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Integrated marketing communications and social marketing

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DOI: 10.1108/JSOCM-07-2012-0031

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 Journal of Social Marketing
Integrated marketing communications and social marketing: Together for the
common good?
Stephan Dahl Lynne Eagle David Low
Article information:
To cite this document:
Stephan Dahl Lynne Eagle David Low , (2015),"Integrated marketing communications and social
marketing", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 226 - 240
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Stephen G. Saunders, Dani J. Barrington, Srinivas Sridharan, (2015),"Redefining social marketing:
beyond behavioural change", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 5 Iss 2 pp. 160-168 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-03-2014-0021
Philip J. Kitchen, Inga Burgmann, (2015),"Integrated marketing communication: making it work at
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JSOCM
5,3
Integrated marketing
communications and social
marketing
226 Together for the common good?
Received 17 July 2012 Stephan Dahl
Revised 24 November 2014
Accepted 11 May 2015 Hull University Business School, University of Hull, Hull, UK, and
Lynne Eagle and David Low
School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville,
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Queensland, Australia

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the view of integrated marketing communications
(IMC) by social marketing practitioners. Specifically, the paper furthers the discussion how a symbiotic
relationship between IMC and social marketing can lead to both practical improvements of
health-related social marketing campaigns, as well as theoretical advancement of the IMC construct.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with practitioners,
the authors provide exploratory evidence for support for IMC within the social marketing community
and highlight potential differences and similarities when transferring IMC from a commercial to a social
context.
Findings – Three main differences emerged when transferring IMC from a commercial to a social
context. These include differences of customer-centric approaches between commercial and social
marketing, the need to weigh out the application of IMC to the charity brand or the use of IMC at a
behavioural level and, finally, different complexity levels of desired behaviour as a mediating factor.
Research limitations/implications – As with all qualitative data, the findings may not be
generalisable beyond the interview participants and organisations studied.
Practical implications – Many practitioners expressed that they liked IMC as a concept, but they
lacked guidance as to the application with a social marketing context. This paper contributes to
providing this guidance and establishing a body of knowledge how IMC can be applied in a
non-commercial setting.
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the practical development of guidance how the largely
commercially applied IMC construct can be modified to be used in a social marketing context, while
correspondingly highlighting how IMC needs to evolve to grow beyond purely commercial application.
Keywords Charities, Social marketing, Integrated marketing communications, Practitioners’ view,
Evolve, Commercial application
Paper type Viewpoint

Journal of Social Marketing

Introduction
Vol. 5 No. 3, 2015
pp. 226-240
In this paper, we set out to evaluate what role integrated marketing communications
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited (IMC) can play in a health and social marketing context. Developed in the 1990s (Schultz
2042-6763
DOI 10.1108/JSOCM-07-2012-0031 et al., 1994), IMC has evolved and gained popularity amongst both marketing academics
 and practitioners, although to date much of the attention has been focussed on Social
implementing IMC within a commercial context (Eagle et al., 2007; Reid et al., 2005). marketing
Appropriating the concept from the commercial sector, one difference between social
and commercial marketing campaigns appears to be that social marketing
communication campaigns are often not well-integrated (Carlson et al., 1996). There is
evidence that integrated campaigns in the commercial sector are more effective than
those whose components are not integrated (Reid, 2005; Reid et al., 2005), prompting 227
calls for the use of IMC in social marketing for a more consistent campaign development
(Nowak et al., 1998). Thus, the reason for the lack of social marketing integration
warrants investigation, as its successful adoption could improve both communication
effectiveness and efficiency. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to explore how the
IMC construct can be modified to be successfully used in a social marketing context and
highlighting how IMC needs to evolve to be effective beyond purely commercial
application.
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Although not linked frequently, social marketing shares core assumptions with
IMC – for example, a focus on customer-centric, “outside-in” approach to
communication; emphasis on media synergy; the use of both internal and external
marketing; and so forth.
In the first part of the paper, we review the concept of IMC itself and the potential
importance of IMC in the health context, before presenting the results of an exploratory
study, seeking to identify the views held by charity-based, social marketing
practitioners of IMC through semi-structured interviews. We conclude by discussing
potential avenues for future research and how researchers in the social marketing field
can address issues raised by the practitioners.

