Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

First things first — thanks to Alain Thys (FutureLab) and Mack Collier (Viral Garden) for stopping by to say “Hi”. It’s a pleasure reading their respective blogs and I can’t wait for more constructive marketing discussions via our blogs.

Back to more Marketing: “Integration” – the biggest challenge for marketing executives across corporations all over the world. I just read an interesting post on Integrated Marcom by David Armano (MarketingProfs) on the importance of Brand Experience vs. Brand Messaging. The genesis of David’s thoughts originated from a piece on iMedia – “A Quick Guide to Integrated Marketing” (by Denise Zimmerman).

Quoting portions of the iMedia article, David concludes that
“If marketers really want to “integrate”—then we will talk about experiences as well. Until then it’s partial integration at best.”

I’d have to agree with David that brand experience is of paramount importance to marketers, particularly in this age of two-way integrated marcom. Let me clarify…

If a channel is “a method of communication or interactivity that attracts, engages, or raises awareness among consumers.”, here are examples of current channels:

ONE-WAY

(i) Radio
(ii) TV
(iii) Movies
(iv) Mail
(v) Email

TWO-WAY

(vi) Social communication
– Offline (such as Events, Teller, etc…)
– Online (such as RSS based Blogs/Podcasts, Webinars)

Every channel facilitates a touchpoint with your prospective customer. So if a touchpoint is “How customers interact with a business or brand”, you can see from the above list that social communication is the only way to precipitate that interaction.

So as a marketer you have the two options: either communicate one-way with your prospects or communicate two-way by engaging your audience with your product/service and getting to hear their feedback on the same. The easiest way to achieve that on top of your slate of marketing events would be via web 2.0 methods such as RSS Marketing, business blogging, and multi-user interactive podcasting (check out Waxxi & their next interactive podcast here), which are becoming increasingly important in elevating the effectiveness of your marketing messages.

I believe that the above-mentioned methods will qualitatively add to the brand experience that you as a marketer strive to include in your integrated marketing mix.

Feel free to check out my 101 series on RSS Marketing, Podcasts, Community Marketing and Search Engine Marketing.

Just in case some of you are left wondering, how large companies in the real world successfully integrate their marketing communication efforts, check out this case study (thanks to iMedia Connection) on how Food Network Channel and Sprint/Nextel wrought Marketing Nirvāna!

Filed under: Miscellaneous