Impact Of Food Advertising On Childhood Obesity

Media Essay
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Published: 23rd March, 2015

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In recent years, the food and beverage industry in America has perceived children and the
youth as a dominant market force. For this reason, children and adolescents have been
targeted by extreme, devoted food marketers, and advertisers with negative efforts. Food
marketers are fascinated by the youth as consumers because of their spending techniques, and
as future adult consumers. Although genetics influences body type and size, there are other
factors to consider as well, like the environment and advertising. Now a days people are
gaining weight because of unhealthy food choices such as fast foods and eating in front of the
television. People are indulging in high-calorie, non nutritious snacks, drinking their calories,
having bigger portions on their plates, and lack of exercise are all contributing to the obesity
epidemic. According to the American Psychological Association, "The childhood obesity
epidemic is a serious public health problem that increases morbidity, mortality, and has
substantial long term economic and social costs." Multiple methods are used to reach youth,
beginning with television advertisements, computer games, and toys in meals.

The way that marketers lure children seem unethical because children cannot comprehend the
difference between reality and fantasy. Parents should show concern over the way that fast
food advertising has pushed their children, invoking them to become overweight and causing
tantrums. Especially for young girls with body issues the American Psychological
Association states that "Advertising by other industries often objectifies girls and women,
contributing to body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression."

Many adolescents, mainly teenage girls, have body image concerns and engage in unhealthy
weight control behaviours. It seems today as though everywhere you turn there are food
advertisements ready to entice the minds of children with delicious foods. Glorying the
cheeseburger, for example, by having an extremely good looking size 0 underweight model
enticing them with her beauty having them think that if they buy one of those they might look
like her. Which is never the case, and is considered false advertising. Eating fast food and
having a size 0 is not a reality. The reality is that we have to nourish our bodies. Nourishment
is the process of getting food into our bodies and using it as unrefined materials as fuel for
energy, vitamins and minerals that keep our body functioning well and healthy.

Young children are especially naive about misleading advertising and don't begin to
understand that advertisements are not always true. By watching how the advertisements
attract children people should question if advertising to children is ethical. The way
advertisers promote to children, they need to know what makes them happy. With the
knowledge of paid psychologists, researchers and, marketers all have access to information
about children's social needs, developmental, and emotional issues. By means of research that
analyzes children's behavior, fantasy lives, creativity, and even their imagination, companies
are able to craft stylish marketing strategies to reach children. It is the way that advertising
and advertisers do many things, to make money. However in a lot of ways advertisements
seem to be unethical, because children do not understand how bad the food could be for their
short term and long term health.

Foods marketed to children are mostly high in sugar and fat, and as such are conflicting with
national dietary recommendations. The results of promoting fast food, soft drinks, and candy
to children can cause children to become overweight and unfit. Which have the negative
social effects such as: bullying, lack of social skills, depression, hypertension and diabetes
(Eberstadt). The Nemours Fondation states, that the percentage of "Overweight children in
the United States are growing at an alarming rate, with 1 out of 3 kids now considered
overweight or obese." Our relationship with food as a country has hit extremes leaving our
nation as the fattest nation in the world. We've forgotten the meaning of an appropriate meal
and why children need to eat, to nurture their bodies, not to satisfy their desires.

The food marketing approach also includes television advertisements that advertise
merchandise placements. Television commercials are generally promoting fast food and junk
food. Which are used to have a certain appeal to children. According to Consumer Reports
magazine, "Young children have difficulty distinguishing between advertising and reality in
ads, and ads can distort their view of the world. Research has also shown that children
between the ages of two and five cannot differentiate between regular TV programming and
commercials"(The Australian Medical Association).

The marketing industry feeds off of children, exposing their vulnerability and distorting their
values in order to pressure what they should eat. The advertising attacks show creativity on
catching children's attention and increase obesity that parents alone tend to be hopeless
achieving power over the marketing experts. Marketers also promote junk foods on school
campuses, kid's social gatherings, such as clubs, and organizations. This has had a huge
impact on how kids view foods today. Children Now states, that "Companies spend $15
billion a year on marketing to children under age 12, twice the amount spent just 10 years ago
in an effort to cultivate nagging, insatiable, "cradle-to-grave" consumers" (Children Now).

Furthermore the way that marketers attract children with toys inside meals. This includes all
the fast food advertisements that feature the most modern kid's toy, one can get for free with
a purchase of a burger meal or, other meals that include chocolates and sweets. There
shouldn't be a bias of which food type should be promoted the most. If at all the healthy foods
should be advertised the most for the reason, that the healthiest foods would have a better
benefit to the children's well being. The American Psychological Association explains that,

"The food and beverage industry has resolved to self-regulate their marketing to children, but
this has not resulted in significant improvement in the marketing of healthier food (i.e., fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, low-fat or non-fat milk or dairy products, lean meats, poultry, fish,
and beans) to children. Almost three out of every four foods advertised to children falls into
the unhealthy categories that contribute to the obesity epidemic."( American Psychological
Association)

Fast food is not a drug, but can be compared to a drug that hurts the health of children and
their lifestyle such as cigarettes. Nicotine is the one agent that keeps smokers addicted. And
the way that fast food is American's comfort food keeps them coming back. It is not the fast
food chains fault for obesity but the matter of personal responsibility.

