Authors Clow and Baack in their book Integrated Marketing and Communications, define IMC as "The coordination and integration of all marketing communications tools, avenues, and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users as a minimal cost.”
We are exposed to more than 1000 commercial messages per day. The number of advertisements has increased by three folds with the increase in the variety of mediums available. We come across advertisements while using most applications on our phones (unless we subscribe to the paid version of the service), browsing websites, listening to our favorite true crime podcast, watching tv, or streaming content. This mix of traditional and new advertising media needs to be consistent in order to get the unified brand message across to its consumer segment. The key to achieving a strong brand identity is a clear, crisp, and consistent marketing strategy. The ability to cut through the cluttered marketing communications environment.
If I was to break down a brand to its basics - it would consist of the name, logo, and location (physical and digital). But it cannot be that simple, can it?
What makes a brand, “the brand”? I would say when the function becomes homogenous with the business i.e. the brand name becomes the moniker of the service or product offering. This is the intangible aspect that is an equally crucial element of any brand. Many brands achieve this status when consumers develop an emotional connection to the brand. For e.g. Coca Cola’s red-colored cans, the Apple logo, or the Cisco Golden Gate bridge logo, signify connectivity.
However, what if brands in the process of persuading consumers end up generating immunity amongst them towards themselves and lose relevance in the crowded landscape? I find myself becoming immune to the messaging clutter every time I forward through advertisements while listening to a podcast. Youtube premium has seen a consistent increase in subscribers since 2020 and the number is forecasted to increase to 27.9 million subscribers by 2024 as per Statista. It's kind of clear to me, that we try and avoid exposure to advertisements as much as we can. New and existing brands need to be able to overcome this lethargy and inculcate their value proposition. The question is how to cut through this clutter.
Statista 2022
Consumers today, particularly the GenZ and the millennial segment do not want to be subjected to constant marketing, instead, they want to be included in the experience. Experiential marketing has been breaking this fourth wall of marketing. Tech companies have been able to unravel the concept of experiential marketing and implement ways of resuscitating customer perception by intentionally connecting with consumers in authentic and meaningful ways. Events like Google Cloud Next, Google I/O, and Adobe Summit have changed the design of their summits by making the entire experience live a live stream instead of having certain “live sections”, as they did before.
Experiential marketing is here to stay because ultimately, the goal of any marketing approach is to be able to generate the maximum ROMI (Return-On-Marketing-Investment) by investing in forging meaningful and memorable customer experiences.
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