We discussed in class on how social media platforms have facilitated a more desired and sustainable way of building a positive brand image and promoting a favorable corporate reputation. IMC is seen as a “marriage” between marketing and public relation(PR) function of a company. From the discussion, I am still unclear on how IMC would be able to deliver the sales objective that marketing function pursues. It seems to me that IMC is just a substitute to PR as it focuses on forging a strong positive brand. More specifically, to what extent does IMC incorporate marketing function of a company? As evident in Blendtec’s successful IMC campaign, there is no element of sales/profit is used as parameter. Blendtec’s IMC success is mainly due to its ability to engage stakeholder, build relationship mechanism and provide platform for dual communication.
Furthermore, how can we able to distinguish an IMC campaign from just a traditional marketing advertisement? Would the fact that IMC campaigns are placed in social media platforms and are digital allow us to distinguish them?
I would appreciate any inputs and views that you guys have on these issues. Thank you very much!
Best Regards,
Valdy Arianto
Marketing communication 
Hi Valdy!
I’m a little unclear myself as to what the definite distinction is between marketing and PR as it stands currently, but from what I understand, in the past PR was solely focused on creating a strong brand reputation while Marketing’s only objective was trying to improve sales/revenue. Now that the two have been integrated, I believe the two objectives have been combined in the same way i.e. develop a marketing campaign for a product by engaging with the product’s consumers and promoting the brand image, and sales will follow by default. As Prof mentioned in class, PR needs to learn what customers want to hear, and Marketing needs to learn that stories sell. Hence, IMC promotes products (and by extension, a company) by telling the stories that customers want to hear.
Using Blendtec’s example, on the face of it it seems to be simply a publicity stunt, as they’re generating public interest by grinding random (and expensive) objects into dust using their product. But given that their product is a mixer, that also shows how efficient their product is! True, we don’t have any sales data to say whether or not the marketing part of the campaign was successful, but I still think that since the ads are trying to promote the product/company, it qualifies as a marketing campaign as well.
I think a good example of IMC would be Tiger Beer’s SG50 campaign. While its UnofficialOfficial party could be considered purely an exercise in PR, most of its marketing channels (traditional as well as non-traditional) aimed at engaging its stakeholders by eliciting feelings of nostalgia and patriotism among its Singaporean consumers (this is the PR part). At the same time though they also redesigned their product by changing the color scheme of its cans and adding in some Singaporean features to its packaging, thus making it more appealing to the market during that specific period (this is the marketing part).
As for your 2nd question, I’d love to know the answer to that as well 😛
Hope this helps! Cheers
Sid
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Siddhant,
Thanks for your inputs, i agree with you as well.
I have a clearer idea on the concept of IMC. It boils down to the objectives of the IMC campaign and what the company would like to get out of it. As illustrated in class, OCBC’s FRANK IMC campaigns are not so much targeted on gaining revenue but rather building on public’s awareness which would encourage conversion (sign-ups). It may be different from Blendtec’s and Tiger Beer’s IMC campaigns. Many thanks Sid!
Cheers,
Valdy
LikeLike