McCann Erickson India has used IMC for General Motors and the launch of Virgin Atlantic. FCB Ulka went the integrated way for launching the new TATA Indigo. Percept has implemented IMC campaigns for Reid & Taylor and more recently Hero Honda Ambition. Rediffuson DY&R too have attempted to integrate the Daikin Airconditioners campaign

TATA INDIGO LAUNCH 

The launch integrated all the elements of IMC to give one message of ‘Comfort and Luxury’. This message and the visual of the ‘Arm Chair’ was used in a variety of media vehicles, including newspapers, magazines, TV, outdoor, merchandising, mailers, website, event design, brochures and even invitation card to the launch event. Parameshwaran emphasises, “Coordinating the entire campaign called for a lot of effort, since you had to use the key elements of the message and adapt it to the medium concerned. The arm chair may look very nice in press ad, but how will look on stage, or on a banner ad on the website? Overall the integration has had a tremendous effect on the brand Tata Indigo. No one got a message from any source that was not aligned to the strategy of comfort and luxury.”

DAIKIN AIRCONDITIONERS
 

The campaign for Daikin Airconditioners has been built around message of ‘complete silence’ which has been taken across not only press, TV, outdoor, retail and online advertising, but has been even used by dealers and sales personnel in the field. Mendoza explains, “Our client sells the Airconditioners on a technology platform which single-mindedly translates into it being more silent than other Airconditioners.” And the result has been very encouraging – the IMC campaign is doing wonders for the product on the sales front – this despite Daikin being about 20 per cent more expensive than other air-conditioners in its class and not once resorting to promotions, discounts etc.

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS WITH RESPECT TO LOWE Ltd.
 

Public relations:
 

LOWE had launched the AXE products with a very grand launch. It does this sort of an activity for almost all its products.

Rural Marketing:
 

For Lifebouy, LOWE had suggested the use of vans Decorated with logos and pictures of Lifebouy all over for the rural market which was a great success.

Sales Promotion:

LOWE had suggested the insertion of dental insurance in the Pepsodent toothpaste packets worth Rs. 1000/-

Direct Marketing:

The team at LOWE handling Pepsodent also went and spoke to various dentists about the benefits of the toothpaste thus encouraging them to suggest that toothpaste to their patients.

SMS:

There has been a lot of advertising done through SMS for the AXE range of products.

Packaging:

The team at LOWE had taken active participation in the packaging of the AXE shaving products.

Wrapping up:
IMC is not a management fad; it is a fundamental and marked shift in thinking and practice of marketing communications by clients and advertising agencies. A quick market scan proves that IMC is being taken seriously and is being practised by a significant group of marketing communications practitioners. The primary value that agencies see with IMC is the consistency, impact, and continuity, which an integrated programme provides.

The critical issue concerning IMC is that of evaluation and measurement of integrated programmes. Part of the difficulty is that traditionally advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and the public relations disciplines have developed separate and distinct measurement approaches. The measurement of integrated programs, which can estimate the synergy between elements, is a totally new field, which remains relatively undeveloped.

IMC is a new approach to marketing communications planning being driven by technology, customers, consumers, and by organisational desire to efficiently allocate finite marketing resources. It is still an emerging discipline. We are living in a period of transition between the historical product-driven outbound marketing systems and the new information-driven, interactive, consumer focused marketplace of the twenty-first century.

So is TATA INDIGO LAUNCH an idea whose time has come? Only time will tell!