How to deliver integrated planning for your brand

Brands are getting better at delivering communications along a consistent theme in today’s complex world, but it can be tough getting it from the drawing board into practice. Here are some practical tips of how to get it done for more effective communications.

Consider paid, owned and earned media

The choice is no longer between digital and traditional channels or above-the-line and below-the-line. Instead, it is about balancing the combination of paid, owned and earned (POE) media:

• Paid media e.g. a television spot or banner advertisement
• Owned media e.g. an event, sponsorship, website or application
• Earned media e.g. a positive post, blog review or journalist endorsement

The default position is to focus time and money on paid media when in fact consumers have shifted their attention towards earned and owned channels.

The POE approach challenges us to understand what drives effectiveness across the new media spectrum, to recognise the legacy bias often present in our selection of paid media and to harness the potential of owned and earned media.

Use engagement ideas

It is ideas that drive business success and business effectiveness just as technology drives business efficiency.

Over the last decade we have moved towards the fluidity and dynamism of engagement ideas.

Engagement ideas generate a physical response or a richer, longer degree of consideration in our audience. They are powerful drivers of earned media and the best ones not only encapsulate the brand proposition but also inspire consumer dialogue and action. Campaigns such as the 'Yellow Pages Treehouse' and Queensland’s 'Best Job in the World' are great examples.

Search is key

Because of its powerful role in the consumer decision-making process, many leading brands now view search as an important indicator of online and offline success, in relation to sales impact and reputation-building.

It is also an immediate measure of a brand’s ability to engage. When you type in a brand name, Google delivers links from all three POE media categories.

At no other point is a brand’s skill at managing its POE mix brought into clearer focus than on a search results page. Paid-for listings will appear, as will the brand’s own websites and the earned links that represent press coverage and blog references.

Organise your own structures to deliver joined up thinking and doing

The importance of ‘joined-up thinking and doing’ cannot be over-estimated in a connected world where a company’s pay-per-click search campaign is impacted by its social media strategy, which is impacted by its CSR strategy, which, in turn, is impacted by its content strategy.

Agencies and brand-owners must get to grips with this new matrix and use it effectively to connect with consumers.