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Integrated marketing
communications and the
language of marketing
development
Joep P. Cornelissen
University of Amsterdam

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the most recent in a long line of

marketing innovations widely endorsed by marketing and advertising academics and
practitioners along the whole spectrum of industry and commerce in Britain and the USA.
Despite its widespread perpetration in the marketing and advertising world, however,
theorising upon the subject has been fraught with problems. This article emphasises and
discusses one such problem: the rhetoric and teleological reasoning that has formed much
of the core of IMC theory, rather than detailed empirical observations of actual changes
in contemporary marketing communications and advertising practice. Collating the
available evidence on US and UK marketing communications practices, the article argues
that much of IMC’s legacy consists in providing a rhetoric of teleology and progress,
rather than a descriptive theory of contemporary marketing communications practices.
Recommendations for theorising about marketing communications management are made.

More important, in communication systems the whole is

generally greater than the sum of the parts. It is this
increasing recognition of a holistic, systemic process of
communication in which there are all types of synergies
that will inevitably drive the acceptance and use of
integrated marketing and communication programs.
(Schultz, 1996, p. 143)
Throughout the past decade, ‘Integrated Marketing
Communications’ (IMC) appears to have found increasing acceptance
as a theoretical concept, idea or simple rhetoric with advertising
agency executives, marketing and advertising practitioners, as well as

International Journal of Advertising, 20, pp. 483–498

© 2001 Advertising Association
Published by the World Advertising Research Center, Farm Road, Henley-on-Thames,
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with writers in the popular and academic marketing and management

press (e.g. Kitchen and Schultz, 1999; Cornelissen and Lock, 2000a,b).
Early writings (e.g. Caywood and Ewing, 1991; Schultz et al., 1993) on
IMC show that the concept was originally advanced as a corrective to
the view that techniques and disciplines of marketing communications
(i.e. advertising, promotions, publicity and personal selling) are
managed and organised in a differentiated and separate manner.
Juxtaposed to this view, IMC, with its depiction of a set of
fundamentally different marketing communications practices, came to
present a transitory period between the ‘old, historical, product-driven,
outbound marketing systems and the new, information-driven,
interactive, consumer-focused marketplaces of the twenty-first
century’ (Kitchen and Schultz, 1999, p. 35).
This article questions whether the management approaches and
practices prescribed by IMC theory have actually found any
endorsement in practice. Reviewing the available empirical evidence
on one central thesis of IMC theory – the organisation of all
communication disciplines into a single, integrated department – I
argue that rather than being descriptive of contemporary marketing
communications management, the use of IMC theory should rather
be seen as rhetorical and ideological, with the purpose of
pragmatically edifying and legitimising practical changes in marketing
communications. The argument is more fully developed in the body of
the article. First, however, a brief introduction to the development of
IMC theory is called for.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IMC THEORY

Like many other new streams of marketing and advertising research,

the concept of IMC was advanced and subsequently embraced by
academics in response to developments in marketing and advertising
practice (e.g. Knecht, 1989; Caywood et al., 1991). Observing
practising marketing and advertising managers cope with the changing
challenges of everyday managerial life – induced by the move away
from a mass communications model into an era characterised by
increasing pressures on mass media advertising, heightened
competition and increasing fragmentation with more individualistically
oriented consumer audiences (Tedlow, 1990) – provided marketing
academics with the grist for the theoretical mill. Stimulated by

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observations of these marketing changes such as media multiplication

