What are the four models of integration?

Real time, dynamic, flexible marketing is the order of the day in most marketing circles. But how can this ideal be achieved when it introduces a large element of uncertainty and complexity to agency and client processes? Especially when most marketing managers are attempting to work across an ever fragmenting list of channels, all with their associated agency specialists – what then is the best way to create harmony and restore appropriate order in which to plan ahead?

A recent publication I co-authored for the IPA, New Models of Marketing Effectiveness: From Integration to Orchestration, sheds light on the murky area of integrated marketing communications planning for the marketing and agency community. It analyses more than 250 cases from the IPA Effectiveness Awards, and puts a ‘stake in the ground’ for the industry by defining the different ways of integrating marketing activity – or ‘models’ of integration – observed in recent years, and also assesses their relative effectiveness in terms of driving results.

Integrated marketing is ‘like conducting an orchestra’

Our report identifies four ways in which marketing campaigns have been organised and proposes that creating and delivering effective integrated campaigns is becoming increasingly like conducting an orchestra.

This trend has increased in the past couple of years as the digital age continues to open up the potential for millions of conversations, and as advertisers and their agencies look for ways to make the growing multitude of channels work in harmony together. This move towards ‘orchestration’ is then compared with more established models to try to understand the most effective methods of structuring marketing activity.

The four models of integration

Our analysis identified four types of integration in campaigns:

1. No integration where a campaign either used a single advertising channel or took a laissez faire approach to merging
channels.

2. Advertising-led integration around a common creative platform. This ranges from visual identity only -the so-called ‘matching luggage’ approach – to a full-scale advertising creative idea across multiple disciplines, including non-advertising channels.

3. Brand idea-led orchestration where there was unification around a shared brand concept or need-state platform. Within this segment, the creative work does not look united by a common advertising idea, yet the audience is able to decode the strands as part of one brand’s message.

4. Participation-led orchestration where the goal between brand and audiences is to create a common dialogue, co-creation, experience or ‘conversation’.

Which works best?

Our study quantifies the additive benefits of seeking to integrate across channels versus planning each channel separately to specific channel objectives – arguably a far easier task to coordinate for marketing clients and their agency partners.
So which form of integration works best? The answer: orchestration – the power of a big, brand idea that all stakeholders within a business can buy into and all channel experts can activate in their own specialist discipline. This, coupled with a clear set of objectives playing to the strength of each channel allows creative ideas that can be flexed to take advantage of dynamic market situations.

This results in activity that does not necessarily look or feel the same or originate from the same creative campaign idea but we have shown, in the IPA report From Integration to Orchestration, that this is the most effective route to drive both business and brand results.

By DMA guest blogger Kate Cox, Head of Strategy, Havas Media