Skip to main content

Integrated Marketing Communications

In my continued efforts to learn about the advertising industry, I read a great textbook called Advertising and Promotion, An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. There are far too many topics to summarize here, so I'll cover my main take-aways.

The book covered the integrated marketing planning process and aspects of the promotional mix, including: advertising, direct marketing, interactive and internet marketing, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, and personal selling. The book was well-written, interesting, and included up-to-date anecdotes and stories. It definitely reinforced much of what I learned in brand management and other marketing classes, particularly the marketing planning process. It was a great overview text.

A couple of the things I found most interesting (major take-aways):
  • Companies spend an unbelievable amount on advertising and promotion. If you add it all up, companies spend in excess of $1 trillion. U.S. media expenditures alone exceed $500B (as of 2009 it was $504B).
  • Despite the fragmentation of media, the majority of spending is still done on television (38%) in the U.S. Advertisers still feel that the combination of visual and auditory experience that can be delivered in that medium conveys their message the best. But the internet is fast growing, now having about 9.5% ($48B) in spending. Much of those gains are coming at the expense of newspapers (26%) and magazines (12%) and to a lesser extent radio (7.8%).
  • Targeting has become both easier and more difficult. With the fragmentation of media, there are more avenues for marketers to reach niche segments (e.g. think of all the niche cable TV channels available now compared to the three or four networks available 30 years ago). But, that also makes the job more challenging for marketers. You can target down to specific DMA's via TV, radio, and even the internet (via location). But its the media buyers that have to figure out what to buy where. It requires media buyers to deal with a lot of information. This is where many of the demand-side platforms are coming in like Invite Media (just acquired by Google), Lucid Media (who just raised $4.5M), or Marin Software (just raised $11M).
  • Measurement is incredibly imprecise. Measurement systems like Nielsen or Arbitron leave a lot to be desired and many marketers debate what should be measured in the first place - exposure, recall, recognition, purchase intent, etc. There are a variety of tests that can be done to help refine messages and media selection (e.g. both laboratory and field methods), but measuring efficacy is pretty difficult. How many exposures are necessary? Are you reaching your target audience? Which media work best? Best practice is to measure based on your objectives, use multiple measures, use a consumer response model, and use both pre- and post-tests.
There is a lot of information available on measurement out there worth looking into more. Particularly on the internet and interactive side. Here's a list to follow-up:
  • www.iab.net - Consortium of advertisers and providers outline guidelines and definitions of measurements for interactive media.
  • Sources of measurement data:
  • - Arbitron
  • - MRI and SMRB
  • - Ad analyzer
  • - Audit Bureau of Circulations
  • - Interactive Advertising Bureau
  • - eMarketer
  • - Nielsen Net Ratings
  • - Jupiter Research
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Biofuels May Hinder Anitglobal-Warming Efforts

Read an interesting article a couple weeks back in the WSJ on how biofuels may actually increase carbon emissions in the medium to long-term. Apprently the shifts in land-use necessary to support the production of bio-materials like soybeans, corn, or palm could in fact release more carbon emissions. The time it takes to get carbon-neutral on some of these projects is pretty crazy - 319 years for soybean biodiesel from Brazil (assuming you're clearing rainforest), 93 years for corn ethanol from the U.S. (assuming you're clearing grasslands), 86 years for palm biodiesel from Indonesia (assuming you're clearing rainforest). I suppose biofuels really aren't meant to reduce carbon emissions, but just crazy that they potentially exacerbate the problem so much.
3 comments
Read more

Nine Prescriptions for Building the Duke Entrepreneurial Community

I think Duke can have one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the world. Are we there yet? Well, not yet. But there's a tremendous amount of momentum that I saw build in just the past two years while I was getting my MBA at Duke. While leading Duke's 10th annual business plan competition, the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC) , last year, I witnessed a near doubling of participation on campus in just a single year. The interest on the ground was clearly there and building rapidly. But now that I'm an alum, I'm looking back and wondering ... how do we rev-up the Duke entrepreneurial community even more? I read a great article by Daniel Isenberg, a professor of management at Babson, called " How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution " in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review. Isenberg outlines nine prescriptions for governments that want to create entrepreneurship ecosystems in their countries. Although he was focused on governments an
3 comments
Read more

Bloomberg for President?

We can only hope. I read an article in the WSJ about how business people across the country, from entrepreneurs to bankers, are all hoping for Bloomberg to run. The economy thus far seems to have taken an unusual backseat in this years election but seems to be emerging as an important issue. An interesting excerpt: As the economy has emerged as a dominant issue in the 2008 campaign, candidates have struck populist notes, from Republican Mike Huckabee's boast that he is not a "wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street" to Democrat Barack Obama's visit to Wall Street to chastise finance executives for failing to protect the middle class. I can see the approach these guys are taking and I'm sure they have really smart campaign strategists. But I really wonder if this type of message of polarizing the "working man" vs. "big business" really resonates with voters anymore? Is the middle-class really that disgruntled with big business and income dispa
2 comments
Read more