and technological advances (e.g. database marketing, e-commerce) in
media and communication channels, academic writers (e.g. Schultz
et al., 1993; Nowak and Phelps, 1994; Duncan and Caywood, 1996;
Schultz, 1996, 1999) have developed the academic theory of IMC with
the objective of addressing, describing and explaining current
marketing communications practices that have not been captured by
traditional accounts of mass marketing communications (see Buttle,
1995). To illustrate, one of the key theses of IMC is that the
mentioned changes in the media, marketing and communications
industry have quickened a decay of traditional virtues among
practising advertising and marketing managers in which the cross-
fertilisation (‘through-the-line’) of communication techniques and
media has tended to displace traditional rigid classifications of mass
communications into ‘above-the-line’ (advertising) and ‘below-the-
line’ (promotions) (Schultz, 1996, 1999).
As mentioned above, the intention of IMC theory was to redress an
imbalance in marketing communications management theory, which,
it has been argued, had not yet geared up towards the drastic changes
happening within the practice of marketing communications and the
communications industry at large (e.g. Duncan and Caywood, 1996;
Pickton and Hartley, 1998). In this light, the exposition of IMC might
have offered potential as a complementary yet alternative perspective
on the subject. However, as I argue, in order to have any validity as a
theory of marketing communications, the theses and claims contained
in IMC theory need to hold in the light of empirical evidence of
contemporary marketing communications practice.

PRIOR RESEARCH ON IMC: PERCEPTIONS OF

CHANGE IN MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Although there is no strong consensus at the present time about the

formal definition of IMC (e.g. Nowak and Phelps, 1994; Schultz and
Kitchen, 1997) or the typology for describing the new marketing
communications landscape (Lowe, 2000; O’Driscoll and Murray,
1998), there is a general belief among marketing academics that the
field of marketing communications has been undergoing a period of
change since the 1980s which has significantly altered the way
communications is organised, dealt with and practised in both

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companies and advertising agencies (e.g. Schultz et al., 1993; Nowak

and Phelps, 1994; Phelps et al., 1996). In particular, in line with general
arguments in the management literature that the 1980s and 1990s have
shown a move from a so-called Fordist socioeconomic system, which
was premised on mass production and mass consumption, to a new
system of production and marketing, characterised by more flexible
labour processes and markets, a flexible organisation of activities (with
geographical mobility), and a greater responsiveness to more rapid
shifts in consumption practices (e.g. Harvey, 1989; Tedlow, 1990), the
concept of IMC has equally been defined as the natural evolution
from Fordist mass market advertising towards targeted marketing (e.g.
Schultz, 1996, 1999). Schultz (1999, p. 337) for instance articulated
IMC as a logical and historical progression into a new age of
marketing communications: ‘it appears to be the natural evolution of
traditional mass-media advertising, which has been changed, adjusted
and refined as a result of new technology.’
When looking at the empirical studies on the topic so far, a number
of studies have reported on the widespread acceptance of the term
‘IMC’ among marketers and advertising agency executives (e.g.
Caywood et al., 1991; Phelps et al., 1996; Rose, 1996; Schultz and
Kitchen, 1997; Kitchen and Schultz, 1998, 1999; Eagle et al., 1999).
Unfortunately, however, there is little in these studies to suggest
whether there is indeed a wide actual support for and enactment of
approaches and practices associated with IMC, or rather just an
agreement among marketing managers and agency executives with the
rhetoric of IMC and the positive connotations that the term possesses
(Carlson et al., 1996; Cornelissen and Lock, 2000a). Moreover,
marketing and advertising managers’ perceptions of change and their
verbal endorsement of IMC or ‘integration’ in marketing
communications strategies is, I argue, not sufficient to grant the thesis
that IMC theory is largely descriptive of contemporary marketing
communications practices. In fact, as some writers have already
suggested, the widespread acceptance of IMC by academics and
practitioners alike might be largely, if not wholly, based upon the
rhetorical appeal and presentation of the ideas associated with the
concept. Writers such as Miller and Rose (1994), Hutton (1996) and
Cornelissen and Lock (2000a) have argued that marketing, advertising
and public relations practitioners were coordinating their efforts long
before the term ‘IMC’ came into use, and that therefore the concept of
IMC represents substantially nothing new. The marketing historian
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Hollander (1986, p. 14), reflecting upon the thesis of the supposed en

