Erase the Lines – with VIM! (Vertically Integrated Marketing)

Another one from the Hyro blog. Posted July 15 2009

Marketing blogs everywhere call for us to tear down the traditional divisions between Above-The-Line, Below-The-Line, and Direct marketing. The future is integrated, they say. The future is digital.

These calls are admirable; and not to be discouraged. Digital channels can be the fulcrum of accountability, interactivity and personalisation in a multi-channel, multi-device marketing campaign. But if you stop there, you’re missing a large and important part of the Integrated Marketing picture.

Let’s call the integration of campaign messaging across traditional and digital channels Horizontally Integrated Marketing. Digital channels also deliver the promise of Vertically Integrated Marketing. I’m talking about the seamless transition between delivering a message and delivering a service. Digital channels let you build customer experiences around the entire life cycle of the customer experience – through the stages of awareness, preference formation, purchase, consumption, confirmation, and back through the loop.

Which leads us to two questions:

Why confine your interactive marketing to activities around building awareness?

And

Is the notion of the ‘campaign’ relevant anymore?

Now, the answer to the first question may be – “we have to focus solely on awareness because there are real constraints to fulfillment via digital channels”- for example if you’re an alcohol brand. But where there is any opportunity for clients to configure, purchase or consume online, there is no excuse for confining interactive marketing to building brand awareness.

 The answer to the second question - is the ‘campaign’ relevant anymore? No. Not if you are using Vertically Integrated Marketing to build experiences around the core of the customer relationship cycle – configuration, purchase, consumption, service, confirmation, retention. Your marketing activities should be ‘always-on’ and constantly optimised.

Chris Maloney of the Commonwealth Bank knows what this is all about. He is ADMA’s Young Direct Marketer of the Year, and recently took a victory lap in the form of an extremely popular presentation – so popular it was repeated three times to cope with audience demand. His presentation didn’t use exactly the same language as I have, but the principles were the same – and he executed these principles to increase the number of home loan applications referred from online from 1% of applications to 13% of applications in less than 12 months. This is an extremely impressive headline, also the main reason people flocked to Chris’ presentation - to find out how he did it. Chris pulled together a roster of agencies to implement his plans - although there are agencies combining all the necessary elements under one roof, like (ahem) Hyro (excuse the shameless self-promotion)*. 

Chris described the traditional notion of the marketing campaign thus: “It’s like the hokey pokey. You put your campaign in, you pull your campaign out, you put your campaign in, and you shake it all about.” He’s obviously not a big fan of the idea either.

*Hyro was not one of agencies used by the Commonwealth Bank, so maybe I’m not such a shameless self-promoter after all!

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I got this comment from Chris Maloney, but it was never forwarded to me. Chris, I apologise for not acknowledging it.

Chris Maloney Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:37 am
Totally agree with your thoughts on integration Michael.

We need to move away from the world of ‘matching luggage’ advertising integration and move to thought integration that carries right from the marketing through to the customer experience.

Glad to here you liked my presentation, thanks for the plug! Keep an eye out over the next few months, I’ve got a few digital integration game changers in the works*…

*Shameless self promotion

Chris