Marketing Effectiveness

Integration: how to get it right and deliver results

Creating and delivering effective integrated campaigns is becoming increasingly like conducting an orchestra. This trend has increased in the last couple of years as the digital age continues to open up the potential for millions of conversations, and as advertisers and their agencies look for ways to make the growing multitude of channels work in harmony together. This move towards ‘orchestration’ and away from a more rigid approach to integration is discussed in a new report published by the IPA in the U.K.

Key findings from the IPA report include:

• 
Multichannel campaigns are more effective than single channel ones.
• 
Three is the most effective number of advertising media to drive hard business measures (hard measures include sales gain, market share gain, reduction of price sensitivity, customer retention, customer acquisition, profit gain and market share defence).
•  TV is still the most effective medium to drive hard and soft measures but press and outdoor can play an extremely important role as lead advertising medium measures include brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand trust, brand differentiation, brand belief, brand fame and brand values.
• 
Campaigns with no obvious integration or who use only one channel are good at reducing price sensitivity but have little impact on market share.
• 
Traditionally integrated advertising-led campaigns are more effective at share gain and customer acquisition.
• 
Brand idea led campaigns are highly effective in retention, share defence and profit gain.
• 
Participation-led campaigns underperform on hard sales measures but excel in rewarding existing users and on brand fame. But despite the digital explosion, they make up a very small percentage overall.
• 
Developing a brand persona or icon is an extremely effective integration device.
• 
Categories differ substantially in their adherence to different models, for example non-integration is common amongst telecoms advertisers, financial advertisers make more use of advertising-led integration, brand idea-led is more popular among non-food FMCGs, and participation-led among brands with smaller budgets. 

For a summary of the IPA report published in Admap click here.


Source: IPA, “Integration: how to get it right and deliver results”, June 2011. Kate Cox has summarised the work in a feature ‘Effective Integration’ in the June edition of Admap. To subscribe to Admap click here.

Published August 2011