masse shift of companies to a market orientation in the 1950s and
1960s, also argued that ‘the indications are that advertising, sales,
promotion and merchandising people in industry worked together
more closely than is commonly thought’.
In the context of the above arguments, it has become clear that
there is a need to identify the actual levels of behavioural change (and
not just perceptions of change on the side of marketing and adverti-
sing managers) that have occurred in marketing communications
practices in order to evaluate whether the view of IMC as a new and
contemporary periodisation of marketing communications manage-
ment is warranted, or, alternatively, whether the concept of IMC
simply presents a regurgitation of old ideas under a new terminology
and rhetoric. Such an approach is particularly significant in the light of
historical writings on the development of the marketing discipline, in
which it has been shown that the discipline is defined by each
generation in the light of the contemporary environment, whereas
actual marketing objectives and practices have not altered much over
the ages (Holden and Holden, 1998). Rather than a simplistically
drawn-out evolutionary process, Hollander and Nevett (1995) for
instance point out that there are many analogues and cross-currents
between past and present marketing processes, where short-sighted
marketing endeavours of the past even have a way of being tried
again. Fullerton (1988) emphasises here that although many of such
historical classifications describing a neat and systematic evolution
(e.g. from production and sales orientations to a market orientation)
are elegant and provide for good historical pedagogy (see also
Hollander, 1986), their gross oversimplification might provide for an
inaccurate description of marketing history and for an entirely false
sense of progress.

IMC AND CONTEMPORARY MARKETING

COMMUNICATION ORGANISATION

In the context of the little empirical research on marketing

communications management and IMC, there is insufficient evidence
to fully prove or disprove the habitualised and now relatively standard
chronology of a shift from mass marketing communications to IMC
practices. Nonetheless, given the explicit changes in marketing
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communications management that have been prescribed in IMC

writings, I collate available evidence to evaluate how well the suggested
chronology fits. And although, as mentioned above, the concept of
IMC is theoretically still underdeveloped, quite generically defined
and, for that matter, ambiguous (e.g. Nowak and Phelps, 1994), clear
prescriptions of change have been made in relation to marketing
communication organisation, where coordinated and integrated
configurations are seen to have replaced ‘functional’ structures in
companies and advertising agencies. The guiding idea here is that the
breaking point of IMC is its holistic systems or integrative thinking,
where traditionally, it has been argued, activities and functions have
been decomposed and specialised (Schultz et al., 1993; Schultz and
Kitchen, 1997; Hartley and Pickton, 1999). The main effect of this
holistic thinking, writers such as Schultz et al. (1993) and Deighton
(1996, 1999) have argued, is that it fosters so-called ‘zero-based’
thinking, where the most cost-effective communication solutions to
particular communication missions or problems are chosen. In
contrast, in traditional practices, it has been argued, specialists
favoured the use of their own tools and there was little examination of
other communication options from either a strategic or an efficiency
standpoint (e.g. Schultz et al., 1993; Deighton, 1996, 1999; Schultz,
1996, 1999). To foster cross-functional cooperation across communi-
cation disciplines and functions, a number of writers have therefore
argued for an ‘integration’ or consolidation of the whole marketing
communications function within companies. In these writings,
‘integration’ referred to the implementation of horizontal coordina-
tion mechanisms such as communication ‘czars’ or cross-functional
teams (e.g. Schultz et al., 1993; Duncan and Moriarty, 1998), and
‘integration’ has also come to be read as the merger of all marketing
communications disciplines under a single organisational unit (Miller
and Rose, 1994, p. 13). Such an integration or consolidation purports to
crystallise upon interrelations between the various sub-functions, to
ease coordination, and to enable the marketing communications
function to play a role in the strategic management of the company
(Duncan and Caywood, 1996; Schultz and Schultz, 1998).
Reflecting the above-mentioned difference between cross-
functional coordination between the still structurally separated
marketing communication disciplines and the full merger or consoli-
dation of these disciplines into one organisational unit, a number of
writers have talked about progressive levels of ‘integration’, namely
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particular stages and forms of configuring and coordinating marketing