Children's lack of self control to all of these media outputs puts them in an emotional
attachment to food. If they are emotionally attached to anything they won't want to get away
from it. Like so many obese and overweight people, they need to be eating constantly, to
reach their satisfaction. People who eat mindlessly tend to be overweight and can end up with
serious health problems. Even though managing your diet doesn't have to get as serious as
counting calories, one should be sufficiently educated on what is healthy and unhealthy.
Emotional attachment to a particular meal can be unhealthy especially if that meal is
unhealthy, in most cases they are. The need for that comfort meal, especially if it is every
day, can lead to tremendous health risks. Like a lot of people say "the more fat, the more
flavour", that is not the case. People need to explore other foods so they can actually see just
because it is "deemed" healthy doesn't make it disgusting.

Parents have important roles in protecting their kids from the advertisements, and in
educating them at an early age. Kids are requesting specific brands of foods as soon as they
can talk and parents that don't find time to prepare them foods therefore they exploit children
to fast food. Good nutrition is the answer for lifelong health, and it begins in childhood. Yet
all too soon, kids are attacked by advertisements that work against parent efforts in regards to
their health. Between peer pressure and the constant television commercials for junk foods,
getting children to eat healthier might seem more pointless than productive.

Ultimately, advertising to children will have a negative influence when it comes to their
health when promoting fast foods and sweets to them. The way that advertising is done has
shown to be unethical. When it comes to advertising to children that cannot distinguish what
an advertisement is in real life. As far as in actuality the only thing that marketers want to do
is make money. Consequently it has an effect on children's health today and the means to stop
advertising will help children in the years to come.

Integrated Marketing Communication

Necessity is the mother of all inventions, and Integrated Marketing Communication – IMC, is
no exception. This new weapon in the lethal arsenal of the marketing strategies of the large
global organizations is the latest innovative tool whose conception is rooted in the fiercely
competitive nature of the global marketing scenario. It has necessitated the coming together
of various promotional functions of an organization. These functions are marketing, sales,
advertising and PR. “Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole
marketing process from the viewpoint of the customer. It involves the coordination of all
promotional activities…(REF03). In a conventional setup, these functions are considered
separate departments and are accordingly managed separately. But the new-age global
marketing model has transformed these functions radically. With the conventional marketing
module, the defining areas of these functions often used to overlap with each other, thus
creating friction, confusion and inefficiency both internally within the company and
externally in the market.

This wasteful and inefficient way of orthodox marketing compelled the companies worldwide
to rethink and restrategize their promotional communication efforts, and the nett result is
IMC. Basically, it combines and fuses the inter-departmental marketing operations into a
single homogenous function, thus creating a seamless environment where marketing, sales,
advertising, PR and other such areas complement each other’s functioning rather than
contradicting it. As noted in the insightful document titled “Integrated marketing
Communications at Dow Chemical Company – IMC in Theory and Practice”, “Marketing
integration provides companies with a competitive edge by focusing all of the sales,
marketing and operations resources on promoting the same message throughout customer and
prospector base and doing everything possible to make sure that sales and marketing
promises get consistently delivered” (REF01).

The other unique salient benefits of IMC which are also mentioned in the above referred
work are that besides creating functional harmony and enhancing field efficiency, it also
greatly helps in two other areas:

1). IMC improves cost-effectiveness of the overall promotional effort in value terms. This has
a direct and positive bearing on the expense-per-unit sale parameter, which ultimately reflects
well in the balance sheet.

2). IMC gets far better rating on the result-orientation front, both at the boardroom level and
field level. Further, since the hitherto separate areas of marketing, sales and advertising now
function under the unified umbrella, they are no longer perceived as separate entities like
distant cousins from a family tree, the company, but like triplets born of the same mother, the
IMC. The keywords here are cohesiveness and coordination, which transform the unified
marketing operation into a well-orchestrated symphony.

To put the IMC concept in a nut-shell perspective, it operates as a neat, compact and perfectly
coordinated commando unit, whose mission is more often than not ambush marketing, a
method that has become highly effective, if controversial, with the more ambitious amongst
the contemporary companies.

Role of IMC in this coursework

This coursework has taken IMC as its base and opted for the modus operandi of illustration
and demonstration to show how IMC produces a nett cohesive output in marketing. Firstly, to
exemplify the effectiveness of IMC, an original object or example is created in the form of a
print advertisement which is included in the appendix of this work. The simple logic behind
this creation is that without an example, one would not be clear what to demonstrate; hence
the example is used as a tool to make a point. Secondly, having created this example, the
subsequent rationale defends how’s, what’s and why’s of this object.