Integrated marketing communications

Within a commercial context, the concept of IMC has been regularly discussed in the
literature since the early1990s (Dilenschneider, 1991). Early definitions of IMC focussed
on the benefits gained from the synergy achieved when the planning of individual
communications elements is done in a coordinated manner to ensure message
consistency (Duncan and Everett, 1993). More recently, a number of authors (Duncan,
2001; Kliatchko, 2005; Schultz et al., 2004) widened the scope beyond marketing
communications planning to put the emphasis on IMC at the strategic level as a business
process for brand communications with involvement from both external and internal
audiences. Thus, Kliatchko (2008, p. 140) defined IMC as “an audience-driven business
process of strategically managing stakeholders, content, channels, and results of brand
communication programs”, suggesting a holistic view of IMC well beyond simple
message consistency.
Many authors see IMC as a step-based process, with organisations transiting
through different levels of integration that are assumed to be sequential. For example,
Duncan and Moriarty (1998) conceptualise IMC as a three-stage model: organisations
start by integrating the communications mix, followed by a wider integrated marketing
mix, and, finally, implementing IMC at corporate/strategic message level, integrating
traditionally non-marketing activities such as human resources, finance and
manufacturing with the corporate-level message. As organisations transit through
these stages, they involve an increasing number of audiences: from largely external,
consumer-focussed audiences in the first stage, to external, directly connected audiences
 JSOCM (e.g. suppliers, competitors and distributors) in the second stage, while adding internal
5,3 (such as employees) and external, loosely connected audiences (such as regulators and
investors) in the third stage.
An updated, widely cited and frequently used model of IMC is Schultz’s and Kitchen
(2000) model of IMC integration. They identify four levels of integration, starting from
integrating communication at the tactical level to financial and strategic integration
228 (Figure 1).
However, IMC research has largely been confined to commercial application within
large businesses. Research into applying IMC in small business (Gabrielli and Balboni,
2010) or non-profit contexts (Palakshappa et al., 2010) only gained attention relatively
recently, but the field remains largely under-researched in these latter sectors.

Social marketing
Social marketing has come into focus because of recognition that many expert-led
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information and education-based campaigns aimed at changing behaviour in relation to

health and well-being challenges, such as smoking, obesity, binge drinking and
domestic violence, were ineffective; the knowledge-behaviour gap is well-documented in
the literature (Moraes et al., 2012). The need for more effective social marketing
interventions is evident: in England alone, the cost of preventable illness was estimated
in 2006 as in excess of £187 billion (US$298 million) or some 19 per cent of total gross
domestic product (National Social Marketing Centre, 2006).
Using social marketing has proven to be successful in achieving sustained behaviour
change in a diverse range of health-related behaviours: including smoking cessation
(Fishbein and Cappella, 2006), safe sex (DeJong et al., 2001), responsible drinking
(Goldberg et al., 2006) and immunisation (Opel et al., 2009).
However, although many social marketing campaigns have been successful, the
overall need for social marketing approaches to improve both the efficiency and

Figure 1.
The original IMC
model
 effectiveness of achieving desired outcomes has been a focus of academic and Social
practitioner debate since the late 1990s. marketing

Social marketing and IMC

Although the importance of consistent messages in health promotion and social
marketing is well-established, it is surprising that IMC has been largely ignored in the
social marketing literature, with few examples of researchers linking both concepts 229
(Hawkins et al., 2011). We located three publications discussing the link between both
concepts – two research-based journal articles and one conceptual book chapter.
Dresler-Hawke and Veer (2006) show the usefulness of IMC when developing consistent
messages across different media forms for healthy eating messages. However,
proponents of the IMC concept would emphasise that IMC implementation encompasses
more than developing a consistent message across different media forms and audiences
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(Kitchen et al., 2008). That is to say, IMC, as portrayed by Dresler-Hawke and Veer, is
similar only to the initial level of IMC adoption in Schultz and Kitchen’s (2000) model –
or to the early conceptualisations of IMC noted in the previous sections of this paper.
Alden et al. (2011) argue in their book chapter for the application of IMC by stressing
the need to integrate messages beyond communication and promotions if social
marketing campaigns are to succeed. They base their argument on the assertion that
communication, including information and education is not enough to achieve desired
results.
Further, Hawkins et al. (2011) show evidence of IMC being applied, although not
necessarily acknowledged as such, in school-based “healthy living” campaigns in New
Zealand, through interviews with teachers and principals in three schools. They support
theoretical claims of an integrated approach to social marketing having concrete
benefits in actual health-related campaigns, thus supporting the assessment of IMC as a
useful tool for social marketing campaigns.
Although previous publications have asserted the usefulness of IMC theories in a
health and social marketing environment, no research to date has looked at how social
marketers see the role of IMC, i.e. how practitioners evaluate the applicability and
usefulness of IMC theories to their work and what potential similarities and differences
arise when IMC is repositioned from a commercial to a non-profit context. The research
presented here addresses this gap in the literature.

