thoughts on integrated marketing

            While the basic ad agency brand-building function has broken off into a whole series of specialized tasks, Reinhard’s opinion is that without offering “integrated marketing communications,” the industry would fall victim to brand consultants and marketing consultants.  Reinhard believes that advertising as a business is slow to change, and he laments the fact that managers worldwide have not been able to point out a client who hasn’t changed their fundamental approach to business more than the agencies have.  “Advertising is the most conservative industry,” he says, “and we should be the most creative.”  Reinhard is clearly upset with the apathetic response to integrated marketing, something he feels was a golden opportunity.

            Reinhard has a point.  It almost seems that nowadays, ad agencies are so focused on mass-producing award-winning ads that are clever, and yet fail to acheive the real goal of advertising as part of the marketing model.  The agencies need to take into consideration the entire brand as well as the product, and the final functionality of advertising must go deeper than simply producing and placing ads.