The example

The print advertisement is supposed to have been prepared by an imaginary group of nursing
homes for senior citizens including aged parents, and its target audience is the domesticated
children of these aged parents. The backdrop scenario visualized for this work is that the
restless, ambitious, go-getter type of son has no place for his parents in his life and family, so
he has lodged them in a senior citizen’s nursing home since he thinks they are out of sync
with his life and lifestyle, and are better off in a care giving center. Since he is the head of the
family and is responsible for this conscious decision, the communication in the advertisement
is targeted at him in the form of a persuasive, compelling dialogue between him and the care
giving center.
The example is a conceptual personification of the broader contemporary scenario where a
nuclear family is considered a role model at the cost of the elder family members like the
parents.

Choice of subject

From the given choice, I have decided to opt for the above subject. Effectively, it is more of
an issue rather than merely a subject. It concerns the complex nitty-gritty of juxtaposition of
family life and work in the contemporary world where survival of the fittest is a stark reality.
In this struggle for mere survival, a very crucial component of the family, that of the parents
is getting dislodged and is wobbling wildly on the societal trajectory like a rocket gone
haywire. Thus, the new-age family, under duress and pressure, has been vertically fissured,
and the parents’ fragment is left out in the cold. It is to this fragmented nuclear family that the
advertisement’s message is targeted. It urges in a compelling and evoking tone to fuse the
fragments, to bring back the parents in the folds of the family and thus complete the family
circle.

The choice of this issue is based on two challenging but exciting counts:

 The subject is necessarily a social issue. Through its choice, it is attempted to apply
the IMC model, which is largely perceived as a commercial, profit-centric marketing
tool, to a non-commercial, non-profit social cause and hence prove that the role of
IMC can and should be expanded to reach out to include the satellite marketing areas
like social marketing. On this point, it would be apt to quote this observation by an
industry expert, “Social marketing was "born" as a discipline in the 1970s, when
Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that
were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes
and behaviors” (REF02).
 The brief on the subject says that the message should originate from a group of
nursing homes for senior citizens and it should target not the elderly inmates, who
would apparently seem to be the obvious target audience, but their children, who
apparently seem less likely to be the target audience. By this clever positioning of the
target audience, one gets to work on two layers, the primary target and the secondary
target while crafting the message.

The creative rationale

In order to conceive, device, design and write the exemplified advertisement, in-depth and
exhaustive consideration was given to various creative approaches and ultimately a
simplistic, direct and uncomplicated communication was found to be the best, in-so-far as the
visual and design matters were concerned, while the persuasive, guilt-generating,
confrontationist and evoking nature of the communication was left to the textual content,
which has emerged as the strength of the work.

Other important factors that were considered and incorporated in the work are:

Concept and catch-line

The concept of the advertisement revolves around two couples – the young couple and the
old parental couple. Their merry pictures form the visual language of the work. Both couples
are shown engaged in warm togetherness – the young couple during after-hours, probably on
a weekend, the old couple during leisure hours. The attire is casual, the expressions genuinely
affectionate. On their individual merits, the two snapshots represent ideal marital bliss, as if
everything is fine the way it is, one family, two pictures, two couples. Two separate pictures,
two separate couples. Then, a very simple merging effect is given to the two pictures that
connote the profound symbolism of the noble intent of the work to merge the two couples and
to complete the family picture. Based on this intent, the catch-line, which is sentenced very
simply but very creatively, pronounces that both the couples are a part, not apart.

The couples’ age, which has a very crucial bearing on the concept and the evolution of the
message, is set at 30+ for the young couple and 60+ for the parental couple, and is captioned
prominently in the header, thus positioning the young couple, specially the husband and the
son to whom the communication is directed, at exactly the middle of the timeline. This
positioning is the soul of the creative concept and is shrewdly exploited to form the crux of
the concluding paragraph, in which the son is evoked to travel thirty years back or forth in
life and recall/imagine his position then. Could he have made it on his own as an infant,
without his parents, and would he be able to make it on his own at 60+, without his children.
Either way, he gets the point that the advertisement is trying to make.

The body text

The body text of the copy is devised in a fully persuasive and partly confrontationist manner.
Both direct speech and indirect speech are juxtaposed to create an interesting and intriguing
dialogue. The objective of the copy is to make the son realize of his wrongdoing by keeping
his parents apart from the family, confront him on the matter, even push him to the wall, and
ultimately inject a sense of guilt for his treatment towards his parents. To further the
objective, he is reminded of the sacrifices and compromises that his parents would have
presumably make in their lives to make his life.

In the second half, the limited role of the nursing home as a facilitator of shelter and service
to the aged people is highlighted, and it is strongly put forward that a nursing home can never
offer a home to the parents, which only the son can.

Finally, the copy makes an evocative end with the timeline transition idea applied on the son.

Emotionalization – A sure-shot winner

The issue is essentially emotional. It is further strengthened in the catch-line and the copy
with top-up doses of a variety of emotions. First, a guilt feeling is induced in the son with
queries that corner him and make him go on defensive. Then a sense of elf-realization is
added to guilt when the dialogue takes a nostalgic turn and urges him to remember how his
parents might have braved all sorts of odds to give him a good upbringing and quality
education, due to which he is what he is today. In the final part, a measured dose of
foreboding is added when the son is asked to visualize his hapless condition at 60+ if he is
left out in the cold by his children, and it may be his turn to get lodged in a nursing home.