Research objectives and methodology

The purpose of this study is, therefore, twofold: we explore the following:
(1) How social marketers see the role of IMC in health-related, social marketing.
(2) Whether the current IMC model needs to be adapted for use in social marketing.

We addressed these questions by conducting semi-structured interviews with campaign

managers of social marketing campaigns run by UK-based HIV-related charities. We
selected HIV prevention-related charities, as social marketing has been and is
extensively used in this context, thus allowing respondents to address the questions
from a basis of relevant, long-term experience of applying social marketing to the issue.
Moreover, the HIV sector offers a multitude of different charities engaging in diverse
campaigns, with charities ranging from small, regional or specialist organisations to
 JSOCM large, nationally operating bodies. This multitude of charities allowed us to sample
5,3 views from different types of organisations.
We chose HIV-related organisations rather than general social marketing agencies,
for example, commercial organisations developing social marketing programmes or
governmental bodies, such as the National Health Service, because HIV organisations
focus on a single issue at all stages of intervention development.
230 We selected six organisations that were, at the time of the research, running
HIV-related social marketing campaigns. Although there are a large number of
organisations involved in this area, only a small number is involved in actual social
marketing campaign design and implementation on the specific topic. For example, the
Pan London HIV-Prevention Engagement Project aims to coordinate activities amongst
42 organisations across London, but only six of these organisations focus exclusively on
HIV/sexual health issues. Other organisations, such as cultural or local government
organisations have wider remits, but are part of the wider stakeholder group consulted
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with and coordinated through the Pan London HIV-Prevention Engagement Project.
To select a cross-section of organisations in the sector, we chose two small, two
medium and two large organisations, all based in London (e.g. the smallest one has one
part-time employee, approximately 100 volunteers and £140,000 annual funding) to two
nationally operating charities (the largest with more than 750 employees, over 1,000
volunteers and approximately £21,000,000 annual funding). Respondents were
individuals responsible for social marketing campaigns or health promotion campaigns
run by the charity, which, depending on size of the charity, was either a volunteer-lead
role or a full-time marketing coordinator. All but one of the respondents had some
qualification in marketing (e.g. a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, or Chartered Institute
of Marketing qualification). With the exception of one participant, all respondents
currently worked or had worked previously in commercial marketing; thus, they were
able to comment on the differing aspects of implementing IMC in commercial and social
marketing practice.
We started the interviews by asking respondents about their understanding of IMC.
As all respondents were trained in or had previously worked in commercial marketing,
all interviewees could identify the broad meaning of IMC based either on their
experience or qualifications. The interviewers then focussed on the themes identified
within the academic literature; i.e. branding, internal and external stakeholder
communication, use of multiple media channels (and synergies). We then showed
respondents the Schultz and Kitchen model (as shown in Figure 1) presented before and
asked them for their views on the model. We used this model because it is widely cited
in terms of commercial activity (Laurie and Mortimer, 2011) and used in class teaching.
Further, its use of levels of IMC implementation allowed us to evaluate if these levels
apply in a social marketing context. We then asked respondents for an evaluation of the
level at which they would consider their organisation to be located in the context of their
own HIV/AIDS intervention activities.
Finally, we asked respondents to comment on the similarities and differences of IMC
when used in a social and commercial marketing context. The duration of each interview
was approximately 1 hour. We analysed the results using the two-stage process
proposed by Powell and Single (1996). First, the data were transcribed. Second,
emerging themes were identified. The research team then identified relevant variables
that offered insights appropriate to the role of IMC in social marketing activities. In the
 reporting of findings, we identify charities as A and B (small charities), C and D Social
(medium-size charities) and E and F (largest in terms of funding). marketing
The nature of these organisations is such that usually no face-to-face contact with the
target audience occurs at the organisations’ premises. Any direct contact occurs through
field workers. All of these organisations’ core campaigns share the common objective of
reducing HIV transmission, and the main focus is on behavioural interventions (e.g.
condom use). 231

