions that too often impede marketing decisions, such as:

• Who should control the communications program?
• How should resources be allocated to advertising, sales promotion, direct response, public relations, and other marketing communications options?
• How can companies resolve "turf battles" and combat fears of budget loss?
• How should the different players--agencies and suppliers--be compensated?
• And most importantly, how can the impact of an integrated strategy be measured and made accountable?

Extensive examples and two in-depth success stories detail how top organizations are sharpening their competitive edge through integrated communications programs.

An incisive study of the barriers that confound today's marketing, Integrated Marketing Communications breaks new ground for all business thinkers and strategists.