August 2005

Content First: The Case for Integrated Communications

Look beyond traditional partners to get your company's message to the right audience.

By Karla Spormann

In a recent interview for MarketingProfs.com, one of my favorite thought leaders, Professor Philip Kotler, said that despite widespread fragmentation of the media market, most companies are still oblivious to the cataclysmic changes underway in the communication marketplace. I couldn't agree more.

The way that consumers and business people interact with the media has changed fundamentally since the advent of the Internet. The old model gave consumers little choice in their exposure to marketing messages. Today, widespread Web usage and the rise of TiVo have created a new model that allows consumers to control their exposure to marketing messages.

In this challenging environment, how do you capture the customer's attention? As Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and author of Marketing Management, Kotler suggests that companies begin by rethinking the balance among their various marketing activities. For example, he says, "I feel that advertising is overdone and public relations is underdone."

Taking Kotler's point a step further, I believe companies need to try new and different strategies to communicate their brand messages. And they need to look beyond their traditional agency partners to accomplish these goals.

Context, Relevance, Substance

Skilled public relations firms that apply traditional PR tools—such as press releases, speaking engagements, and analyst briefings—may prove effective in cutting through some of the clutter. But if you really want to get a message through to your audience, you need to get more creative. Consider a partner with experience developing meaningful content that tells a story: Partner with a custom publisher.

While large corporate marketers have begun to embrace the Web as an advertising channel, the sites to which these online advertisements drive customers are sorely lacking in substance. More often than not, they fail to support a company's brand promise or communicate the clear value of an offering.

Web communication must become a vital part of any integrated communication strategy. And this is where agencies skilled in custom publishing and content development are essential. You need a partner with specialized skills to take advantage of the medium, while maintaining the focus on audience needs and interests. Do you want your site to enrich and bring meaning to a brand promise or merely to serve as a billboard?

Once you've committed to the idea of putting content first, don't be led astray by your technology partners. Agencies with a core competency in technology typically support content with a traditional copywriting approach. That means you'll get lots of bells and whistles, but little substance that fulfills your promise to customers.

I found it fascinating that ClickZ News recently reported that Web marketing firms are scrambling to add video expertise to their teams. Almost all of the executives interviewed cited that what they really needed to bring video to client sites was storytelling skills. That's exactly the point: Whether their clients want video or not, most of the largest Web marketing firms acknowledge that they don't have storytelling skills in-house. No wonder the vast majority of websites fail to engage their audience: The agencies that created them don't have the skills required to make these vital connections.

An integrated communications approach that puts your corporate website at the top of the priority list has the best chance of success. And a partner with deep expertise in developing original and meaningful content for both print and Web channels may be your best weapon to foster a new level of engagement with customers.

About the author:

Karla Spormann is the president and founding partner of Tendo Communications.