Comms directors want more integration, survey reveals

A survey by Shine Communications and the London Business School revealed that only 49 per cent of marketing and comms directors believed their campaigns were well integrated, with four out of five saying the issue was among their main concerns.

Richard Brett, MD of Shine, said: ‘Clients are realising they need to be more integrated and get their agencies to play better together to come up with singular ideas to work across multiple touch points. This is because consumers are being bombarded with so many different channels and there’s a greater danger of them seeing different pieces of activity around the same campaign.’

The news follows suggestions that SABMiller is discussing ways to include PR in a review of Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s above-the-line business as it seeks to create a more integrated offer (PRWeek, 13 July).

Leigh Daynes, director of comms at Plan UK, warned that failing to integrate could lead to budget cuts from the board. He said: ‘There’s ever more scrutiny of budgets around the impact of campaigns and that’s as true in any sector as it is in ours.’

The research also showed larger companies were more likely to encourage multiple agencies to pitch for ‘the big idea’. Thirty-six per cent of organisations with more than 1,000 employees gave all of their agencies the opportunity to put forward ideas at the same time. However, in the under-1,000 category, only half as many followed suit.

Just 11 per cent of comms directors assigned a lead agency to take charge of the other consultancies in the brand’s roster – a model followed by Procter & Gamble.

Of the 61 senior in-house figures quizzed, 69 per cent managed between two and five agencies, and a further ten per cent managed six or more.

This article was first published on prweek.com