Marketers have always looked at integrated marketing as something they do. Start with a foundation of advertising, then add a pinch of PR, a dash of direct marketing and a spoonful of sales promotion and voila!, you’ve got effective marketing.
I think that’s backwards. Marketers don’t do integrated marketing, customers do. Customer integrate all experiences with a company into a composite impression. If a customer decides that listening to music on hold for 15 minutes while waiting for help tells her more about that company than their radio commercials, that’s her privilege. If another customer decides to focus more on how an invoice reads than how the brochure or print ad read, he can.
Do the marketing efforts of most companies recognize this?