Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is a crucial tool that ensures all the communication throughout a company’s marketing mix are integrated and consistent.
With modern day markets being highly saturated with various companies selling the same products, it is brand names, and what they represent, that become the deciding factor in customers’ purchasing decisions. Instead of purchasing just a product, customers today are buying the lifestyle, community and meaning that comes with the product.
It is due to this that IMC has become a crucial tool in marketing your business. A brand can only be built successfully when all channels in the marketing mix fully portray what the brand represents.
How to create an IMC outline for your business
You firstly have to go through the process of defining your target market. This will allow you to understand what needs your product fulfils, as well as who benefits most from it. It further provides you with an outline of how your target market interacts, who they are socially and how they communicate.
Once you know this, you will be able to better understand what lifestyle and “sense of community” will fit them, and how and where you should communicate with them (read more on brand voice here).
IMC in real life
A company using IMC effectively is Nando’s. Instead of selling their product features, the brand created a fun, vibrant, “local is lekker” community that South Africans can relate to. Their tongue in cheek advertising that borders controversy proves popular in the market, and through this the brand builds a positive perception in the consumers’ minds, long before they have tasted their food.
This brand message is successfully communicated through integrated marketing communications on their various platforms and channels:
Example 1: Menu
Speaking true to their fun side, the Nando’s menu is anything but formal and basic. The menu features a creative font, and has food categories such as “Hungry-ish” and “Flaming Hungry”.
Example 2: Social Media
The brand’s social media platforms are filled with fun, controversial and current events marketing. They use this to indirectly sell their products and brand itself. The below is an example of some South African’s belief in the conspiracy theory that the Covid-19 vaccine has a micro-chip that allows Bill Gates to track your movements.
Example 3: TV Advertising
Nando’s further show their fun, tongue in cheek and controversial side through their tv advertising. Most of their ads are removed quickly from broadcasting, due to it being controversial, yet their main target market, who is younger, fun and ironic themselves, praise Nando’s advertising for this exact reason.
As seen in the examples above, IMC is about ensuring that you communicate the exact same brand message, lifestyle and tone of voice throughout your various marketing channels. There is no use in making jokes on social media, while being serious and formal on tv advertising, and then being dull and boring on your website. This will create brand confusion and won’t allow customers to see how they fit into your brand and the lifestyle or community you are selling.
The best success comes from knowing your customer, defining the brand and lifestyle that you want to sell to them, and then ensuring that all your marketing channels are consistent in the lifestyle or community they are selling and how they are selling it. Therein lies the success of integrated marketing communications.
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