Between the lines

This piece traces the development of integrated marketing from the 60s to the present time. The author reminds readers of the time when media advertising was pre-eminent and describes the growth of other areas of communications such as direct mail and sales promotion, which were ignored by agencies until clients learned that there were alternative, and often more cost effective ways, of moving product than TV.

Between the Lines

Integrated Marketing: the raw onion sandwich?

 By Provocateur

 

Novelist Julian Barnes once pondered 'Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.'

For those of us who have observed the trends, fads, follies and fancies of the agency scene over the past four decades, that old raw-onion taste keeps coming back especially when we hear the magic mantra, 'integrated marketing'.

What is integrated marketing? Newfangled snake oil?...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands