Integrated Communications in the Postmodern Era

Philip J. Kitchen,Ebru Uzunoglu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137388551
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione
• Index: Business

This book is readers who wish to develop their knowledge, insight, skills, and facility into integrated communications within the post-modern era, a topic of relevance everywhere, but particular apposite as the original conference was hosted in Turkey, a rapidly developing nation, and one enjoying significant growth in the global.

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Introduction: Integrated Communications in the Postmodern Age

Philip J. Kitchen and Ebru Uzunoğlu

Introduction and overview

This book is intended for marketing and brand managers, market researchers, and in any field directly related to marketing and communication (Kitchen, 2010; 2013). It is proposed for postgraduate and undergraduate students, and other interested publics, who wish to develop their knowledge, insight, skills, and facility into integrated communications within the postmodern era – a topic of relevance everywhere, but particularly apposite as the setting for several chapters is in Turkey, a rapidly developing nation, an EU accession nation, and a nation enjoying significant economic growth in the global marketplace. The book is based primarily on the opinions, views, and expertise of significant authors in the field (see Contents).

Every business, everywhere, is facing challenge in the changing marketspaces and marketplaces of the 21st century. Every market is under fire. Competitive forces have heightened and accelerated. Customers, the vital essence of any business, are not only more demanding but more discerning of what businesses and brands are and what they stand for. Consumers are more sophisticated and critical of business practices. Pressure groups are scrutinizing and criticizing corporations more than ever before. Technological progress has opened up new horizons for innovation and communication. Social media is gaining ground and, in many cases, challenging traditional media. News is transmitted within seconds to different parts of the world. These shifting tectonic plates of communication necessitate integration of online and offline communications. There are no invisible companies. What happens in one geographic market is instantly transmitted via global media to receptive consumer visual display units (VDUs), or computer, television, and cell-phone screens – or is almost immediately accessible. The world of information accessibility and the concomitant demise of corporate invisibility is today’s (not tomorrow’s) world, and it is a communications reality in the 21st century.

Today, businesses need integrated communications, not just locally or nationally, but also from a global perspective. Given the speed, span, and reach of electronic communication, there are no purely local or national firms, only global ones. This situation creates and underpins the need for communications which not only needs to be based on a sound and deep understanding of specific marketplace/space needs but also adopts an integrated approach, of relevance to specific markets.

The corporation or firm is often also branded (e.g., P&G, Unilever, Coca Cola, Microsoft, Mars). Thus, communication decisions are not just about traditional product branding directed by mid-level managers but corporate and organizational brands and communications as well, which are under the aegis of senior corporate managers. The important point to note is that both areas of communication are conceptually and practically interactive, synergistic, and generally global (Schultz, Patti, and Kitchen, 2012).

The postmodern age

We commence with a familiar example from 2006, when Selfridges – a well-known London retail icon – encountered some difficulties.

Dominated by 22 pillars, the long grey neoclassical 1909 façade of Selfridges, one of London’s great department stores, seems anachronistic. The exterior suggests values – of grandeur, dignity and authority – from another era. The interior doesn’t. Consumer anarchy reigns, with over 3,000 different brands, all in their own concessions, screaming for attention.

Selfridges nearly went out of business (as so many department stores did) in the 1990s. But it reinvented itself by dismissing the order, formality and stillness of the old stores. Every brand was given its head and allowed to do what it wanted. Uniforms were out, as went standard decor, shelving and presentation. There is no hierarchy of goods; watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafés with fast food. Shows, action and stunts break up the day. Selfridges calls it “shopping entertainment”. So successful is it that two years ago a panel of style gurus voted it Britain’s “coolest brand”. (Economist, 2006, italics added by authors)

This suggests that something changed in the retail marketing world, at least so far as Selfridges was concerned. A leading professor in the UK said:

Change in the marketing environment during the past decade or so has continued unabated. Technology continues to dominate the scene. We now live in a communications world dominated by internet connections and served by such devices as handheld computers, touch screen lap-top devices and perhaps most significantly mobile phones with full internet access capability. Face to face conversations using such tools now enable consumers to develop and sustain relationships which were still a dream at the turn of the century. Companies and consumers alike can now interact in a world of virtual reality. Individuals are now able to see a new image of themselves through multiple interactions with others in a world they cannot normally experience. In the real world, where people pass by in silence, deep in their own thoughts, one can only guess what is in their minds. The world of the Internet is a virtual reality where one can look, listen, and learn not only about products and what others say and do but also about oneself. This other world has a magnetic appeal, as the phenomenal interest in social media websites such as Facebook has shown. The Internet is full of silent chitter chatter. The mass adoption of the Internet and rise in the use of social media has taken place globally. Arguably, it has enabled customers to benefit by having more choice, facilitated the creation of worldwide distribution channels, and furthered globalisation in general. Many companies now connect directly with their customers and, by having ready access to information, businesses are able to innovate in terms of how they may best serve their customers. (Proctor, 2014)

A more traditional business, UK’s flagship retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S), developed a postmodern advertising spin by attempting to link their brand with the UK’s version of the X-Factor show in Christmas 2013. However, this raised some significant criticism. Postmodern advertising is one thing, but whatever else M&S may be is certainly not postmodern – not in store design, content, personnel, advertising, or in other forms of promotional technique. It does in fact still seem to belong to another earlier era.

Postmodernism is defined as:

A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal. (PBS.org, 2014, italics added by authors)

In businesses, advertisers have been using postmodernist ideas for some time. Instead of anachronistic messages which simply “tell” or “sell”, the onus of understanding is left with consumers and potential customers who are not only connected to traditional media, perhaps in different ways than in the past, but are also connected to and interacting with all the new technologies afforded by three increasingly interactive and integrated screen-based technologies. These technologies also afford opportunity to interact customer to customer, business to customer, and business to business.

In each of the contributions that follow, four strands or themes will be considered. These will be:

•On/offline communications in the country or region of research;

•Details of methodologies utilized, measures, etc. (where applicable);

•Communicating product/service/brand values on/offline in the postmodern context; and

•Seeking to describe how postmodern communications fits into integrated marketing communications (IMC) via on/offline strategies.

Please note that, in the following summaries, we have not included references. Readers are encouraged to go to the specific chapters for full details.

Synopsia

In Chapter 2, Kitchen and Marwa Tourky note that throughout the world, advertising, a major plank of communication or promotion in business-to-consumer markets, faces diverse challenges. Businesses everywhere are concerned with maximizing their communications potential, and since around the mid-1990s the best solution has been and still is integrated marketing communications. That is, customer-driven communications drawing upon all online and offline promotional mix elements. The spearheading force still tends to be advertising, but it depends ... upon ... contextuality. For example, in economies facing severe economic challenges (i.e., Cyprus, Greece, Ireland) advertising is under great pressure as it represents a significant cost or investment. Thus, we find marketing public relations making inroads in these economies. The important point to note is that each campaign is different, as each marketplace or marketspace is different! Pre-emptively using, say, advertising prior to understanding market dynamics is a move guaranteed to fail. And few businesses have budgetary resources to waste on unwanted or unneeded communications.

In the past five years, and accompanied by major recessions in many nations, media have expanded and further fragmented. Measuring returns has become more straightforward online via mobile and more complex, as many more channels (media) have proliferated. Consumers are more streetwise, savvy, and sophisticated. Markets are splintering and fragmented. Audiences are more smudged than ever before. The economic crisis – the worst since the Wall Street Crash – is not over and its aftershocks will be felt, and paid for, over many years.

What are the key challenges facing today’s marketing people? These concern the interface between traditional sales, marketing and communications; and new, interactive sales, marketing and communications. These brand activities are focused upon customers and prospects with the need to measure or show marketplace results. A few years ago, Don Schultz and Philip Kitchen spoke of transitioning from old to new ways of communicating, based upon the needs associated with the new world of the 21st century. That transitioning process continues apace. How does the firm or brand move from where they are now to where they need to be in this dynamic global marketplace? The old approach of the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, place) was essentially outbound, linear, and driven by a supply orientation. The reality is, of course, that markets are not, and perhaps never have been product-, production-, or even marketing-driven. But now, more than ever before, markets are driven by customers, consumers, prospects ... all economies pace businesses and eventually will be customer-dominated and customer-driven. The business that really understands its customers and works with them, with the recognisance that business is demand-driven, should have (if approached correctly) an enormous source of ongoing information that should underpin competitive advantage. In the Kitchen and Schultz (2001) book, Raising the Corporate Umbrella, we wrote of two approaches, or mentalities, that seemed to govern old or new approaches to integrated marketing and corporate brand communications. The old style approach is still with us today. The new style, however, is gaining ground rapidly. The future lies in the new system, processes, and approaches to effective, integrated brand communications.

