Integration

Integration, shmintegration. I’m losing patience with that word. Everywhere I go, that term is continually invoked, but seldom implemented. It was a buzzword way back in, what, the mid-eighties? Usually buzzwords have the good grace to vanish after a decade or so. No such luck with integration. It hangs on because the elusive condition to which it refers is still highly coveted by pretty much every ad agency in the world. Yet achieved by very few.

So what is this integration thing any way. Well, it operates on two often-overlapping levels: “strategic” and “executional” integration. (This is not my distinction. I first heard it at DDB, where, until recently, I’d been anchored for quite some time. Speaking of which, if you’re looking for a good freelance writer . . . )
“Strategic” integration means that every communication generated by a particular Brand, from the TV to the shelf talker or tray liner, should speak with the same voice, show the same face, reinforce the promise and personality of the Brand. “Executional” integration is the more, dare I say, superficial, surfacy layer, meaning that every piece of communication shares all the manifest visual and audio aspects which are being used to express the Brand. Same typeface ,musical theme (United Airlines is a textbook example), color palette, graphic approach or elements. If the ad uses photography of a certain style, for instance, so do the point of sale pieces, direct mail, outdoor boards, etc. When you view the body of work of fully -- and beautifully -- expressed Brands like , IBM, VW, Nike or Apple over the last ten or twenty years, you’ll see a fair amount of executional variation within the body of work for each Brand, but each hangs together as seamlessly strategically integrated. Just look at the instruction manual for the iMac and you’ll see -- and feel -- what true, seamless integration can mean.

So what’s my problem? Simply this. Ad agencies and their ilk all try to accomplish integration, particularly between “general” advertising and “below the line” stuff, i.e. promotions, direct mail and non-traditional media of all kinds. Yet most of them have separate groups of people, usually drawn from separate talent pools, working in separate departments, often on separate floors or even separate buildings, being asked to integrate their work with each other. What kind of sense does all this separation make? Well, it makes the most sense to the people doing the general advertising. Because they generally hold the other modes and media in disdain. They prefer to keep a distance. Separate, but unequal. Eew, direct mail. Ick, promotions. Shelf danglers? Sales materials? Puke. (In all fairness, there is resistance and reverse-disdain on the part of many direct and promotions people as well. The barriers are being held up from both sides.)

Of course, this attitude reveals how deeply uncommitted these general advertising folks (and the others, to some extent) are to the notion of integration. They pay it lip service, but won’t commit to the concept. Because it would mean they would either have to work shoulder to shoulder, as peers, with the people who do other than purely Brand advertising , or elsethey would have to do that work themselves. In my ongoing tour of Chicago’s agencies, I just don’t see much of that, other than in small agencies where the creatives have to do it all, since there’s no one else to do it. Chicago’s marketing communications “community” continues to be largely a house divided in this regard. I’m told that Cramer-Krasselt is having some success breaking down these barriers. I’ve seen glimpses at DDB.

But that just makes my point. If, after fifteen years of the world worshipping at the alter of integration, a few isolated instances of limited success are all we can point to, then clearly, the barriers are still holding. And, sadly, I see this prejudice everywhere I go, being handed down to the latest waves of General Advertising Prima Donnas in-the-making. What is it going to take to remove the onus from the stigma? Why can’t we all just get along? Is busing the answer?