Integrated Marketing

The New York Times yesterday (Click headline for link) quoted new CEO McCleeland's arrival at advertising agency Cliff Freeman as "indicative of the efforts that agencies are making to bolster the ranks of senior management to address the challenges they confront as consumer behavior and media continue to change.

Mr. McCleeland's experience in what is known as integrated marketing -
that is, campaigns that include non-traditional elements as well as
conventional outlets like TV and print - is of particular value as
marketers strive to broaden their media selections beyond the usual choices".

McCleeland goes on himself to say, "Now for an agency, integrated marketing is the price of entry to compete for clients," Mr. McCleeland said. "You can't talk to them without the goods."

We could not agree more. And it's particularly gratifying to have a maverick like Cliff Freeman agreeing with the position we have held for years now, ever since Omnicom owned DAS CEO Tom Harrison began expanding his roll-up strategy. While Integration has been an enigmatic goal for many since Stanley Tannenbaum's book "Integrated Marketing Communications" was published in 1992, it was not until Harrison really initiated the momentum amongst the nearly 200 Omnicom marketing services companies in his DAS group which now contributes well over 50% of Omnicom's revenue.

Harrison,an ex-entrepreneur who founded one of the first DAS companies, Harrison Star,has now written his own book, "Instinct" (Warner business Books 2005).
While this book deals with entrepreneurial instinct and not integrated marketing specifically, Tom's inspiration to integrate marketing services is raw entrepreneurialism and the opposite of the bureaucracy some holding companies are falsely accused of.

Omnicom refers to itself as a holding company of talent. But one could argue that that is just another way of saying a holding company of entrepreneurs.

Like Tom, many of the DAS company CEOs founded and built their companies from the ground up. I have built two and now work for a Global giant holding company.

In every discussion with Tom and other senior Omnicom executives, the subject is entrepreneurial. It's what the Harvard Business School would call the Service Profit Chain based on the book written by Professor James Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor at the Graduate School of Business and Len Schlesinger, CEO of The Limited Inc.

Integrated Marketing is simply the exploitation of Jim's SPC.

Each marketing company used to deliver customer service is a link in the chain. As the cliché goes, "a chain is as strong as it's weakest link".

But the chain needs to be strategically grounded to be relevant and must be executed on a simultaneous but integrated basis.

This is where most integration becomes disintegrated as the marketing services silos retract into their own shells to execute their discipline and deliver their P&L at the expense of integration. (See 11/15 post).

Tom recognized a long time ago what others are just seeing now. Integration is not a theory or a new buzzword for a fad. It's good business.

But like any good business, it needs to be properly structured and managed. This has been the challenge in the past. Now we have developed best practices based on years of solid experience and in market results.

Marketers no longer have to pay for experimentation. Provided they hire experienced people to set up and run Integrated Marketing according to proven best practices.