Results
Familiarity with IMC
All respondents expressed some familiarity with IMC as a concept, and all six
respondents linked IMC to message consistency across media channels. Five
respondents mentioned branding or brand as a central concept related to IMC. Likewise,
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five respondents named customers as important actors in IMC, but only two
respondents mentioned internal stakeholders without prompting. This result suggests
relatively high familiarity with the basic concept of IMC, although mostly
conceptualised at the customer involvement and marketing levels, i.e. consistent with
the first two levels of the Schultz and Kitchen model. The emphasis on media
integration, branding and customer involvement expressed by the social marketers is
not similar to results obtained by Laurie and Mortimer (2011), who evaluated
commercial marketing communication practitioners’ views on IMC. Four respondents
indicated the topicality and contemporaneousness of IMC, although mostly within a
commercial context. This implied that respondents showed an awareness of issues in
the commercial sector. Moreover, all participants agreed that integrated messages are
an important way of achieving outcomes, both in terms of brand benefits to the
individual charity or in terms of behaviour change objectives.

Stakeholders – external
Major external stakeholders for the charities consist of the clients (or individuals
targeted by the social marketing campaigns) and funders, which can be both
governmental and quasi-governmental organisations (such as the National Health
Service in the UK) as well as private funders (individual donors, community members,
etc.).
Taking the lead from the client by engaging in consumer-focussed business and
marketing practices and offering consumer-relevant solutions and benefits is central to
IMC (Kliatchko, 2008).
All respondents agreed that client focus is at the heart of their activities, not least
because “the whole experience [of the staff and volunteers] is about improving peoples’
lives. It’s what drives every one of us here” (Respondent E). Extensive research and
expertise about the clients were achieved by being “really switched on” (Respondent A)
when it came to the target groups, not least because “most staff and volunteers have
shared experiences with the service users” (Respondent D). Therefore, “market
research”, though not always termed as such, was felt as coming “natural[ly] to us. We
[staff and volunteers] know what it feels like to be a client. Most have probably been
there” (Respondent B). In other words, client focus and understanding was derived
innately rather than resulting from an obligatory routine.
 JSOCM An interesting role was attributed to funders and donors: three of the six respondents
5,3 commented that large funders, facing increasing pressure on resources, scrutinise
applications exhaustively, and that “extensive justification and data to back up that we
are delivering a lot of bang for each buck” (Respondent E) was critical to gaining
funding. This implied that funders are perceived as driving market research and
customer/client engagement. Funders also play a role in enhancing market research
232 quality, by “comparing what we claim we know and how we know it [the clients’ views]
” (Respondent F).
Individual donors on the other side were attributed a more central role in relation to
the main “charity brand”. The brand image of the charity, in turn, was described by four
of the respondents as a crucial antecedent for donations, i.e. building strong brand
recognition and creating trust-facilitated community fundraising activities:
We have huge brand recognition, which really makes it easy when asking for donations. […]
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They [donors] see the logo; they immediately know what we do. We don’t need to explain
anything (Respondent D).
Community fundraising activities, in turn, represented more than just raising funds:
“When they see us out, it’s a reminder [to engage in safe sex]” (Respondent D).
However, not all external stakeholders influenced campaign design: all six
respondents acknowledged the role of funders and clients, while individual donors were
largely overlooked. Large funders were seen as typically influencing outcome
measurements and core messages of campaigns, whereas clients, either through formal
channels, such as user groups and surveys, or through informal channels, such as
personal contacts, had substantial influence on campaign details.

