Making the headless chickens dance:
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) in the music business

Story by: Mark Beard | Publication Date | 14-Jan-2010

When we penned Music Marketing PR and Image Making, social media was in its infancy - Facebook was a baby and MySpace still promised to be the musician’s marketing nirvana. Apple was yet to dominate digital distribution and the recording industry’s main game was litigation not innovation. The “360 degree deal” — the supposed love-child of Robbie Williams and EMI — was yet enter general parlance while the practice, if not the term “freemium” was only being pursued by unsigned garage bands and innovative veterans like Bowie, Prince, Pearl Jam and The Grateful Dead.

So how to make sense of today’s music marketing environment? What are we to make of Robert Levon Been's (of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) exasperated, yet poignant comments about today’s music business?

 "No one has any idea how to make money. People used to think they knew and now it just seems everyone's like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, trying to guess what's going to be the future and how to make a buck being a professional musician, artist or label. No one seems to know what they're doing."[i]

Is it true that no one who knows what they are doing? Are we left to just to guess? How do we know the future? How will musicians, artists and labels make a buck?

The truth is, that these questions are omnipresent business questions – meaning they always have and always will be questions that give business people sleepless nights. To suggest that the business of music is immune to such dilemmas is understandable, yet naïve.

Are we creative people so arrogant to assume that just because we believe our art to have a higher purpose that customers must buy it? Like the fable of the emperor’s clothes it is this kind of presumption that led the recording industry into self-delusion; that production and distribution were independent of changing customer taste.  To be sure, I am not suggesting that art should necessarily be customer-centric, after all great art often emerges despite supposed customer taste, “finds” an audience and flourishes.

The point is that Robert Levon Been’s frustration is felt not just in the music business, but it is keenly felt today, in every industry. We are not alone – every business (large and small) on every continent is facing the same perfect economic storm; a borderless global economy, disintegrating intellectual property protection, withering technological change, cost/price transparency brought on by the web and the social media revolution.

But do we have an answer to headless chicken question?

I have always been suspicious of experts that claim to have the answer to solving marketing problems. Marketing after all is a soft science, with few predictable phenomena. As I have suggested previously… “if marketing phenomena were scientifically provable then everyone would have the same advantage, and thus no advantage at all”. [ii]

I am therefore reluctant use any influence I may have to suggest you follow some prescriptive, yet subjective formula of music marketing success. What I will suggest however is that you at least reflect upon our updated integrated marketing communications template that considers the critical role that new media (websites and social media) play in planning a promotional campaign.

What is meant by integrated marketing communications?

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) refers to the strategic coordination of all forms of communication between a product or firm its target markets. The purpose of IMC is to ensure that no one element of the promotional mix (advertising, publicity, public relations, sales-promotion, direct marketing, sales) is executed without considering its impact on all other elements in the promotional mix. It is a coordinated and integrated approach to marketing communications. [iii]

Traditionally advertising tended to dominate how we communicated with the consumers because (1) there was little else and (2) advertising agencies were biased to the media upon which they earned commission - the actual television and radio airtime and column inches in print media. It should be no surprise that the marketing lexicon is still dominated by terms like “adspend” and “marketing and advertising”, both indicating this natural bias to “paid for” advertising media.

However in recent years the emergence of integrated marketing communications (IMC) was in part a reaction to the “skewed” nature of marketing budgets. But more importantly, it is directly related to the proliferation of new ways in which we communicate and interact with people. Moreover, shareholders are demanding increased accountability from marketers – a neat fit with the powerful measurability inherent in new media and the limited measurability of  “old” media like broadcast advertising. It’s much easy to monitor clicks of the mouse than clicks of the television remote!

Rationale for a new IMC model

Our new IMC model is based on the rationale that web and new media (it seems) have been elevated the role of  “quarterback” role in marketing communications. What better way to coordinate all the “headless chickens” than through the medium that all media forms and promotional mix elements have in common – the Internet.

All forms of marketing communications are present on the web and the dyad (and battle) between television advertising and web advertising is no longer relevant. The convergence of all media into “web-like” forms suggests that the web is actually media neutral - resulting in kind of level playing field that further heightens the need for an orchestrated, integrated dance…

Here are a few of the new headless chickens that our now running around the marketing coop…

• Web advertising – banner adverts, pay-per-click, pop-up adverts.

• Online editorial journalism - the desired destination of corporate PR and press releases.

• Word-of mouth – viral media, shared links, “Likes” ala Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Stumleupon, Linkedin, Digg etc. Search engine optimisation where websites are optimised for higher organic search rates via Google et.al.

• Sales Promotion – competitions, coupons, loss leaders, in-store (online) sampling, freemium offered in the online/mobile space.
  

• Sales Management – using cloud computing sales management tools such as SalesForce.com.

• Customer Relationship Management – ReverbNation is a great example of how IMC (at least for bands) works on the web.

• Direct Marketing – harvesting website visitor and customer data for DM campaigns. Email marketing has all but eliminated the monthly printed newsletter sent by hoards of organisations and Facebook promises to make even email marketing somewhat redundant. Direct SMS campaigns with link backs to web pages and social media pages.

• Location-based social networking and geospatial technology like Foursqaure, Gowalla and Google Latitude where (for marketing purposes) physical activity is linked and integrated with the web – the intersection of social networking, actual physical interaction with retailers, events and people away from the PC - via mobile devices.

Access our new integrated marketing communications (IMC) model

To download our updated integrated marketing communication (IMC) template you will need to create an Updates Account. Doing so will also provide you with a wealth of music marketing and management resources associated with The Music Business Educational Supplements and Budgeting and Bookkeeping For Creative People: A guide to accounting for music, arts and entertainment businesses.

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