5/20/2021 IGN ITOR Student

suggested by the listing in Table 1.2. It also is essential for you to recognize that all five fea- 00mm of
tures are critical to both understanding the philosophy of IMC and appreciating what must Integrated Marketing
be accomplished to implement this philosophy into practice. These five features do warrant mum“…
your committing them to memory. NOTES

Key Feature #1: The Consumer or Business Customer

Must Represent the Starting Point for All Marketing
Communications Activities
This feature emphasizes that the marcom process must start with the customer or prospect and
then work back to the brand communicator in determining the most appropriate messages
and media to employ for informing, persuading, and inducing customers and prospects to
act favorably toward the communicator's brand. The IMC approach avoids an ”inside-out"
approach (from company to customer) in identifying communication vehicles and instead
starts with the customer ("outside-in") to determine those communication methods that will
best serve customers' information needs and motivate them to purchase the brand.

Consumers In Control
It is widely acknowledged that marketing communications are governed by a key reality:
The consumer increasingly wants to be in control! Marcom practitioners must accept the fact
that marketing communications must be consumer—centric. A respected advertising pundit has
characterized this new marcom reality in these terms:
The fact is, people care deeply—sometimes peroersely—about consumer goods... What they
don't like is being told what they should care about or when they should be caring.... This may
he culturally diflicult for advertisers to accept, having spent turc centuries trying to browbeat/
seduce captive audiences. But take heart. Once the consumer is in the driver’s seat, he or she will
often cheerfully drive right in your direction.E

There ane numerous signs that consumers control when, how, and where they devote their
attention to marcom messages. Technological developments such as digital video recorders
(e.g., TiVo), MP3 players (e.g., iPods), and high-tech cell phones (e.g., iPhones) have enabled
consumers to enjoy television programs, music, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment
when and where they want. As such, consumers have the ability to pay attention to adver-
tising messages, or to ignore them! The Internet and the digital world allow consumers to
seek the information about product services that they want—via online searches, blogging,
emailing, text messaging, and social networking in outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, and
YouTube—rather than being mere captives of the messages that marketing communicators
want them to receive. (See the Global Focus insert for a marcom program in China that puts
consumers in control.)
Consumers not only passively receive marcom messages, but now they are active partici-
pants in creating messages via consumer-generated media such as those noted immediately
above. Does this idea of consumer-generated media and consumer-centric marketing mean
that consumers no longer attend to TV commercials or to magazine or newspaper advertise-
ments? Well, of course not, as you can prove by reflecting on your own experiences with
these media and the ads placed in them. It does mean, however, that consumers—particularly
younger consumers who were born and raised in the digital era—can actively acquire infor-
mation about the brands they favor rather than depend on the passive receipt of unwanted
information received at inopportune times.

Reduced Dependence on the Mass Medla

Many marketing communicators now realize that communication outlets other than the" mass
media often better serve the needs of their brands. The objective is to contact customers and
prospects effectively using touch points that reach them where, when, and how they wish to & ! l 7

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