and corporate communication disciplines (Duncan and Caywood,
1996; Caywood, 1997; Schultz and Schultz, 1998; Fill, 1999; Kitchen
and Schultz, 1999). For example, the models of Duncan and Caywood
(1996), Schultz and Schultz (1998), and Fill (1999) prescribe a process
from an initial awareness of the interconnection of marketing
communications issues, followed by a more cross-functional
coordination and interaction between communication disciplines, and
a redefinition of the scope of marketing communications. Then, in a
further stage, some of the barriers between the former disciplines
have disappeared, and the marketing communication sub-functions
become consolidated into a single department to drive organisational
and strategic directions through the primacy given to customer value
and a market orientation. Duncan and Caywood (1996) add two
further stages; in the first of these, the scope is broadened to all
stakeholders, demanding a fully ‘integrated’ corporate communica-
tions function. The second stage deals with the alignment of the
‘integrated’ communication function with other business functions for
the management of relationships between the company and all its
stakeholders (see also Caywood, 1997). The latter argument of not
only structurally integrating the different marketing communications
disciplines, but also, beyond that, to align and integrate the whole
marketing communications function with public relations (or
corporate communications) into one ‘integrated’ communications
function, resonates with earlier and also contemporary writings of
Cook (1973), Kotler and Mindak (1978), Kitchen (1993), and
Gronstedt (1996), among others. Kotler and Mindak (1978, p. 20), for
example, already argued that ‘new patterns of operation and
interrelation can be expected to appear in these functions [marketing
and public relations]’ with the two functions ‘rapidly converging’ in
their concepts and methodologies:
And indeed as competitive and environmental trends
unfold it may be that the view of marketing and public
relations as the same function may not be far removed
from the reality of the 1990s. While there may be
disagreement, debate and contention surrounding the
boundaries of public relations and marketing, there does
appear to be some overreach and commonality between
the two communication types. Such overreach and
1 commonality has been fostered and developed primarily in
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relation to organisational development and change, itself a

response to the external environment.
(Kitchen, 1993, pp. 90–91)
Apart from the criticism that this configuration theory needs
further theoretical development in terms of the types of coordination
mechanisms and environmental conditions associated with each level
or stage of configuration (Cornelissen and Lock, 2000b), it is still
possible to evaluate the actual support for IMC which in this case
hinges upon observations of the existence of these ‘integrated’
functions, or attempts thereto, in practice. A fully integrated or
consolidated arrangement of communications is here seen as
progressing from increasing overreach and commonality between
marketing and public relations (where in the past, it has been argued,
communication functions were functionally separated).

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON MARKETING

COMMUNICATION ORGANISATION

When looking at the empirical studies on communication

organisation, it appears that the prescriptions of IMC fall short in the
light of evidence of how corporate and marketing communication
disciplines are actually organised in companies in both the USA and
the UK. Surveying 75 of the 300 largest US corporations, Hunter
(1997) found that in 81% of these corporations external communica-
tion disciplines have been arranged into separate public relations and
marketing departments. Hunter’s (1997) study also showed that both
the public relations and marketing departments operated at a similar
level in these US corporations (as separate but equal management
partners), and that there were no apparent moves towards a con-
version of communication disciplines (e.g. marketing communications
taken out of the marketing department and subsumed as the
responsibility of the public relations department) or towards closer
alignment or a consolidation of all communication disciplines into a
single communications department. Grunig and Grunig (1998,
p. 154), reporting on the IABC Excellence study, surveyed 323
organisations in the USA, Canada and the UK and found that public
relations is more effective when marketing communications does not
dominate the communication function: ‘public relations has its
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greatest value when that function and the marketing function are
treated as equal partners in management.’ In addition, Grunig and
Grunig’s study also looked at the organisational effectiveness
(calculated by their ‘Excellence’ factor) of an integrated, central public
relations department versus independent units for such
communication programmes as marketing communications, employee
communications, investor relations or media relations within
organisations. Their study found little if any evidence of the supposed
negative consequences (advanced by IMC writers) of structurally
dispersing communication disciplines into separate units or of
delegating communication responsibilities to other functions such as
finance and human resources (which has been considered to erode the
power and role of corporate and marketing communications within
the strategic management of a company).
In short, the departmental arrangement seems to make
little difference…Central public relations departments
were no higher in excellence than a series of specialised
units, although our data could not show what if any
co-ordination occurred between the specialised units.
(Grunig and Grunig, 1998, p. 155)
In a recent programme of research studying 122 large companies
within the UK, Cornelissen (2000) found that within virtually all these
companies the departmental arrangement of communication
disciplines are characterised by a strong functional organisation of
communications into public relations and marketing departments.
Further data analysis suggested that such consolidation of disciplines
into public relations and marketing departments is related to the
interdependencies between disciplines in terms of domain similarity
(i.e. the degree to which two different individuals responsible for
communication disciplines share similar goals, skills or tasks),
reflecting the astute differences between ‘corporate’ and ‘marketing’
objectives and tasks, and resource dependencies between communica-
tion disciplines (i.e. the dependence of a member responsible for a
particular communication discipline on obtaining resources from
another area or discipline to accomplish his or her objectives), as well
as to the resultant interaction between disciplines. In regard to the
latter, the data indicated that communication disciplines with relatively
higher levels of interaction (often due to interdependencies) between
them
1 are grouped together (for example, the communication
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disciplines of media relations, issues management, community

