Content area
Full text
Introduction
Integrated communications can be defined as the notion and the practice of aligning symbols, messages, procedures and behaviours in order for an organisation to communicate with clarity, consistency and continuity within and across formal organisational boundaries. Consequently, the project of integrated communications is an important marketing issue. Without the alignment of symbols, messages, etc., organisations reduce their potential impact and sub‐optimise their communication budgets (Smith, 1996). Without clarity, consistency and continuity in their communications, organisations have difficulties standing out as interesting and distinctive brands in a cluttered marketplace (Duncan, 2005; Knox and Bickerton, 2003; Shimp, 2003). And without consistency between messages, procedures and behaviours, words and deeds, organisations cannot expect to be recognised as legitimate players in the contemporary globalised world (Balmer, 2001; Gioia et al., 2000; Schultz and Kitchen, 2000). Thus, it is only logical that we find the ideal of integrated communications promoted most fervently within the broad field of marketing. Under the headline of integrated marketing communications (IMC), marketing scholars and practitioners increasingly talk about the inevitability of integration and the need for organisations to devise and implement unified and integrated communications programmes (e.g. Schultz et al., 1994; Duncan and Caywood, 1996; Schultz and Schultz, 2003). Shimp (2003, p. 6) even suggests that integration, according to con‐temporary marketing philosophy, “is absolutely imperative for success” (see also Argenti et al., 2005).
Integrated communication, however, is broader than IMC, which tends to assume that integration takes place, or should take place, within the realm of marketing. Today, integrated communications has become an expansive discipline that links marketing to a number of other fields, including corporate design, corporate culture, public relations and corporate communication (Van Riel, 1995; Baker and Balmer, 1997; Balmer and Greyser, 2003; Christensen et al., 2008). While the concern for unified and integrated corporate images was evident already in mid‐to‐late nineteenth century corporate communication (Marchand, 1998), the systematic application of integrated communication programmes dates back to the introduction of house style manuals in the 1930s (Van Riel, 1995; see also Olins, 1989); and while marketing in many cases gradually assumed the responsibility of coordinating the organisation's formal communication parameters (cf. McCarthy, 1960), the burgeoning field of corporate culture took interest in the management of the informal...