Stakeholders – internal
The narrative of the “shared experience” extended to the way charities communicated to
internal stakeholders. While one charity conceded that:
[…] we may mean different things to different people. Most of our funding comes from a gay
“background”; many of our volunteers are gay, and they see us as a typical gay charity. But
most of our service users are not gay, in fact some come from quite homophobic backgrounds
(Respondent C).
The same respondent also pointed out that “both groups rally around the cause”
(Respondent C). The “shared experience” of staff, volunteers and service users resulted
in what one respondent described as a “natural fit” (Respondent A), resulting in “much
less convincing to be done [than in the commercial sector]. People here are engaged in the
issue. It’s more than just a job” (Respondent D).
However, although the engagement, especially of staff and volunteers, was a strong
point, it also had some downsides. Especially, “when trying to do things professionally”
(Respondent B), i.e. giving consistent messages, as “nobody here reads a script […] they
[the volunteers] speak directly from their hearts” (Respondent B). All respondents felt
that internal stakeholder engagement was essential to succeeding, setting the charity
and health sector “well apart from the commercial sector” (Respondent A). As one
respondent (D) put it: “They [commercial sector] are doing it by dictate. We’re winning
hearts and minds”.
 Media synergy Social
There was also agreement that charities were far more creative when using media than marketing
commercial organisations, although there was a belief that the use of data to leverage
media synergy was lacking behind the commercial sector, due to less sophisticated use
and a lack of availability of data:
We’ve only just started to use a content management system for one of our sites that can track
your progress on the site, and give you appropriate menu choices based on your profile 233
(Respondent F).
Main obstacles for planned integration were budget constraints: “media planning is
really ad hoc. It’s mostly done when we have an opportunity [to get discounted or
donated space]. […] Planned synergy is difficult then” (Respondent A).
For example, we often get discounted rates we can afford over holiday periods. So we tie in
activities with that. It’s really rapid synergising then. […] possibly more creatively than would
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be the case in for a well-planned campaign (Respondent A).

Brand communication programmes

For respondents, a brand was not necessarily their own organisation’s brand but, in
some cases, an overarching sector brand. For example, a free condom distribution
service, in which several organisations take part, is using the “Freedom” brand as a
main brand. For all of these organisations, branding is, therefore, a mix of their house
brand and overarching campaign brands. In Kliatchko’s (2008) definition, IMC is the
result of (well) managed strategic brand communication programmes, underlining the
importance of a coherent brand image for commercial IMC. All respondents recognised
the importance of a well-defined brand, especially as an advantage for fundraising and
community engagement.
However, for the respondents, brand prominence, and to some extent brand
competition, was more complex in a social environment than in a commercial context.
All identified significant tensions between different brands, acutely where several
charities worked together on campaigns:
It’s sometimes difficult: we have the partners who want their logo first, then there is us, then
there is the funder. Then maybe a campaign brand […] it can take a long time to figure out who
comes first on the material (Respondent D).
However, markedly, the main focus for respondents was on individual charity branding
rather than associating a brand consistently to a desired behaviour. Several respondents
made references to campaigns where behaviours are more visibly branded:
If we would have something like “5 a day” [national healthy eating campaign] for sexual health
then I’m sure we would be asked to use it prominently. Luckily we don’t (Respondent B).
“Having a brand as Sex4Life [reference to Change4Life, national healthy living
campaign] could be useful. But I doubt there are the resources and the motivation to
develop this” (Respondent D). Three respondents agreed that branding behaviours
could be useful from a client and message perspective: “Freedoms, Sho-Me, MyHIV,
Count Me In, It’s Better to Know […] I guess it must look a bit confusing to a client”
(Respondent C). Nevertheless, three respondents felt that the diversity of brands used
was actually a strength rather than weakness, showing that “the sector isn’t just one big
 JSOCM government department where everything is centralised” (Respondent B). “One could
5,3 say that there is a brand for everyone. […] the upside is that it minimises reactance. We
can target very diverse groups differently” (Respondent A), suggesting that the variety
of competing brands has a positive impact on the desired behaviour and could actually
enhance the relevance for targeted audiences of the core message as “no matter what
brand. All say the same thing really” (Respondent A).
234
Levels of IMC
Respondents found locating themselves on the levels of IMC difficult, signifying that the
order of the levels proposed by Schultz and Kitchen’s (2000) model of IMC was not
appropriate in their circumstances – or not as sequential as the model may imply.
Several respondents pointed out the focus on behaviour change by everyone in the
organisation, especially in the case of volunteers, “because that’s why they are here”
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(Respondent B) and the openness to achieving change as cost-effective as possible. Five

