Integrated corporate and product brand communication (1).

From our perspective, all forms of communication over which the company can exercise control or influence can be integrated. Firms obviously do not arrive at integration overnight either. Instead they progress through at least four stages discussed below:

Stage 1: Tactical Coordination

Firms in this first stage of tactical coordination focus on the idea of one sight, one sound; that is they attempt to integrate promotional elements such as advertising, sales promotion, marketing public relations, direct marketing, and/or the Internet. Firms, also, strive to maximise consistency and synergy among all promotional mix elements. They may typically instruct advertising agencies to maximize all potential exposures to the brand through a multiplicity of different media. Typically, and in accord with marketing communication theory, messages will vary in content, but the same core values will be depicted repeatedly. Repetition of the same promotional campaigns, however, that have been successful in, for example, the U.S.A., often mean problems if adopted and implemented wholesale overseas. Typically, consumers may respond in different ways simply because their fields of experience differ.

Stage 2: Redefining the Scope of Marketing Communication

In the second stage, the firm starts to adopt an outside-in, as opposed to inside-out, perspective. Typically, the focus here is on the customer's or consumer's reception, perception, and perspective. Rather than simply integrating from a tactical Stage 1 perspective, businesses look at all potential contacts a customer or consumer may have with a product, service, brand, or company. For the first time, firms start to consider integrated communication--from the dual perspective of both internal and external communication activities. Thus, they begin to attempt the alignment of all communication to fit the needs of corporate publics, including consumers, and exchange partners, customers or consumers.

Stage 3: Application of Information Technology

The third stage does not constitute the arrival and incorporation of consumer and customer data as the driving force for marketing activity. Usually, this empirical data is already available inside the organization. Instead, the firm starts to understand, aggregate, and apply the data to identify, value, and monitor the impact of integrated communication programs to key customer target markets or segments over time. It is generally here that communication clearly becomes a strategic corporate tool and not just a departmental tactical activity.

Stage 4: Financial and Strategic Integration

The fourth stage constitutes the highest level of integration at this time. Here, the emphasis moves to deploying both the marketing database(s) identified in Stage 3, with the previous abilities developed from Stages 1 and 2 to drive corporate and marketing strategic planning using customer information and insight. Firms in this stage tend to re-evaluate financial information and infrastructures to aid in the development of "closed-loop" planning and evaluation. Thus, firms at this stage are able to evaluate marketing expenditures based on some type of return-on-investment in customers or in marketing communication activities.

CONTEXTUAL OVERVIEW

The majority of firms, whether international or global in scope or scale, are moving through these stages, though relatively few (possibly a handful) have now arrived at Stage 4. Most multinationals and global marketers, in our experience, will be working at Stages 1 or 2. Initially, their goal is to find ways to integrate the broad variety of brands they have created over time. They also struggle with the integration of the large number of individual marketing databases and with the customer segments or niches they are serving, and relating all these to the to-be targeted marketing communication plans they hope to deploy. However, overlaid on this ideal template will be their position in their historical, cultural, managerial and contextual situation. Likewise, each brand within the corporate portfolio may he positioned nationally, internationally, regionally or globally which, of course, compounds the communication management problem.

While a specific study of corporate communication has not, to our knowledge, been conducted such as the one on IMC cited, we strongly believe the same type and structure of integration development would likely be found. Thus, we believe the four stages of integration are applicable to corporate activities, not just to product brand communication. Further, we believe the framework outlined can be used by corporate communication managers as a guideline for integration development in all types of firms.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

This paper has considered the global marketplace in which integrated communication or integrated marketing communication has to he deployed. The key word is contextual. Contextual in the sense of firm and environmental dissimilarities. Contextual in the sense of differential approaches by firms over time. Contextual in the sense of brand positioning either from a corporate or marketing perspective. We then discussed the move to a global approach in which brand dimensionality (external image vs internal identity) drives firms to consider more societally oriented approaches. In the early 21st century, the process of businesses and consumer exchanging brands and monies will undoubtedly continue. But the corporate brand, what the firm is, what it stands for, will be of major interest to consumers, customers, and stakeholders around the world.

Information, not just from a partisan company perspective, will also be available from anywhere in the world. Notably, consumers, customers, and stakeholders are no longer dependent on company-generated information. This will, we believe, necessitate two types of integrated communication--namely corporate and marketing. For some firms, this distinction will be irrelevant. For others it will be crucial. Businesses must decide for themselves. Stakeholders want to know who the firm is and what it stands for and how it operates. Today, there is no escaping and "stonewalling" is certainly not a solution, as firms such as Monsanto, Coca Cola, and others have learned to their chagrin.

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of NTC, Chicago, and Palgrave (nee Macmillan), London in allowing us to draw upon elements from our book: Schultz and Kitchen (2000) op cit.

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Philip J. Kitchen holds the Chair in Strategic Marketing at Hull University, Hull, UK. An author of five books, he has published many papers on corporate and marketing communications in academic and practitioner journals in the U.S.A. and Europe.