This mix of emotions creates a strong, heady appeal in the copy, the kind of appeal that is
capable of changing mindsets with its impeccable convincing power.

The design
The design has various imperative visual factors that contribute to the overall effect and
impact of the advertisement.

Large Visual area

The layout devotes almost 60% of the space to the visual area. This visual space attempts to
achieve several objectives:

 The large, roomy visual area makes the viewer stop, look and notice the
advertisement in a clutter. Having noticed it, the viewer turns into a reader and reads
the content, thus getting the full message.

Compartmentalization

 To create two distinct vertical visual compartments housing a couple’s picture each,
symbolizing a divided family.
 Subsequently, to create one unified horizontal visual compartment housing both the
couples’ pictures in it that symbolizes the intent of the advertisement to unify the two
pictures, and the family.

Power of black

Black means darkness, bleakness, lack of light, lack of vision, lack of compassion. Black is
predominantly a negative color. According to Native American Cherokee symbolism, black
implies problems and death (REF06). By using black as a background color, it is deliberately
sought to portray the negativity of a nuclear family; the subtle message that black conveys in
this particular work is the selfishness and self-centeredness of the nuclear family in leaving
out the elder couple in bleakness by not including them in the concept of a family.

But besides being negative, black is also a very powerful color. It stands out in the crowd. It
is precisely due to this characteristic of black that it is used in the work. It grabs attention, it
props up the visual area, and it makes the text stand out.

The above chapter concludes and completes the creative rationale which answers the how’s,
what’s and why’s of the defense of the creative aspect of the advertisement. Considering that
creativity is the soul of a good promotional effort, and unless such a work is creative, it will
fail to achieve its objective; the creative rationale is presented in detail in this coursework.

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Linking creative strategy with media strategy

An advertisement is not a painting or a sculpture. It is not art for art’s sake. It is not meant to
be framed and to adorn the walls, but is expected to go out in the market and slog it out, to
perform or to perish. “At some point in the marketing process, the work has to change from
research and strategizing to actually going out and promoting a product or service to potential
customers” (REF04).

As an extension of the advertising function of IMC, and also as a sequential next step after
the creative stage in the advertising process, a sound media strategy ought to be formulated to
bring out the best in the work in terms of exposure.
For this campaign, it is thought fit to recommend its repetitive releasing in uniform and
regular bursts in related print medium. The segment would include magazines, periodicals,
trade journals, segment-specific publications like newsletters and in-house journals, and the
like.

The budget and release schedule should be decided with the consideration that this is an all-
season campaign – families do not have a season to remain apart!

Corporate sponsorship

“Corporate sponsorship is a business relationship in which two entities exchange things of

value, including a public display of support” (REF05). From Nikon to Nike, across the world,
being a responsible corporate citizen is the prevailing norm. Today, every large organization
worth its salt has a specially earmarked budget for public welfare spending. If Nikon is
spending millions on wild life conservation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spends
trillions on philanthropy.

So, it would be worthwhile for this imaginary group of nursing homes to scout for corporate
sponsorship for it. Such a move, if successful, would serve several purposes:

 It will spare the group from shelling out money from its limited resources.

 Since corporates can create a liberal budget for the campaign, its demographic and
geographic reach will expand, thus giving it more length and breadth.
 Lastly but most importantly, a sponsorship by a large corporate is akin to adoption.
This move would immediately put the campaign in impeccable lineage and gift it an
air of social elitism. It will be in distinguished company and hence command more
respect and attention from its peers.

Extra measures to expand the scope and reach of the campaign

As a sequel to the previous chapter, if the campaign does manage to get a good patron, it can
make inroads in the transnational territory. Large corporates hate to do anything at a small
level. It is generic to their philosophy to think big in whatever they do. So may be the case
with the decision to release this campaign on a pan-European platform.

If such a scenario does materialize, the below mentioned innovative and novel releasing ideas
can be incorporated in the media strategy. While doing so, it taken into account that the target
base would now shift to the socially conscious corporate elite, like the frequent flier business
traveler.

 Release in in-flight reading material of major airlines with concentrated European

traffic.
 Publications of major airlines like their magazines
 Publications targeted at and catering to Eurail, Eurolokshop and other such rapid
transit systems
 In-house reading material of star rated hotels
 In-house publications of leisure activity entities

Conclusion
No idea or innovation is small enough to become big enough. All it requires is out-of-the-box
thinking approach, vision and professionalism. The nursing home group too can think big and
achieve big with its promotional effort based on the IMC model. Having done so, it should
not find itself in a self-limiting bond and should go all out to scout for corporate sponsorship
to promote their campaign. If they hit pay dirt, it would not be far-fetched for them to cross
the boundaries of the UK in releasing the campaign to a pan-European target. If it can do so,
it will truly become a borderless effort, just like the IMC.

