Integrated Marketing Communications in Football

Argyro Elisavet Manoli

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000610260
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Sport & Exercise Science

This book takes an important step forward in showing how Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) have been applied within the English Premier League (EPL) – arguably the most commercialised and watched sport league in the world – and how it can and should be utilised in the context of other sports properties.

Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research, the book offers a detailed view into the marketing communications practices of EPL clubs (such as brand management and communications alignment), the football clubs' practitioners' perspectives of IMC and the integration processes taking place within the clubs. It examines the key marketing communications practices that strategic IMC entails, including marketing strategies and goals, cross-functional communication, external communication management and brand management, and helps researchers and practitioners to understand how IMC can have the maximum positive impact on the brand of an organisation, by managing their content, channels, stakeholders and results.

This book is fascinating reading for any researcher, advanced student or practitioner with an interest in sport management, the business of football, sport marketing or innovative approaches to marketing and business communications in other commercial spheres.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003140238-1

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the research, while situating the topic within the pertinent literature, presenting the rationale for this book and relating it to the original contributions to knowledge that are addressed by the research. Following this section, the English Premier League (hereafter EPL), the sector examined in this book is presented, which can facilitate the appreciation of the overall research.

Research Aim

The purpose of this book is to gain understanding of Integrated Marketing Communications’ (hereafter IMC) appreciation and implementation in EPL clubs. Since this book intends to deepen our understanding of IMC by gaining a more holistic view of IMC’s appreciation and implementation, its aim is two-fold; first, to investigate practitioners’ perceptions of IMC, and second, to examine whether and to what extent IMC is implemented in the football clubs studied. Through this examination, a new theoretical framework can be developed that can illustrate IMC’s appreciation and application in the EPL. This book will investigate IMC’s appreciation and implementation through a qualitative research design which allows for rich information to be collected, enabling the author to gain deep insight to both the practices encountered and the views expressed. The framework and rationale for this book will be presented in the following sections in more detail.

Framework

Since this book aims at examining the appreciation and implementation of IMC in a spectrum of organisations within a particular industry, a case study approach is selected. In more detail, the EPL, the sector selected, comprises of multiple case studies that represent the companies – football clubs that operate within it. In this book the focus is drawn on the EPL, which consists of the multiple case studies / football clubs that participated in the league in any of the following five consecutive seasons: 2010/2011, 2011/2012, 2012/2013, 2013/2014 and 2014/2015.

This method chosen aligns with the author’s critical realist perspective and the epistemological approach selected (retroduction), while allowing for rich and valuable information to be acquired, bearing in mind the complexity involved in examining phenomena related with organisations and relationships within them (Creswell, 2013). Taking into consideration the author’s effort to conduct engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007) and study practitioners’ perceptions and implementation of theory, this collective case study approach that allows for multiple case studies of EPL clubs to be examined would permit for a more holistic view of IMC’s appreciation and implementation to be acquired.

Based on the complexity of the industry and on the disparities that exist both globally and within each country on aspects such as structure, finance and customer base and reach (Szymanski & Smith, 1997; Noll, 2002; McNamara et al., 2013), the focus of the research was limited to the clubs in the top level of English professional football, the EPL. Additionally, due to the promotion–relegation phenomenon, and in order for this research to be accurate in representing the industry sector, the EPL clubs of the following five consecutive seasons (2010/2011, 2011/2012, 2012/2013, 2013/2014 and 2014/2015) were chosen, 30 in total. Based on the fact that the clubs included in this research represent 66.66% of the total number of clubs that have participated in the league since it was created in 1992, while the majority of them have participated in the EPL for the greater part of its existence, it could be argued that increasing the number of seasons, and therefore increasing the number of clubs, would not have affected the findings of the research significantly (Belk, 2007).

In more detail, the clubs included in this research are: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Blackpool, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Cardiff City, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham, Hull City, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Norwich, Queens Park Rangers, Reading, Southampton, Stoke City, Sunderland, Swansea, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion, West Ham United, Wigan Athletic and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

In more detail, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the key individuals responsible for marketing and marketing communications activities in the 30 football clubs comprising the census of this research. The interviews took place between August 2014 and March 2015 and were conducted in-person in either the office or the training ground of each club, while following a coherent interview protocol.

