Integrated Marketing - an opportunistic silver bullet by some and an end in itself by others

The point that slips by in discussion with most marketing types is that integration as a strategy does not depend on size. In fact simply getting the events people in a company to communicate regularly with the media people about their target market is a valid form of integration.

Looked at from a different angle it's about communicating one coherent message to the consumer and that does not take massive budgets and five-year plans.

I've had some interesting debates trying to convince a business friend that Integrated Marketing was not about creating an entire new department. It can revolve around ad hoc and task-driven work groups with representation from the different departments involved in the communication process.

In fact Integrated Marketing is never going to be the same thing to everybody and if it was it would be of benefit to nobody. It should be driven by a specific company's needs, objectives, budget, strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats that have to be worked with.

The bottom line is that Integrated Marketing can streamline and focus the business and marketing strategies by getting buy-in from the different disciplines. It is not an opportunistic rabbit out of the hat and definitely not a whole new department requiring a budget all of their own.

Successful Integrated Marketing Communication begins within the existing organisation as the target market has no chance of getting a logical message if the different people in different parts of the marketing strategy don't at least synchronise watches.