References

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS: ISSUES

Introduction
The emergence of integrated marketing communications (IMC) has become one of the most
significant examples of development in the marketing discipline (Kitchen, 2003). Because of
the realities of competition in an open economy it has influenced thinking and acting among
corporate organisations,

Some 20 years ago academics and professionals discussed theory and practice of business
communication but without considering the idea of integration as a realistic approach to reach
a competitive strategic position for the company. Some early attempts in the beginning of the
1980s initiated academic interest and articles appeared in the academic literature (Dyer, 1982;
Coulson-Thomas, 1983). From the beginning of the 1990s IMC became a real hot topic in the
field of marketing (Caywood et al., 1991; Miller and Rose, 1994; Kitchen and Schultz, 1997,
1998, 1999). Twenty years ago, 75 percent of marketing budgets went to advertising in the
US. Today, 50 percent goes into trade promotions, 25 percent into consumer promotions and
less than 25 percent into advertising (Kitchen, 2003). The allocation of communication
budgets away from mass media and traditional advertising has obviously promoted IMC in
recognition and importance for effective marketing. The emergence of IT has greatly changed
the media landscape, contributed to an extensive deregulation of markets and individualized
patterns of consumption and increased the segmentation of consumer tastes and preferences
(Eagle and Kitchen, 2000; Kitchen, 2003).

Four stages of IMC have been identified by Kitchen and Schultz (2000) starting from tactical
coordination of promotional elements, redefining the scope of marketing communications,
application of information technology to financial and strategic integration. They found that
the majority of firms are still operating in the first two stages, some are moving into stage
three and very few have moved to stage four.

One fact is that there are barriers to developing IMC from tactics to strategy. If we accept that
communication is the foundation of all human relationship (Duncan, 2002) we also have to
accept that only strategically oriented integrated brand communications can help business to
reach a sustainable competitive position.

My main purpose, thus, is to systematically review the literature of the marketing concept
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) by identifying key debates within the academic
research, summarize them and propose opportunities for further research.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Communication is the process by which individuals share meaning. This means that each
participant must fully understand each other otherwise no dialogue will occur. Only through
knowledge and understanding of the communication process are the actors likely to achieve
their objectives of influencing attitudes, knowledge and/or behaviors to persuade, which is
one of the most prominent reasons why organizations need to communicate (Fill, 1999). With
increasing worldwide interest in the emergent concept and field of IMC it is important to
investigate its theoretical foundations.

An English exile in Paris - Thomas Hobbes - produced his major work: Leviathan in April
1651 (Hobbes, 1651, pp. 46-8). He argued that our cognizance, i.e the thinking, such as
beliefs (Peter,J.P., Olson,J.C., & Gruert, K.G. 1999) of the world are really of the pressures
materially exerted on us by external "motions" (or signals from the environment). Also our
"passions" are influenced by material motions. Men are therefore mostly influenced by
internal material perceptions of an external material world (Hobbes, 1651, p. 52). While not
accepting his thesis wholeheartedly, it is evident that we live in a material world (Lansley,
1993) - one which supports the perspective that men are expected to be influenced by
external motions. However, the outcomes associated with the Hobbesian metaphor suggest
that conditions now are quite different from those early years - a position supported by the
communications revolution taking place in the twentieth century alone.

The opinion that we are influenced by external motions gains credence when standard models
of consumer behaviour are considered (Kotler, 1992, pp. 161-4). Such models describe
consumer behaviour as a "black box" of consumer characteristics and decision-making
processes. The black box is influenced by inputs consisting of environmental characteristics
(social, economic, technological, political and cultural) and marketing characteristics
(product, price, promotion, and place). These may lead to attitudinal change (i.e. brand
loyalties and behavioural tendencies) and ultimately to actions in the form of product, brand,
and store choice, timing, and amount.Clearly, such communications are not alone in their
attempts to influence thinking or behaviour. So what is occurring within the "black box"?

Marketing communicators are aiming to progress consumers through the cognitive, affective,
and behavioural stages of decision making as exemplified by, for example, the "AIDA"
model (Strong, 1925) which asserts that, for advertising to work, it must be effective through
four distinct stages:

 Attention. The consumer must notice the communication.

 Interest. The consumer must be drawn to take in the message which is being
communicated.
 Desire. The consumer must want to acquire the product or service which is the subject
of the communication.
 Action. The consumer must make the purchase.

There are many other communication models all of which describe promotional
communication in terms of altered cognitions, emotional feelings, or behavioural tendencies
towards a firm and/or its products or services.

Marketing communications does not and cannot operate in a vacuum of its own making.
Consumers perceive social reality in a number of ways in which , the least being, by social
interaction with others (Berger and Luckman, 1991). Media content and other forms of
promotion, together with knowledge derived from a diversity of origins, and social
interaction, form a constructed view of temporal existence within consumer minds.
Consumers make use of, and are not just affected by, promotional activity. Marketing
communications are limited in the effects they can have on consumer minds (Katz, 1987).
But, undoubtedly, in order for marketing communications to have an effect on consumer
minds, they have to reach the sense organs of the person(s) to be affected. However, what
happens after is debatable.

