CHAPTER 16
The integration of marketing
communications
TONY YESHIN
The blurring of the edges of
marketing communications
Recent years have seen significant changes in
the way that marketing communications cam-
paigns have been developed and implemented.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the primary source for
the development of all forms of marketing
communications activity was the advertising
agency. At that time, separate departments
within the agency provided their clients with
advice in all of the appropriate areas.
Since then, two strands of change have
taken place. First, the wider appreciation of the
techniques themselves and the need for special-
ist personnel to develop them have both resul-
ted in the creation of specialist companies
which deal with specific areas of marketing
communications. The consequence has been a
progressive fragmentation of provisions within
the area. Initially, there was an emergence of
specialists in each of the major fields of market-
ing communications, in areas such as sales
promotion, public relations, direct marketing
and so on.
Today, that specialism has been taken even
further. Companies which deal with e-market-
ing, product placement, the organization of
trade and consumer events, sponsorship activ-
ities and so on now abound. Individual special-
ist companies can now provide clients with
inputs in areas such as the design and produc-
tion of point-of-sale materials, the creation of
trade and consumer incentives, pack design
and guerrilla marketing techniques, amongst
many others. Even in the mainstream areas,
agencies have become specialized in terms of
youth or grey marketing, FMCG or retail
marketing communications, dealing with phar-
maceutical products or travel and tourism. And
the specialisms continue.
Second, and in contradiction, there has
been an increasing tendency for this wide
variety of specialists to provide inputs which
encompass a range of executional devices.
Today, several different companies will have
the ability and expertise to develop campaigns
utilizing a wide range of marketing commu-
nications formats. Moreover, few marketing
communications campaigns utilize a single
component or element. Rather, marketers will
tend to employ several different devices which,
previously, were the domain of dedicated and
specialist companies.
The consequence has been a distinct blur-
ring of the divisions between previous special-
ist practitioner areas.