respondents reiterated in various forms that a stern focus on achieving results is
because of the nature of the people working for them, maybe more so than in a
commercial context: “For companies it’s all about look at my great advert and for us, it’s
about look at what a difference I’ve made today” (Respondent D). This implied having
achieved Levels 2 and 4 of the model.
On the other hand, respondents identified problems with Levels 1 and 3, both from an
internal perspective (“it’s sometimes difficult to coordinate many volunteers on the
ground level. Let’s face it they are here for free” [Respondent B]) as well as from a
message perspective: “We try to coordinate what we are saying. But there is just too
much other information out there” (Respondent D). However, some of the message
clarity may be due to the relative ease of the desired behaviour: “Our core message isn’t
complex […] most people know what they should be doing, really. It’s not as baffling as
alcohol units or portion sizes for people” (Respondent A), which may itself be a product
of (unintentionally) integrated messages, “all say[ing] the same thing really”, as
Respondent A remarked, thus implying that within a health behaviour context, coherent
messages maybe the key to successful outcomes, possibly more so than consistent
brand images.

Discussion
Despite the exploratory nature of this study, and taking into account that care should be
taken in generalising the findings discussed beyond the parties interviewed, the overall
impression is of a clear appreciation of the benefits of IMC in a social marketing context.
Yet, there are some reservations regarding the uncritical adoption of the concept. With
regards to our first research question, we can conclude that IMC as a broad concept is
seen as relevant in the social marketing field by practitioners. However, with regards to
our second research question, there emerged subtle differences between IMC when
applied in the commercial or social sector.
The following main differences emerged around three issues:
(1) differences of customer-centric approaches between commercial and social
marketing, especially the centrality of a “shared experience”;
(2) application of IMC to charity brands or at behavioural level; and
(3) complexity of desired behaviour.
 Several researchers have raised the issue of the inadequacy of customer-centric Social
approaches to IMC in commercial marketing (Eagle et al., 2007; Laurie and Mortimer, marketing
2011). In a charity-led, social marketing context the inverse appears to be true. Focus on
clients is both a common function of charities’ self-image, through shared experiences
between staff, volunteers and clients, and second, a result of funder-led control. Such a
finding is interesting specifically from a policy perspective: although this research did
not evaluate differences between social marketing campaigns led by governmental 235
bodies, charities and commercial social marketing agencies, it seems plausible that
competition within the charity sector drives more extensive outside-in direction of social
marketing campaigns, where different charities “compete” to achieve a better fit with
their perspective audiences. Thus, encouraging competition in preference to running
unified, national programmes may be a way to enhance client relevance of campaigns.
However, such competition has a potentially significant downside, in that it may
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hinder message consistency in favour of message relevance. For example, in their