 Most consumers are continually bombarded with communications virtually every

waking moment of the day. On an average day this may amount to over 2,000
exposures (Kotler, 1988). The majority of such exposures are screened out either by
lack of interest or sensory overload.
 Messages may be distorted or twisted to fit with pre-existent cognitive structures
(Cartwright, 1972), i.e. recipients of communications may twist them to fit in with
their existing knowledge or information base.
 Selectivity in memory retention is evident dependent on the extent to which
elaboration and message rehearsal take place in receivers.

Thus communication systems are very essential in affecting consumer opinions.

By a communication system Shannon and Weaver meant a system essentially contained five
parts:

1. An information source which produces a message or sequence of messages to be

communicated to a receiving terminal. The message may be of various types.
2. A transmitter which operates on the message to produce a signal suitable for
transmission over the channel.
3. The channel is merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to
receiver.
4. The receiver, reconstructing the message from the signal.
5. The destination is the person for whom the message is intended (Shannon and
Weaver, 1949, p. 3).

Shannon and Weaver classified communication systems into three main categories: discrete,
continuous and mixed. By a discrete system they meant one in which both the message and
the signal are a sequence of discrete symbols, for instance telegraphy. A continuous system is
one in which the message and signal both are treated as continuous functions, e.g. radio or
television. A mixed system is one in which both discrete and continuous variables appear,
e.g. transmission of speech.

Related to the broad subject or communication, Warren (1949) identified, problems at three
levels.Level 1 The technical problem - how accurately the symbols of communication can be
transmitted. Level 2 The semantic problem - how precisely the transmitted symbols convey
the desired meaning and Level 3The effectiveness problem - how effectively the received
meaning does affect conduct in the desired way. Figure 1 shows a communication system,
where the information source selects a desired message out of a set of possible messages. The
selected messages may consist of written or spoken words, or of pictures, music, etc. The
message is changed by the transmitter into the signal, which is sent over the channel to the
receiver.
The kinds of questions which Shannon seeks to ask concerning such a communication system
are:

1. How to measure amount of information?

2. How to measure the capacity of a communication channel?
3. The action of the transmitter in changing the message into the signal often involves a
coding process. When the coding process is as efficient as possible, at what rate can
the channel convey information?
4. What are the general characteristics of noise and how can undesirable effects of noise
be minimized or eliminated?
5. If the signal being transmitted (as in written speech, telegraphy) how does this fact
affect the problem?

Shannon and Weaver developed what is now accepted as the basic model of communications.
It is a sequential and linear model, which has survived for decades and appears in somewhat
different shapes in common literature in the field of marketing communications. However,
the model is essentially a one-step model of communication and is oversimplified since
communications do not necessarily occur in a single step. The linear model of
communications emphasizes the transmission of signals, ideas and information primarily
through symbols. As we have seen the linear model focuses on transmission effectiveness and
efficiency and emphasizes measurability. Holm (2002) found that 70-80 percent of relevant
literature in the field of marketing communications during the 1990s is based on the linear,
process-oriented perspective on communication theory.

We assume that communication is intentional and a deliberate effort to bring about response.
We also assume that communication is a transactional process between two and more parties
whereby meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols. This means that all
those involved in the process must share a common view of what the symbols and signs
actually mean. This, then, means that a sender's and a receiver's field of experience,
understanding and interpretation to a certain extent must overlap. This requires a somewhat
different and developed theoretical approach to marketing communications, a qualitative
approach, which pays attention to the reader, to the listener and the viewer since meaning can
only be derived socially (Blythe, 2000). Meaning, signs, symbols, syntactic and culture
become essential elements in the developing of communications. The linear, process-oriented
model and its components are straightforward, but it is the quality of the linkages between the
various elements in the process that determine whether the communication will be successful
(Fill, 2002). However, this crucial perspective on communications is focused by only 20-30
percent of the relevant literature in the field of marketing communications.

IMC as a concept has gained recognition on an international scale during the 1990s. Thus its
widespread use is comparatively recent. Let us assume that the ultimate purpose of marketing
is to deliver a higher standard of living (Kotler, 2003). If we use a more limited definition we
could say that marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what
they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of
value with others (Kotler, 2003, p. 9). The keyword is value, which can be defined as a ratio
between benefits and costs, between what the customer gets and what he/she gives. To
increase greater customer participation the marketer can use several combinations of
methods, all aiming to raise benefits and reduce costs. It is then evident that the main purpose
of marketing communication is to affect the consumer's conception of value and of the
relation between benefits and costs.
Defining IMC, Smith et al. (1999) distinguishes three definitions:

1. Management and control of all market communications.

2. Ensuring that the brand positioning, personality and messages are delivered
synergistically across every element of communication and are delivered from a
single consistent strategy.
3. The strategic analysis, choice, implementation and control of all elements of
marketing communications which efficiently (best use of resources), economically
(minimum costs) and effectively (maximum results) influence transactions between
an organization and its existing and potential customers, consumers and clients.

In order to reach a better understanding of the full meaning and process of IMC Smith et al.
(1999) have developed a tool which is supposed to show marketing integration as occurring
at one or more of seven levels. They distinguish the following levels and corresponding
degrees of integration.

