Education: The Kotler's IMC model

For those who still don't know him, let me introduce Philip Kotler. He is the first academic in defining marketing as it is known nowadays. 

According to Wikipedia:

Philip Kotler (born 27 May 1931) is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor; the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (1962-2018). He gave the definition of marketing mix. He is the author of over 80 books, including Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Kotler on Marketing, Marketing Insights from A to Z, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Places, Marketing of Nations, Chaotics, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing, My Adventures in Marketing, Up and Out of Poverty, and Winning at Innovation. Kotler describes strategic marketing as serving as "the link between society's needs and its pattern of industrial response.

(...) He is regarded as "The Father of Modern Marketing" by many scholars.

In my opinion, the impact made by Kotler, and the key to his success, is the applicability of his theories to the real business world, something that is absent in most of the scholars' work, more concerned with raising their scores by publishing than with producing useful papers.

The concept of Marketing Mix or the Four P's (Product, Price, Placement and Promotion) is Kotler's main contribution to the field of marketing. Inside the fourth P, Promotion, the term IMC (Integrated Markting Communications) is something crucial in any company, as it always recalls the need for consistency.

Under this concept the company integrates its many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its brands.

IMC calls for recognizing contact points where the customer may encounter the company and its brands. Each brand contact will deliver a message, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

IMC ties together all company messages and images. E.g. television and print ads have the same message, look & feel as e-mail and personal selling communications; PR materials project the same image as the web site.

Different media play unique roles in attracting, informing, and persuading consumers, and these must be carefully coordinated under the overall plan.

Some companies appoint marketing communications directors, with overall responsibility for company communications efforts, to produce better communications consistency and greater sales impact. It places the responsibility in someone’s hands to unify the company’s image as it is shaped by thousands of company activities.

Kotler et al. (2013). Principles of Marketing (6th edition). Pearson Education Limited.