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NEWSLETTER

MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

PURPOSE OF THE MENTORING NEWSLETTER

There is no set agenda to our newsletter, other than constructively inform. From the trenches, we will give you tips on how to get a job; we’ll tell you as a female professional, what you can expect out there in the business world; we’ll even tell you’re hired to be fired, and perhaps answer what’s with the clients from hell bit. But most important, Minutes of the Last Meeting is designed to open dialogue among leading edge students, where we can interact in an informal, beneficial setting. To get things rolling, this issue covers a talk about Integrated Marketing Communications and some examples of what you may be getting yourself into at an April meeting of Florida State University’s Advertising Club.

(Minutes of the Last Meeting is the title of a book written by Bill’s favorite author, Gene Fowler, who was waxing poetic about the last days of W.C. Fields. It is hilarious.)

FSU APRIL TALK ON BEING PREPARED FOR THE UNEXPECTED

I’m sure you’ve already heard about the importance of Integrated Marketing Communications or IMC in your profession from Dr. Rayburn, as well as others here at FSU. I’d like to simply reinforce what they have said, and add my personal perspective, coming from the trenches of business warfare, and teaching the subject as an adjunct professor for 15 years.

I had an early glimpse of IMC in the 1960s at a then small company called Xerox Corporation headquarterd in Rochester, NY. Here they were introducing products that revolutionized the way documents were reproduced and stored in a business environment. Because there were no strategic plans, those working in the communications department didn’t have a clue, but worked intuitively and from the gut. It was a ball.

What was great about the department, was that we were in one big bull pen, interacting on every aspect of communicating to a public that was literally waiting for the next innovative development. I was recruited as a copywriter, working on promotions, television and print advertising. Early on, my boss and mentor asked me if I wanted to help out in public relations, as he knew I had been a working journalist. As a reporter and editor, I figured I had transferable skills and could bang out press releases.

At this point, I didn’t know if I was an advertising, television or public relations person, and really didn’t care. I was having fun. Without consciously knowing it, I was practicing IMC.

My boss even introduced account planning before its time, when it wasn’t even named that. He said how the heck do we know what out target audience wants, listens and reacts to if we haven’t felt the pulse? You know the smell, taste, and feel. He dispatched us to the field in our major markets, and we followed salesmen around for days as they made calls on Xerox prospects.

Here we felt the pulse of the very people we were talking to, and went back and wrote about benefits to their needs. For example, we found that secretaries influenced decisions more than we ever imagined. They were even proud of the fact that they could master what looked like a complicated new machine that didn’t get their hands dirty. Thus, we created campaigns around secretaries, and elevated them to Key Operators, rewarding them with framed certificates. Of course, they didn’t know we had trained a chimpanzee to operate Xerox equipment the same way they did.

That was my first real life experience in IMC, account planning and the fact that even back then, communicating to the masses wasn’t necessary, that communicating to very targeted audiences was central to many success stories.

I never lost track of that in subsequent jobs, making sure that my departments included every tactic in a seamless blending of public relations, print advertising, television, direct marketing, promotions, event marketing, and now the Internet.

Let’s fast forward to today. Just suppose in your first job in public relations (Or it could be advertising. Just reverse everything.) you are faced with this scenario:

You’ve completed your public relations internship with Zimmerman right here in Tallahassee working on a major account. Your personal and business objective is to work with a bleeding edge biotech firm in marketing public relations, introducing new products globally, and being a part of corporate history, while making a solid contribution to the venue’s mission. You get that job with Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California. The first day on the job, your boss presents you with this: “We’re going to introduce a new product that will revolutionize the way doctors think about treating breast cancer. We want you to be part of the team that makes this happen, as you will bring fresh thinking to the process. I need your take on an IMC program.”

You gulp and don’t exactly how to respond. You can’t say: “You hired me for public relations. I took one advertising course and a marketing course, but this doesn’t qualify me to help create a strategic introductory plan for such an important product. We discussed IMC in class, and its importance in the communications mix, but I’ve never actually practiced it.”

O.K. This may be oversimplification, but the point is that many communications managers and directors expect you to understand, and even better, practice IMC as a value added addition to any team from the very beginning. You may have a degree in public relations that enables you to walk the walk and talk the talk, but what about the other components of IMC? Like in print advertising, the Internet, TV, drive-time radio, direct marketing, promotions, event marketing, etc.

Let’s get back to our Amgen example. Of course your response is: “I’ll get on it with the other team members, and we’ll be back to you pronto.” You go to your office, and call the team director and explain what happened. She convenes a meeting, and you all get into it. Long story short, the conclusions are the story is so big, that you’ll lead with a public relations campaign, knowing that the pick up will be global in scope, hitting every manageable mass media outlet, both horizontal and vertical. But before this conclusion is agreed to, the advertising director challenges you. “Why not print and TV commercials at the same time,” she argues. You retort that after the public relations campaign had run its course, that to sustain prospect interest, print and TV should kick in, thus stretching the budget to substantial advantage. You further argue that the target audience of doctors, such as oncologists, breast surgeons and radiologists, will be a perfect fit for direct marketing, as focused targeting is what it’s all about today, what with the data bases we have at the touch of a finger. Obviously, she doesn’t understand the power of public relations. Check mate. But the point here is you understand IMC, when to use it and in this case, what chronological order.

Of course, all problems, or better yet, opportunities aren’t as readily solved,
but I’m sure you get the drift. Never think linier. What does that mean? Bob Schmetterer, a business buddy, and former CEO of one of the world’s largest integrated agencies, Euro RSCG Worldwide, said it this way in his book, Leap:

“The Creative Business Idea is an idea that combines creativity and strategy in new ways, and results in break though solutions and industry firsts. It arises from and influences business strategy, not just communication strategy, and leads to innovative execution across traditional and new media. This results in business solutions that influence the nature of the business itself.” Bob summarizes it this way” “Embrace all communications channels and use them to connect to consumers in new ways. In a changed world, we need to play by new rules.”

Amen for that!