ABSTRACT

The traditional craft disciplines such as advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and marketing public relations have moved from named and labelled agencies to become ‘integrated’ agencies from which clients seek solutions to marketing and communication problems. The professional communication world is changing and with it are the marketing communications needed to persuade customers to buy. Integrated marketing communications epitomizes the drive and dynamism surrounding marketing communications in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The concept of integrated marketing communication had stimulated discussion in the world of marketing and communication for well over a decade before D. Pickton and A. Broderick described it as ‘the process of integrating the elements of the marketing communication mix across customer contact points to achieve greater brand coherence’. Compared to communication agencies labelled as focusing on other promotional functions T. R. Duncan and S. E. Everett claimed it was advertising agencies that were significantly more likely to be responsible for multiple aspects of communication.