By João Pedro Andrade
Integrated communication is a marketing strategy which has become popular over the last decade. The concept is rather basic: planning the communications actions for a brand or for a specific campaign in a way that they are carefully connected and communicates aligned messages. In other words, integrating all the communications tools so that they coexist in harmony.
To understand the importance behind integrated communication, it is enough to just use simple logic. When communications actions converse harmoniously and in one unison voice at all times, it is much more powerful than the actions separately.
One good example is the campaign Like a girl, by the personal hygiene brand Always, in 2015. With a focus on reaching girls in puberty, the brand promoted a positive redefinition of the prerogative expression “like a girl”, which assumes that men who do things like girls, hold to an inferior standard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=XjJQBjWYDTs
The campaign was promoted in print media, social media and television, with its main appearance in the Super Bowl commercial in 2015. Apart from promoting the brand, the campaign promoted the elevation of adolescent girls’ self esteem, who started viewing the expression ”like a girl” as something positive and as a source of pride.
A good communications campaign usually involves a fair amount of work to be elaborated in an effective manner. However, once the hard part is done, this can be turned into profit by contributing to increased sales and a competitive advantage in relation to competitors.
Last but not least, if we consider that successful communication is that which is done with a minimum of interference (that is, with as little unwanted external filters that difficult the interpretation as possible), integrated communication becomes a strong ally, considering that it is developed with the purpose to act on several fronts and in an integral manner.
