Learn · every claim sourced
Plain-language foundations, primers and guides on integrated marketing communications, with a source for every claim. New here? Begin with the short reads below.
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How to turn an integrated plan into a schedule: continuous, flighted and pulsed patterns, what the effective-frequency and recency research says about timing, one calendar for always-on activity, bursts, launches, PR moments and events, and the lead times each discipline needs.
How to choose and manage agencies: whether to pitch at all, what a pitch costs, the industry's pitch principles (the Good Pitch, the Pitch Positive Pledge, the ANA and 4As), remuneration models and what the ANA found about them, scopes of work, lead-agency, roster and in-house choices, and two-way performance reviews.
The structure of a marketing and communications plan that holds up in the boardroom: Kotler and Keller's outline, a situation analysis that ends in a diagnosis, an objectives tree from business to communications, strategy and the integrated mix, budget, timeline, measurement and risks, how SOSTAC maps onto it, and the one-page version.
A practical chooser for the sixteen objectives marketers plan for: which disciplines usually lead, which support and what to measure, with the balance between brand and activation, the caveats that change the answer, and links to every primer and objective hub.