Rationale for This Book

Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick (2012) argue that marketing is led by three forces: customer orientation, goals orientation and integrated efforts. These forces have in fact changed the traditionally perceived one-way communication process of an organisation to a two-way dialogue between an organisation and its stakeholders (Kotler, 2000) where value is co-created (De Chernatony, 2001), which has, in turn, changed the way in which marketing communications are defined. According to Shimp (2007, p. 651),

marketing communications is the collection of all elements in an organisation’s marketing mix that facilitates exchanges by establishing shared meaning with the organisation’s customers or clients.

The significant changes in the marketplace mentioned above, paired with the shifting views in the way in which marketing is perceived and applied, made Webster (2002, p. 23) argue that ‘it’s patently clear that marketing management needs a new paradigm’. According to Kitchen and Schultz (1999, p. 21) the answer to this call was found in IMC, as the following quote demonstrates:

IMC is undoubtedly the major communications development of the last decade of the 20th century’ which can lead to ‘a key competitive advantage associated with marketing.

A number of definitions have been presented for IMC as it will be discussed in the following chapter, in an attempt to shed light on what it captures and the role it can play within modern corporations. These definitions also demonstrate the different perceptions of IMC, what it is and how it fits within marketing. From the early definitions that present IMC as a concept of alignment of communication messages in order for the advertising function to be facilitated (Keegan et al., 1992; Schultz, 1992, 1993a, 1993b), to the views that argue that IMC derives from relationship marketing (Schultz & Schultz, 1998, 2004; Duncan, 2002) or that it is synonymous with brand management (Kliatchko, 2005, 2008), IMC and the way in which it is located within marketing has been discussed extensively over the last 25 years. Porcu et al. (2012, p. 326) propose the latest definition of IMC, which presents it as:

The interactive and systemic process of cross-functional planning and optimization of messages to stakeholders with the aim of communicating with coherence and transparency to achieve synergies and encourage profitable relationships in the short, medium and long-term.

As it is argued through their work and the recent work of academics focusing on IMC such as Kliatchko (2008), Schultz and Patti (2009), Moriarty and Schultz (2012), Kliatchko and Schultz (2014), Gambetti and Schultz (2015) and Vernuccio and Ceccotti (2015), IMC is not a mere marketing communications concept or tool, but a strategic cross-functional process that exceeds the ‘boundaries’ of marketing and communications and ‘rans throughout an organisation’, while having:

the potential to lead to global restructuring of the marketing and communication roles, through the elimination of boundaries between the main areas of marketing communication and between the business units.

Porcu et al. (2012, p. 325)

Academics such as Baker and Hart (2008), Thorson and Moore (2013) and Armstrong et al. (2014) see IMC as an amalgam of relationship marketing, brand management and communications systems, with elements of strategy and planning. According to Thorson and Moore (2013) and Keller (2016), IMC is a strategic planning process that allows for marketing and communications programmes to have the maximum effects possible on the brand of an organisation, by managing their content, channels, stakeholders and results. In more detail, IMC includes the management of the exchange of meaningful messages (content), through the most relevant and preferred contact points of the stakeholders (channels), in order for a purposeful dialogue and potential relationship with the most profitable and relevant target aggregates (stakeholders) to be achieved, while analysing the return of investment (results) of the appropriate resources allocated on marketing communications (Schultz & Schultz, 1998; Duncan, 2002; Kliatchko, 2005, 2008; Kitchen, 2016).

Taking all the above into consideration, the author agrees with what is suggested through Kitchen’s (2016) and Schultz et al.’s (2014, p. 455) work that ‘IMC can be recast as the base for rethinking and replacing traditional marketing theory’, while emphasising elements of strategic planning, holistic approaches, message synergy and brand and relationship management. As a result, the significance of studying, understanding and implementing IMC can be underlined. IMC’s importance and benefits have been researched and supported extensively by academics such as Ewing et al. (2001), Naik and Raman (2003),...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Integrated Marketing Communications
• 3 Integrated Marketing Communications Perceptions and Implementation
• 4 Marketing Strategy, Marketing Goals and Internal Communication
• 5 Communications Alignment and Brand Management
• 6 Football Practitioners’ Perceptions of Integrated Marketing Communications
• 7 Integration Scenarios
• 8 Conclusion
• Index