In Chapter 3, Enrique Ortega and his colleagues indicate that iinformation and communication technologies are an integral part of many tourism activities. Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) and Visitor Information Centres (VICs) use these technologies to some extent to promote activities once tourists have arrived at their chosen destinations.

Most tourists have a limited knowledge of the range of products and services available in their destination. Consequently, the information they receive once at their destination is very important to improve their knowledge of attractions and places of interest. In this way, tourists can be more active and visit more attractions and, in some cases, may even extend the duration of their stay at the destination. More active tourist behaviour leads to greater spending at the destination, enhanced tourist experiences, a more favourable impression, and a willingness to return to the location – together with a greater inclination to recommend the destination to family and friends.

The design and implementation of an effective communication strategy by CVBs and VICs should provide tourists with easy, fast, and convenient access to a wealth of information on current tourist attractions at the destination. This requires knowledge of tourists’ information needs and how they prefer to access the material. This presentation analyses the current state of tourism communication in the community of Madrid (Spain). This destination receives about 10 million tourists (domestic and international) each year. The methodology includes two surveys, one of potential domestic tourists and the other of hotel managers, as well as observation of the information available in the hotels and tourist attractions and places of interest in the community of Madrid.

The research results indicate the growing use of new information and communication technologies compared to traditional media, mainly brochures. In fact, until now, the traditional media have not really been fully exploited, although the trend is to use them less and less, which is a serious mistake when it comes to encouraging tourists to learn more about the destination. In addition, CVBs and VICs have a very limited capacity, in coordination with the different existing tourism enterprises at the destination, mainly hotels and places visited frequently by tourists, to bring together contributions from all of the tourism stakeholders and the different types of media.

In Chapter 4, Guda van Noort and her colleagues state that Web 2.0 has empowered consumers to voice their complaints and to share these with a multitude of other consumers on the Internet. These online complaints, also referred to as negative word-of-mouth (NWOM), hurt brands because of their ability to taint the opinions of numerous potential customers and other stakeholders. Therefore, brands, once predominantly steered by positively framed, top-down, mass communication, are increasingly shaped by the brands’ ability to circumvent or mitigate negative online interactions between consumers. Especially NWOM expressed in social media is of great concern, because of the networking capabilities of such media and the global reach. Hence, brands are increasingly present on social media to monitor, and to respond to NWOM by means of “webcare”: The act of engaging in online interactions with consumers, by actively searching the web to address consumer feedback.

It will be addressed that webcare is a hybrid element, as it is related to customer care, marketing, and public relations. Empirical webcare intervention studies will be elaborated upon. Based on studies in the context of blogging and social network sites, the effects of not responding to NWOM will be discussed. Second, effective communication strategies for webcare interventions will be addressed. For example, it will be discussed whether responding reactively (upon request of the complainant) or proactively, and which communication style (i.e., corporate or conversational tone of voice), is most effective. Although these research findings are intriguing and have strong managerial implications for organizational communication processes, they also raise some important questions from an IMC perspective. Therefore, the final part of the presentation will serve as a starting point for future research endeavours.

Chapter 5 by Klement Podnar and Urša Golob addresses fundamental problems related to conceptualization of online media, their differences and similarities with traditional (mass) media as well as their use for (communication) management purposes. Understanding the Internet and social media, in particular – including its technology as a “marketspace” that reaches beyond the traditional view of the tool or medium – signifies the realization of ideal two-way communication for the concept of integrated marketing communication. With acceptance of relationship marketing paradigm and dual marketing-mix model, IMC concept deals with the traditional mainstream managerial marketing paradigm. Traditional paradigm in its core enhances the action (one-way) perspective and therefore does not enable proper two-way communication. With acceptance of the emergence of marketspace and adopting the relationship paradigm, integrated marketing concept rediscovers its core. Communication is not a one-way but a two-way process. This is an “old” cognition which postulates ...