 Vertical objectives integration. It means that communication objectives fit with

marketing objectives and the overall corporate objectives.
 Horizontal/functional integration. Marketing communications activities fit well with
other business functions of manufacturing, operations and human resource
management.
 Marketing mix integration. The marketing mix of product, price and place decisions is
consistent with the promotion decisions, e.g. with the required communication
messages.
 Communications mix integration. All the 12 communications tools are being used to
guide the customer/consumer/client through each stage of the buying process and all
of them portray a consistent message.
 Creative design integration. The creative design and execution is uniform and
consistent with the chosen positioning of the product.
 Internal/external integration. All internal departments and all external employed
agencies are working together to an agreed plan and strategy.
 Financial integration. The budget is being used in the most effective and efficient way
ensuring that economies of scale are achieved and that long-term investment is
optimized.

Smith et al. claim that the most important and fundamental level is that of vertical integration
of objectives and activities and that no effective marketing communication objective can be
formulated, which is not directly linked to specific marketing objectives and to relevant
corporate objectives.

All these levels contain specific critical issues which might occur during the process and need
to be solved. One of the most essential tasks is to make sure that goals on different levels and
character are mutually achievable. Objectives for profitability must be consistent with
objectives for growth, for gaining increasing market share and for certain social
responsibilities and to broader societal concerns. Goals and strategies must deal with industry
threats and take into consideration risks of competitive response. When it comes to
communication and implementation it must be sure that the goals are well understood and
accepted by the key implementers. The emergence of the internet and new information
technology has led many companies to reconsider their key factors to competitive success.
Porter (2001) states that some companies have used internet technology to shift the basis of
competition away from quality, features and service toward price, making it harder for
anyone in their industry to reach profitability. Porter has pointed out how internet influences
industry structure. Some of his findings are:

 differences among competitors are reduced;

 competition migrates to price;
 geographic market widens increasing the number of competitors;
 new substitution threats are created by the proliferation of internet;
 standardization of products reduces differentiation;
 reduced barriers to entry shifts power to suppliers;
 traditional powerful channels are eliminated;
 end-users bargaining power is increased through reduced switching costs;
 difficult to keep internet applications from new entrants; and
 the internet can expand the market by making the industry more efficient.

Evidently, these and other factors must be taken into consideration when developing
marketing communication. However, the most essential difference, from a communicative
perspective, is not the changing set of tools. More important is to adjust objectives and
strategies to changing marketing and communication realities. As we can see, IMC is a more
complex issue. It is the art of uniting a sender's purposes and goals with the carefully selected
receiver's prerequisites of interpretation and preunderstanding, to develop a creative strategy,
where content and form of the messages are congruent and to optimize the selection of
channels. The process has obvious similarities with classic methodology of rhetoric (Vossius,
1990).

Thus IMC has become a strategic issue and should, therefore, be treated in accordance with
the nature of strategy and strategic decisions. The characteristics commonly associated with
the concept of strategy and strategic decisions are, first, that strategy is concerned with the
long-term direction of an organization or a company. Second, strategic decisions are likely
about to gain some competitive advantage. Third, strategic decisions are concerned with the
scope of the organization's activities. It is to do with what owners and managements want the
organization to be like and to be about. This could and should include important decisions
about visions, product range, withdrawal from or entering markets. Johnson and Scholes
(2002) claim that strategy can be seen as the matching or resources and activities or an
organization to the environment in which it operates, sometimes known as the search for
strategic fit. Besides identifying strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities in the
business environment it would be seen as important to achieve the correct positioning of the
company including the organization of the three concepts identity, profile and image.
Questions concerning the connection between these concepts are of the utmost importance for
the organization's relations to its market, for its ability to develop, maintain and increase a
competitive position (Holm, 1998).

There are many tactics at the marketer's disposal when using the elements of the
communications mix in order to maximize the impact of the communications activities. The
basics of this is the four-way division into advertising, public relations, sales promotion and
personal selling (Blythe, 2000).

