Defining integrated marketing communications

This chapter provides a broad understanding of what integrated marketing communications (IMC) is andwhy it is used. It will introduce the idea of communication barriers, to help explain why creating an effective marketing communications (marcoms) campaign is so challenging, and touch on various theories of communication. In later chapters, there will be discussion of how these communication barriers can be overcome. This chapter also discusses the steps involved in the marcoms planning process, aided by 11 questions. We then give an example of how a business school uses these questions to help develop a marcoms program to benefit its Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. This chapter has two parts: part 1 deals with the principles of IMC and outlines the steps involved in planning a marcoms campaign, while part 2 deals with a more advanced but nuanced understanding of IMC.