Role Of IMC In Branding

HE ROLE OF IMC IN BRANDING

Integrated marketing communications plays a very important role in developing and building brand identity and brand equity. IMC strategy and brand identity strategy are critical components of the firm 's overall brand equity strategy. Developing strong brand equity is a primary concern for companies (Keller 2003). Creating a strong well known brand will enable companies to have a competitive advantage over its competitors. Creating a well known brand and strong brand awareness will result in strong brand equity. The appeal of brand names is stronger than ever and marketers realise that creating a strong brand image will help achieve greater profitability and growth. Companies are use the IMC approach in order to communicate

Brand identity can create relationships between the brand and the consumer by having value propositions that include financial, emotional or self expressive benefits (Aaker 1996), The company needs to establish how to communicate the brand identity to all brand stewards (employees and agents) that are responsible for marketing communication with consumers (De Chernatony 1999). De Chernatony (1999), pointed out that there is the possibility of conflicting messages being communicated to consumers because the all the various communication tools have different points of contact with different consumers. This makes having an effective IMC strategy vital as IMC enables companies to create synergetic messages that will communicate clear and consistent messages to consumers as well as effectively reinforcing the messages communicated by the company. An effective brand identity strategy should advise, guide and assist in evolving, fostering and applying the company’s overall IMC

Companies need to focus on internal integration before focusing on external marketing communications. Companies need ensure that the employees of an organisation are satisfied and communicate effectively with each other so that an effective IMC strategy can be developed (Vicent Tortosa, Miguel A. Moliner, Javier Sánchez, 2009). A lot of the integrated marketing communications process is outsourced to agencies as well as having people within a company working on the IMC strategy. But because some of the IMC process is outsourced to agencies or “part-time marketers” it is vital to people within the company and those in agencies working on the IMC process are communicating effectively to create specific identities for the different brands. Employees can be heavily influenced by internal marketing which could encourage employees to become more focus on customers by implementing market like approaches and activities internally. The internal aspects of a company need to have good relationships with each other (Vicent Tortosa, Miguel A. Moliner, Javier Sánchez, 2009), and with the external aspect of a company in order for an effective IMC process to be