Integrated marketing communications: From media channels to digital connectivity

Media is in the midst of a digital revolution that frees news, information and advertising from the technological limits of print and broadcast infrastructures. The digitization and networking of information transform marketing communications into a vastly different set of practices for connecting consumers and brands. This paper overviews the transformation in media and describes the implications for integrated marketing communications (IMC) practice and scholarship. Digital media brings about infinite reproduction of content, consumer networking, user-generated content and an expansion of media from news and entertainment to almost any technology that has a digital interface with people. The role of media in marketing communications practices shifts from the execution of message strategies into an extension of consumer understanding. Media planning, the practice of allocating a media budget across a set of vehicles, will be replaced by a dynamic, automated process that serves ads based on information streams of consumer intentions and actions. Several of the core principles of IMC – consumer insight, data-driven decision making, cross-media integration and communications with multiple stakeholders – represent an improved framework for managing communications in a digital world.