evaluation of a sexual health campaign emphasising the use of condoms as a way to
“keep the secret” about male-to-male encounters between Latino men identifying
outwardly as heterosexual in the USA, Fernández Cerdeño et al. (2012) credit the success
of the campaign with the cultural relevance of the message to the targeted audience. The
campaign emphasised that consistent condom use during male-to-male encounters was
a way to avoid someone else finding out about these “secret” encounters taking place,
using the slogan, “Nobody knows about it. And with a condom nobody will ever know
about it” (Martínez-Donate et al., 2010). Such a message is drastically different to
messages aimed at self-identifying homosexual men and could be seen as offensive to
the latter target group. However, one could argue that despite different
contextualisation, the advocated behaviour is alike (e.g. use of condoms and regular
health checks). Striking a balance between potential synergies through integrated
messaging and client-specific relevance will, therefore, be a challenge in case of diverse
target groups, which, arguably, may be the case for most social marketing campaigns.
A further potential challenge while using IMC in a social marketing context is where
the emphasis of the integration should lie. Within a charity-led context, there are likely
to be more parties involved than in traditional, commercial marketing operations for a
single brand or product. Thus, should integration focus on the charity brand or
branding behaviour? Are there ways in which both can be combined? For example,
major supermarkets in the UK use the “5 a day” brand to promote fruit and vegetables,
yet are doing so while also promoting their brand. In other words, can health-related
campaigns develop models of successful co-branding between different partners?
Finally, although commercial marketing largely focusses on a well-defined and
relatively easy outcome (purchase of goods or services), outcomes, ways to achieve
desired behaviours and existing client involvement and knowledge are likely to be more
multifaceted in many social marketing situations. Our research focussed on relatively
easy and well-understood behavioural objectives. However, many other social
marketing campaigns are likely to be more complex, with less clearly defined
behavioural outcomes, such as alcohol or drug consumption reduction, healthy eating or
environmental causes. Our respondents indicated that because of the relatively easily
understood desired behaviour of sexual health campaigns, there was room for a variety
of different messages and strategies with one uniting outcome. For more complex
 JSOCM behavioural goals, however, having different messages may well lead to confusion
5,3 rather than achieving of outcomes.
Based on these results, and addressing research Question 2, it is possible to
conjecture how an IMC “Triangle”, based on the original four-level triangle by Schultz
and Kitchen (2000), could look like:
We, therefore, propose a five-stage triangle, shown in Figure 2. At the initial level, we
236 locate “behavioural agreement”, i.e. charities working together on a given social
marketing outcome are likely to have broad agreement on the behaviours that should be
promoted (in this case, consistent condom use). The first stage is likely to be the result of
both the evidence base as well as funding policies, and integration among different
partners and organisations appears relatively straightforward as well as fundamental
for the achievement of a behavioural goal. For instance, taking the example of HIV
prevention, the vast majority of HIV organisations emphasise on consistent condom use
and regular testing as a means to reduce HIV transmission, although these
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organisations may not work together in any other way.

The second level of integration requires partners to share information and insights
created through their engagement with end-users. Frequently, partners in social
marketing campaigns, especially in the case of HIV organisations, are likely to be
heavily engaged in activism on behalf of their core audience. Thus, sharing, or
advocating, and co-ordinating amongst interests of respective end-users are likely to be
a relatively early sign of achieving integrated communication. Using the example of HIV
prevention work, an example of Level 2 integration is co-operation partnerships
amongst a multitude of organisations working broadly in the area of HIV prevention,
such as the Pan London HIV Prevention Programme, mentioned previously, with 42
partner organisations. Although HIV prevention or advocacy may be part of some or all
of the work of these organisations, and they are likely to have broad agreement on the
behaviours required to reduce HIV transmission, there is no coordinated promotional or
communication activity amongst partner organisations. For example, some
organisations may facilitate access to particular target audiences; others may include

Figure 2.
The revised IMC
model
 broad calls for condom use within larger projects related to health and well-being, while Social
others may engage in a consultative role, for example, through providing feedback marketing
about potential ways to reach targeted audiences or likely reception of prevention
messages.
At the next stage, we propose the tactical coordination of marketing communication.
In the original model, this stage is the earliest stage of IMC development. However, it is
likely to occur later in a social marketing context. We suggest that this later placement 237
is the result of two main factors: First, it requires the first two stages to be completed to
ensure message relevance to a variety of target audiences. Second, it requires partner
organisations to coordinate some of their activities and work together in the design and
delivery of their respective behaviour-relevant communications. For instance, using
similar taglines and campaigns and delivering these in different parts of the country, or
to different target audiences. An example of such a cooperation in the HIV sector can be
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found in the coordinated activities under the umbrella term of “It Starts with Me” HIV
prevention project, with coordinated marketing activities amongst HIV Prevention
England, national partners such as National AIDS Manual and Terrence Higgins Trust,
as well as local partners including Yorkshire MESMAC, BHE for Equality and others.
Although the main campaign is coordinated nationally, each partner organisation
continues to operate separately and delivers the campaign to their respective target
audiences on a local and regional level.
The fourth level, consistent in following the tactical coordination of marketing
communications in commercial IMC, is the redefinition of the scope of marketing
communication. At this level, the focus would be on the integration of the customer
experience (Schultz and Kitchen, 2000). To continue with the example of the “It Starts
with Me”, this would require coordination of activities beyond the communication of
behavioural goals and the delivery of a consistent customer experience, for example, by
provision of shared testing services and coordinated activity in terms of branded
behavioural outcomes.
In the final phase, commensurate with the final and highest stage of commercial IMC,
emphasis is directed towards shared strategic planning, based on the data and
experiences from delivering the outcomes on the previous stages. An example of a
successfully integrated campaign is the Think! road safety campaign, where activities,
communications and insights are integrated across different partner organisations, each
working together in a defined partner framework to deliver strategic outcomes
connected to the campaign.

