Integrated marketing communications and the language of marketing development

Abstract

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the most recent in a long line of marketing innovations widely endorsed by marketing and advertising academics and practitioners along the whole spectrum of industry and commerce in Britain and the USA. Despite its widespread perpetration in the marketing and advertising world, however, theorising upon the subject has been fraught with problems. This article emphasises and discusses one such problem: the rhetoric and teleological reasoning that has formed much of the core of IMC theory, rather than detailed empirical observations of actual changes in contemporary marketing communications and advertising practice. Collating the available evidence on US and UK marketing communications practices, the article argues that much of IMC's legacy consists in providing a rhetoric of teleology and progress, rather than a descriptive theory of contemporary marketing communications practices. Recommendations for theorising about marketing communications management are made.