Integrated Marketing vs. Multilateral Marketing Communication

Integrated marketing communication, introduced in Finland in the late 80's, is integration of all marketing tools, online and offline, approaches, and resources within a company which maximizes impact on consumers mind and which results into maximum profit at minimum cost.

Though I see that IMC is the only correct approach to marketing communication in general, depart from MMC, it still represents One-Way-Communication - from the marketer to the target group, only.

The starting point is to break down the honeycombed thinking and acivity models in order to achieve even more precise focus, cost effectivity and multidimensionality.

The will to see marketing communication only as a chain of separate elements, building up an integrated chain of communication, prevents us to utilise the most essential starting point of Total Communication in where, in addition to marketing communication methods, even the people representing the departments of organizations and the media works as a total fusion. To quote an old phrase: “The whole is always larger (more effective) than the sum of its parts”.

To concentrate on single communication tools is a good business for direct marketing agencies, for instance, but an effective way to disintegrate the total communication of corporations and brands. The more (mass-) media we buy, the more money we make “is still a common way of thinking in most AD-agencies.

It seems that an entirely unbelievable idea of that there is a “line”, which separates e.g. advertsising from other marketing communication is still alive.

Although, many agencies build-up marketing programs with total thinking as a starting point, they are often short of motivation to look for and find integrative components, ways and causes needed for an effective total marketing whole. Many agencies are simply trapped in their own special disciplines.