relations, employee relations, public affairs and investor relations into
a public relations department) to minimise the costs associated with
cross-unit interaction. Of the 122 surveyed companies, only nine had
actually wholly consolidated or integrated the responsibilities and
activities of their communication disciplines into a single communica-
tions department. At the same time, however, Cornelissen (2000)
found relatively high levels of cross-departmental interaction through
the instalment of formal relationships (formal procedures and
communication channels, team-based structures and integrators or
‘czars’) between the functionally organised public relations and
marketing departments with the purpose of facilitating coordination
of communication programmes.

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AND THE

LANGUAGE OF MARKETING DEVELOPMENT

The preceding review of research studies clearly indicates that, when

looking at current (marketing) communication organisation across
companies in both the USA and the UK, rather than full support for
an overall consolidated or ‘integrated’ communication department, the
organisation of communication disciplines is characterised by a strong
functional organisation into public relations and marketing
departments. These findings generally dislodge the validity of the
suggested argument of an evolutionary movement towards
‘integrated’ communication functions, which, as will be argued here,
rather underlines the rhetoric of progression that IMC theory has
proffered in relation to the development of marketing
communications. Instead of the suggested teleological evolution of
‘differentiation’ to ‘integration’ in communication organisation, the
transition process (to organisational structures adept at the
contemporary communications landscape) might rather actually be
fraught with disruption, or perhaps not follow this logic at all.
Projected futures cannot simply and effortlessly dissolve the solidity of
inherited structures. To illustrate, Prensky et al. (1996, p. 181, emphasis
added) have claimed from an IMC perspective that ‘marketing
organisations are behind in developing the content of communication
programs and the process of co-ordinating such programs’, as
established characteristics of structure, culture and politics were found
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to hamper the (in the view of Prensky et al. (1996)) inevitable change
process towards an IMC structure and approach. It follows, however,
that prescriptions of marketing communication organisation based
upon this teleological reasoning are not necessarily descriptive of
practice, nor should they dictate how marketing communications
should be managed. As such, and as the review of studies has clearly
shown, the organisation of marketing communications might simply
not have followed the ‘evolutionary’ path, nor, it may now be
suggested, should it necessarily have to.
Arguments made under the heading of IMC generally express the
idea that current marketing communications practice reflects a drastic
change from mass communications to one-to-one forms of
communication (through database marketing and interactive media),
from functionally organised communication disciplines (‘differenti-
ation’) to more cross-functional forms of organisation (‘integration’),
and from fragmented communications towards communications in
unison (e.g. Caywood and Ewing, 1991; Schultz et al., 1993; Duncan
and Caywood, 1996; Duncan and Moriarty, 1998; Pickton and Hartley,
1998). It follows, however, that while there are certain important
insights here, there are also strongly rhetorical and ideological elements
informing this new myth of post-Fordist marketing communications.
Post-Fordism, in marketing and marketing communications theory, is,
in effect, imagined as anti-Fordism: it is quite simply seen as the
inverse of, and antithesis to, the rigid and massified system of Fordism
(e.g. Schultz, 1996). This kind of idealised and teleological thinking is,
however, I argue, clearly unsatisfactory and even problematic. That is,
as the review of studies on communication organisation has
illustrated, we might expect that any real-world transition beyond
Fordism is a great deal more complex, unruly and uncertain.
The general process of transformation of marketing communica-
tions rather needs to be seen as complex and uneven, where it is
genuinely difficult to establish whether the present period marks the
emergence of a post-Fordist system, whether it should be character-
ised as neo-Fordist, or whether, in fact, it remains a period of late
Fordism. The basis of definition and periodisation is, in fact, not at all
self-evident. In a complex process of change, we have to ask by what
criteria we might identify the components of a new phase of
marketing communication management, and also how we do so
without falling into the trap of teleologism. The marketing historian
Fullerton (1988) argues here for a ‘complex flux’ model, which posits
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modern marketing’s evolution as a complicated yet fluid process