Directions for future research

Given that the Schultz and Kitchen model was developed in the era before social media
became prominent, and in an explicitly commercial context, a number of issues should
be explored in the specific social marketing context.
Of particular importance to social marketing is the notion that messages are no
longer under marketers’ total control. As consumers perform an integration of diverse
messages they receive (Finne and Grönroos, 2009), how this integration is performed
may be crucial to understand actual attitudes and behaviours as a result of social
marketing campaigns. For example, in the case of HIV prevention, there is a multitude
of messages; some of which are similar (e.g. consistent condom use), but some of which
 JSOCM may be understood as conflicting (e.g. reduced infection risk of people on anti-retroviral
5,3 treatment and treatment as a prevention tool).
Moreover, and following the recommendation by, for example, the National Social
Marketing Centre’s (2010) Benchmark Criteria, to use multiple media channels for all
campaigns, future research needs to determine the most effective channels by segment.
Following on from this, researchers should address how different sources of information
238 are accessed, comprehended, evaluated and how information from different sources is
integrated before behavioural decisions are made.

Conclusion and directions for future research

Wider adoption of IMC in the social marketing field has the potential to enhance
campaigns. However, too few researchers have addressed the issue of how IMC needs to
adopt if it is applied in the more complex world of health and social marketing. At the
moment, the reality “on the ground” seems to be that most practitioners like IMC as a
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concept, but are lacking guidance as to how it might be successfully used in their specific
context. Thus, the academics and practitioners have the opportunity, based on the
model presented above, to provide more detailed strategic guidance. Future research
should evaluate IMC variations, including alternative models such as Alden et al.’s
(2011) model. Following an extension of the study to a wider range of health and lifestyle
situations to compare and contrast findings across different conditions and population
segments, professional guidance can be developed to guide strategic IMC in the social
marketing sector and to aid in the development of future interventions.

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Andreasen, A.R. (2002), “Marketing social marketing in the social change marketplace”, Journal of
Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 3-13.

About the authors

Stephan Dahl is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Hull University Business School in the UK. His
research interests include health marketing, cross-cultural marketing and online marketing. He
has published in national and international journals, including the Journal of Marketing
Management and Journal of Advertising Research. He is also the co-author of two forthcoming
textbooks on integrated marketing communications and social marketing. Dr Dahl’s current focus
is on the role social marketing and social media can play to prevent health problems, to help
patients with chronic diseases, increase physical activity and reduce crime, especially in a
cross-cultural context. Stephan Dahl is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
s.dahl@hull.ac.uk
Lynne Eagle is a Professor of Marketing at James Cook University. Her research interests
centre on: marketing communication effects and effectiveness, including the impact of persuasive
communication on children, impact of new, emerging and hybrid media forms and preferences for
or use of formal and informal communications channels and trans-disciplinary approaches to
sustained behaviour change in social marketing, health promotion and environmental protection
campaigns. She has published in a wide range of academic journals, including the Journal of
Advertising and European Journal of Marketing, led the development of both Marketing
Communications and Social Marketing texts and contributed several book chapters for other texts
as well as writing commissioned expert papers and presenting numerous research papers at
international conferences. She is on the editorial board of several journals including Journal of
Marketing Communication, Marketing Intelligence & Planning and Young Consumers. Her work
has been cited extensively by academics and industry spokespeople, and she has given numerous
media interviews regarding research findings.
Prof David Low is Head of School, School of Business, James Cook University (JCU). Prior to
commencing at JCU, David was Head of School for the School of Marketing at the University of
Western Sydney, a position he held for 5 years. His research interests include cross-cultural issues;
country of origin studies; ethnicity, market orientation, firm performance, e-marketing;
innovation; small and medium-sized enterprises; and the use of technology in business value
chains. He has just co-edited a book on E-Novation and Web 2.0.

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