Integrated marketing communication: a worked example of one campaign across every channel

Integrated marketing communication means one message, one plan and one measurement system carried across every channel a buyer meets, so that advertising, public relations, retail, search, email, social and sales all say the same thing in their own natural voice. The worked example below takes a single launch claim and runs it through eight channels, with the role each channel plays, the asset it needs and the number it is judged on. The example is an illustration built to show the method rather than an account of a real campaign.

What integrated actually means

A campaign is integrated when it passes four tests.

• One idea. Every execution expresses the same claim. Not the same wording everywhere, the same claim everywhere.
• Channel roles, not channel copies. Each channel has a job it is good at. Television builds recognition, search catches the person already deciding, retail closes. Running the television script as a search ad wastes both.
• Sequenced. Awareness channels lead, response channels follow and stay on after the heavy spend stops.
• One measurement frame. Every channel reports into the same funnel, so you can see which part of the journey the campaign actually moved.

The example: one claim, eight channels

The illustrative brand sells home water purifiers. The product change is a filter that is rated for twelve months instead of six. The claim, written once and used everywhere, is: one filter, one year, no mid year service call.

Channel	Role in the campaign	The asset	How the claim appears	Measured by
Television and connected TV	Build recognition fast across the whole market	A 30 second film and a 10 second cutdown	A family going a full year without the service visit	Reach and frequency against plan, brand search volume
Outdoor near retail	Remind buyers close to the point of purchase	Six sheet and mall panels	Seven words and the filter visual	Footfall and store level sales in panel catchments
Public relations	Make the claim verifiable by a third party	A technical briefing and a product fact sheet	How the twelve month rating was tested	Coverage in named outlets, and whether the claim survives in the copy
Search advertising	Catch the person comparing purifiers now	Responsive search ads plus a landing page	Filter life as the headline, cost per year as the proof	Cost per enquiry and conversion rate
Organic search	Answer the research questions before the shortlist forms	Pages on filter life, running cost and replacement schedule	A plain comparison of six month and twelve month filters	Impressions, clicks and assisted conversions
Social and creators	Show the product in a real kitchen	Short video from home and kitchen creators	The filter change itself, filmed once	Views, saves, and clicks to the product page
Retail and in store	Close the sale and settle the price question	Shelf strip, a demo unit and a staff card	A two line answer to the cost per year question	Sell through per store, and staff recall of the claim
Email and owned base	Sell replacement filters and upgrades to existing owners	A three email sequence tied to filter age	Your filter is due, and the new one lasts twice as long	Open to purchase rate, upgrade revenue

Eight channels, one claim, eight different jobs. Notice that the claim is never diluted and never repeated word for word. That is the difference between an integrated campaign and a matching set of posters.

The planning grid

Before any asset is made, fill one grid. Every row is a channel and every column is a decision somebody has to own.

• Audience. Who exactly this channel is reaching, in the words of the segmentation.
• Role. Awareness, consideration, conversion or retention. One per channel.
• Message. The claim in that channel's natural length.
• Asset. The exact deliverable, with format and duration.
• Dates. Live date and end date.
• Budget. Media and production, separately.
• Owner. One named person, internal or agency.
• Measure. The single number this channel is judged on.

A grid with two owners in a row is the row that goes wrong. A grid with two measures in a row is the row that gets argued about at the review.

Sequencing, worked over ten weeks

• Weeks minus two to zero. Technical briefing to press. Search ads and organic pages live before any advertising runs, so the demand the advertising creates has somewhere to land. Retail staff briefed and demo units placed.
• Weeks one to three. Television and outdoor at full weight. Creator content published in the same fortnight. Search budgets raised, because brand searches rise with broadcast.
• Weeks four to six. Broadcast weight drops. Coverage from the press briefing lands and gets amplified on owned channels. Retail promotion runs.
• Weeks seven to ten. Advertising off. Search, organic pages and the email sequence continue. This is the period that tells you what the campaign built, because response channels running alone show the lift that remains.

What breaks integration

• Separate briefs. Creative, media, digital and retail agencies briefed on different documents produce four campaigns. One brief, one claim, one review meeting.
• A legal rewrite in one channel only. If the claim has to be softened for broadcast, it changes everywhere, or the campaign now has two claims.
• Landing pages that arrive late. Advertising live before the page is ready sends the most expensive traffic of the year to a home page.
• Channel owned metrics. When each team reports its own best number, nobody can say what the campaign did.

Measuring an integrated campaign

Report three layers. Market level: brand search volume, unaided awareness if you track it, and total category sales. Channel level: the one number per row of the grid. Commercial level: incremental units and gross profit against total campaign cost. Then run one holdout, either a region with no broadcast or a two week on and off pattern, so the lift can be attributed rather than assumed. The method is set out in our guide to marketing return on investment and the version finance accepts.

This page covers integrated communication planning with one worked example. For the above and below the line split that sits underneath channel roles, see our page on what the line actually is.

What gets asked about integrated marketing communication

Is IMC the same as an omnichannel campaign?

They overlap. IMC is about one message across communication channels. Omnichannel usually describes a buying journey that moves between store, app and site without losing state. A business can do one well and the other badly.

Does a small business need IMC?

Yes, and it is easier at small scale. Three channels with one claim, one grid and one owner is a complete integrated campaign.

Who owns an integrated campaign?

One person on the client side who signs the claim and chairs one weekly review with every channel owner in the room. Rotating ownership between agencies is the most common cause of drift.

How do I keep the message consistent without making everything identical?

Write the claim once and write a one line brief for each channel on how the claim appears there. Judge each execution against the claim, not against the television film. Brand guidelines make this faster, and our worked brand guidelines example shows what belongs in them.

What is the shortest useful version of this plan?

One page with the claim at the top, the channel grid underneath, and the ten week schedule below that. Anything longer gets read once.

Where to go from here

• Campaign examples and the mechanism behind each one
• A marketing budget format finance will approve
• Advertisement samples for six formats
• Ten native content formats that work

The ninth row on the planning grid

The grid in this example has eight channels and one message. Add a ninth row, and call it the assistant answer. Its job is the same as every other row: carry the single message to someone who has not yet decided.

The difference is that you do not buy it. It is written from what the other eight channels left on the web, so a consistent campaign tends to produce a consistent answer and a scattered one produces a scattered answer. Ask the buying question the campaign addresses and compare the reply with your message line. AI Knows Us records the reply for each question you give it.