Traditionally, the tools of marketing communications are around 12-20. Collectively, these
are referred to as the promotional mix (Blythe, 2000; Burnett and Moriarity, 1998; Fill, 1999;
Kitchen, 2003; Kotler, 2003; Pickton and Broderick, 2001; Smith et al., 1999).
In order to illustrate the complexity of the communication process, we must add a number of
tools of varying importance and of different character, both personal and mass marketing
communications. On a macro level, the scope of marketing should include ideologies,
political as well as commercially oriented. Examples like the Nazi era in Germany (The
Ministry of Propaganda systematically used sports events like the Olympic Games, as large-
scale event marketing. Music, opera, art, architecture, uniforms, badges, flags, exhibitions,
film, literature, education and parades were all used as communications tools in order to sell a
political ideology). We find similar examples in the former Soviet Union and in today's North
Korea. However, increasing need and opportunities to reach the single individual consumer,
buyer, guest, client, visitor, patient or voter, leads to the search for more sophisticated and in
several situations critical tools. It is of utmost importance to widen the methodological
perspective and take into consideration tools of particular interest in a one-to-one marketing
perspective. The numerous tools and the uncountable possible combinations illustrate the
complexity of IMC and that decisions concerning IMC is a strategic issue mainly consisting
of principals and guidelines rather than instructions on a tactical level, mostly handled by
advertising agencies (Schroeder, 2002; Percy et al., 2002) and account executives. Also on a
macro level, we can distinguish three factors which have fundamentally changed the
conditions for IMC; deregulations of markets, globalization of the economy and
individualization of the consumption. The emergence of new information technology can be
considered as the dominating underlying factor. Communication has always been built upon
three different systems - sound, image and writing. All these systems have been depending on
technological development. Up till now no technology has been able to transmit all systems,
at the most two. Gutenberg produced writing and image. Sound film came 1929, based on
sound technology and photography. The numeric revolution handle the three systems and has
become a fourth system, the digital system which itself has had tremendous economic and
social consequences. Previously, the three communication systems were separate. The IT-
revolution has made a total communicative integration possible, which in its turn has changed
business structures. Three large business areas are now integrated: telephony, television and
the computer industry. The importance of specialization has decreased and differences
between previously separate cultures as publishing, film industry and music industry have
diminished. Fusions have brought the three spheres together and they have become the heavy
industry of our time. The development of the industrial revolution took around 200 years. The
new technology has reached practically all over the world in 20 years.

However, communication remains as one of the most human of activities. We can, again,
define communication as "a transactional process between two or more parties whereby
meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols" (Engel et al., 1994). Notice the
key elements: communication is intentional; a deliberate effort is made to bring about a
response. It is a transaction and the participants are all involved in the process and it is
symbolic where words, pictures, music and other stimulants are used to convey thoughts
(Blythe, 2000). Computer-based systems have revolutionized communications. Computer-
based communications include data based systems and web sites. We can argue that
technological development has put "good old days" far behind. The competitive arena of
today bears little resemblance to that of the mid-1990s (Blythe, 2000, p.10). Non-
differentiated mass markets rarely exist today. A number of factors have emerged and interact
in such a way that the environment for communication strategy is radically changed. Engel et
al. (1994) claimed that appealing to unidentified individuals in a mass market is increasingly
becoming a dead end. One fundamental consequence is that the traditional emphasis on
heavyweight mass communication campaigns (so-called above-the-line), has been replaced
by more direct and highly targeted promotional activities using direct marketing and other
tools aimed to reach the smallest of all target groups, the single individual.

Conclusions
The primary goal of IMC is to affect the perception of value and behavior through directed
communication. The development and diffusion of IMC is closely associated with fast
technological advancement and of a rapidly globalizing and deregulations of markets and
individualization of consumption patterns. This has emphasized the need to adjust objectives
and strategies to changing marketing and communication realities. In the rapidly changing
and highly competitive world of the twenty-first century only strategically oriented IMC can
help business to move forward. However, Kitchen and Schultz (2000) have found that a
majority of firms have remained on a level mainly dealing with tactical coordination of
promotional elements and that very few, a handful in today's world, have moved to financial
and strategic integration.

We can assume that the theoretical and methodological perspectives and frameworks are
influenced by educational background and tradition. On a tactical level marketing,
communication is handled by professionally skilled account executives, art directors and
copy directors with very limited competence and experience from strategic management. A
study of the current educational program, specially designed for management on strategic
level, shows that communication theory and methodology takes up approximately 3 percent
of total time. The rest of the time is devoted to strategic planning, applied management,
financial analysis, marketing, politics and economics. This educational structure has
remained during at least the last two decades.

A main conclusion we can draw is that those who have strategic and tactic responsibility for
IMC live in separate educational, cultural, intellectual and empirical spheres. Those
responsible for strategic management decisions possess, at the best, strategic management
ability but lack insight and awareness concerning communication theory and method. And
those professionally skilled in communication lack relevant skills concerning strategic
management, theoretically and empirically. If we imagine these two spheres as areas, we can
easily notice that the intersection field is very small.

A study of relevant literature published during the 1990s shows that a simplified theoretical
perspective on communication as process oriented, sequential and linear is dominating 70-80
percent of the books, thereby overlooking the complexity of communication.

Different educational cultures might be an essential obstacle to move IMC from tactics to
strategy. A study of leading Swedish schools and institutes in the fields of management
shows that approximately only 3 percent of total time is devoted to communication theory
and methodology. The study also shows that the education programs of the leading marketing
communications schools contain less than 10 percent of leadership and strategic management
while more 90 percent is aimed at communication theory, various techniques, advertising, art,
copy and account executive training.

A concluding remark is that the concept of IMC is dominated by a simplified and insufficient
theoretical perspective and handled by professionals with skills on a technical and tactical
level. This indicates that there is a gap between two cultural, intellectual and empirical
spheres.
Opportunities for further research.
Based on various researches by scholars in the field, I would encourage more research to be
carried out in this aspect of marketing. It is a matter of common interest for academics,
professional schools and practitioners on strategic and tactical levels to close the gap in order
to move IMC from tactics to strategy. This can be achieved by international research and
reconsidering educational programs regarding management, marketing and marketing
communications.