involving simultaneous change and continuity. With this ‘complex
flux’ model of historical development, Fullerton also takes issue with
this rationalisation of a teleological or evolutionary perspective in
marketing, where from a standpoint of the present, contemporary
marketing is seen as a progression and advancement on preceding
practices and concepts. Rejecting the equation of ‘development’ or
‘evolution’ with ‘improvement’, Fullerton (1988, p. 121) argued that
‘development brings changes, which may or may not be
improvements’.
This article equally argues that, as change will likely be complex,
turbulent and a matter of contestation, neither the emergence nor the
nature of any system beyond the Fordist system of mass marketing
communications is predetermined or inevitable. Rather than
projecting, in a conceptual sense, and rhetorically legitimising the
systems of marketing communication management of the present and
future as many writers have done (and termed as new panaceas or
paradigms such as IMC) (e.g. Schultz, 1996; Schultz and Kitchen,
2000), and presuming that these will inevitably appear, empirical
research is needed to describe and articulate the current state of
marketing communication organisation and management practice. To
this end, I have explored the actual state of contemporary marketing
communication organisation by reviewing the available research
evidence.

CONCLUSION

This article has evaluated the validity of IMC as a descriptive theory of

marketing communications management. The review of research on
marketing communication organisation in US and UK companies
indicated, albeit tentatively, that the suggested periodisation of IMC
does not subsume enough evidence to provide for an accurate and
coherent description of contemporary marketing communications
practices. And because of this scant support for the claim that the
concept of IMC is actually descriptive of contemporary marketing
communications management, I have argued that the concept of IMC
and associated language should rather be seen as rhetorical with the
purpose of pragmatically edifying and legitimising practical changes in
marketing communications. I then progressed with a critique of the
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rhetoric and teleological reasoning at the core of IMC theory,

signalling the need for marketing communications history research
and for solid theoretical development of past and present marketing
communications practices and occurrences (see also O’Driscoll and
Murray, 1998; Kitchen, 1999).
There has been little theory building concerning these
occurrences other than a call for a more ‘integrated’
approach to managing a more complex communications
mix. The detail of such prescription remains poorly
articulated and while this might be excused on the grounds
of the size and rapidity of change in practice (direct
response marketing, loyalty scheme marketing, electronic
commerce, the controversy over the effectiveness of mass
advertising), it also shows signs of intellectual failure in the
academy.
(O’Driscoll and Murray, 1998, p. 398)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author thanks the VSB Bank Research Foundation (NL) for its
support of this research.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Joep Cornelissen is an Assistant Professor in Corporate and

Marketing Communications Management at the Department of
Communication Studies, the University of Amsterdam. His current
research and consultancy interests are in Integrated Marketing
Communications and marketing communication organisation. His
published work has appeared inter alia in the Journal of Advertising
Research, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing
Management, Journal of Business Communication, Public Relations Review and
the Journal of Marketing Communications.

1 Footnote.

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