The IMC models: relationships, pillars, PESO and the stages of integration

Integration is easy to agree with and hard to plan. Four models give it a structure. They come from different places (academic marketing, an IMC textbook tradition, public relations practice) and they answer different questions.

• Duncan and Moriarty (1998): integration as the management of brand relationships. Communication, not persuasion, is the foundation, and it meets marketing at three points: messages, stakeholders and interactivity¹.
• Kliatchko (2005, 2008): integration as a business process with four pillars to manage: stakeholders, content, channels and results⁴⁵.
• PESO (Gini Dietrich, 2014): integration across four kinds of media: paid, earned, shared and owned⁶⁷.
• Schultz's stages: integration as a journey, from a shared message to a closed loop where results shape strategy⁸.

None of them is "the" IMC model. Each is a lens, and a working plan usually needs more than one. The first piece in this track explains where the idea came from.

In April 1998, Tom Duncan and Sandra Moriarty published "A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships" in the Journal of Marketing¹. Their argument was that communication, rather than persuasion, is the foundation of customer-focused marketing. They identified three points where marketing and communication meet (messages, stakeholders and interactivity) and argued that interactive communication at the corporate, marketing and marketing-communication levels builds brand relationships, which in turn drive brand value¹. A textbook resource from Oxford University Press describes the paper as a pivotal piece that moved IMC from a functional view towards relationship marketing².

Duncan wrote widely on IMC, including the book Driving Brand Value, and with Moriarty he built an internationally recognised master's programme in IMC; he died in 2019³. His textbook IMC: Using Advertising and Promotion to Build Brands gives a chapter to the brand communication process¹³.

What the model asks of a plan, in practice:

• Messages come from more than marketing. If communication happens at the corporate level as well as the marketing level, then a company's policies, prices, products and service all say something about the brand, whether or not anyone planned them. Our reading: the gap between what an advertisement promises and what the service delivers is itself a message, and often the loudest one.
• Stakeholders, not only customers. Employees, investors, suppliers, regulators, journalists and communities hold relationships with the brand too, and they talk to each other.
• Interactivity. A relationship is two-way. Listening (service conversations, reviews, social replies, complaints) is part of the communication programme, not a separate function.

When to reach for it: relationship-heavy businesses (business-to-business, services, subscriptions, financial services), reputation and crisis work, and retention and loyalty, where what the brand does matters more than what it says.

Jerry Kliatchko set out to settle the definition. In 2005 he reviewed and critiqued the existing definitions in the International Journal of Advertising and proposed a new one built on a small set of pillars⁴. In 2008 he revisited it, after reviewing the academic IMC literature from 1990 to 2006, and defined IMC as an audience-driven business process of strategically managing the stakeholders, content, channels and results of brand communication programmes⁵.

The four pillars work as a checklist for any programme:

• Stakeholders: who the programme is for, inside and outside the organisation, and what each group needs to believe or do.
• Content: what the programme says and offers. One idea, expressed in ways each audience can use.
• Channels: every way the content reaches people, not only bought media.
• Results: what the programme must change, how it will be measured, and how the measurement will be used.

The model's strength is its plainness. It names the four things a plan must manage and the order to think about them: audience first, channel third. Its limit is that it does not tell you how to choose between channels or how mature your organisation is; that is where PESO and the stages come in.

When to reach for it: as the headings of a campaign or programme brief, and as an audit of an existing plan. A plan that cannot fill all four headings is not yet integrated. Objectives and measures are covered in objectives and KPIs.

The PESO model was created by Gini Dietrich, founder and chief executive of the agency Spin Sucks, and launched officially in 2014 with the publication of her book Spin Sucks⁶. It sorts media into four types⁷:

• Paid: advertising, including social and digital options as well as traditional outlets. See advertising and digital advertising.
• Earned: publicity and media relations, extended beyond print and broadcast to bloggers and influencers. See public relations.
• Shared: social media, with the emphasis on engagement rather than passive consumption. See social media.
• Owned: content the organisation publishes itself, such as blogs, videos and podcasts. See content marketing.

Spin Sucks presents the model as a way of integrating all four into one programme that builds awareness, reputation and credibility⁶. The model is copyrighted and trademarked by Dietrich and Spin Sucks, which asks users to credit it, and the company offers a certification with the S.I. Newhouse School⁶.

PESO comes from public relations, and that is its value to marketers: it puts earned and shared media on the same page as the paid media that usually dominates the budget. Its limit is that it is a map of media, not of audiences or results. It tells you where a story can travel, not whom it is for or what it must achieve. Definitions of each media type are in the glossary.

When to reach for it: auditing a media mix (are we buying attention we could earn?), planning a launch where coverage and conversation matter, and briefing PR, social and content teams together.

Don Schultz, the researcher most associated with IMC, also described integration as something organisations grow into. In the four-stage development model he set out with Philip Kitchen in 2000, as summarised in a later study, organisations move from message integration, to consumer integration (an outside-in approach that uses feedback from the people who receive the messages), to measuring what activity achieves and collecting the data to track it, and finally to a closed loop in which results feed strategic planning. The same study notes that the third and fourth stages are rarely reached⁸.

The early research explains why so many organisations stall at the first step. Kitchen and Schultz surveyed 128 senior executives at US advertising agencies in 1996 and 1997⁹; a study of clients found that they wanted agencies involved in IMC, and that "ego and turf battles" stood in the way¹¹. Schultz and Kitchen also concluded that IMC was a lasting response to databases, media fragmentation and the demand for synergy, not a fad¹⁰. The book IMC: The Next Generation turned the later stages into a five-step process centred on brands, individuals and measured returns¹².

When to reach for it: to place your organisation honestly, and to choose the next step rather than the whole programme at once. If you have a shared look but no shared results, the next step is not another style guide.

The four models do not compete. Each answers a different question, and together they cover a plan.

A working sequence:

1. Write the brief under Kliatchko's four headings: stakeholders, content, channels, results⁵. Leave nothing blank.
2. List stakeholders and unplanned messages the Duncan and Moriarty way¹: who else hears from you, and what your product, prices and service say without a campaign.
3. Check the channel plan against PESO⁷: for each objective, which of paid, earned, shared and owned does the work, and is one type carrying everything?
4. Place yourself on the stages⁸ and commit to one step up this year. For most teams that means planning from the audience outwards and agreeing how results will be fed back.
5. Design the results loop before launch. The measurement principles drawn from the IPA Databank by Les Binet and Peter Field are a good starting point¹⁴; measuring effectiveness covers them.
6. Use a planning framework to sequence the work. Planning frameworks compares SOSTAC, RACE and others.

• Duncan and Moriarty's 1998 paper in the Journal of Marketing¹, Oxford University Press's note on its place in the field², Medill's tribute to Tom Duncan³ and his textbook¹³.
• Kliatchko's 2005 and 2008 papers in the International Journal of Advertising⁴⁵.
• Spin Sucks' guide to the PESO model⁶ and a publisher's summary of the four media types⁷.
• On the stages: Frehse and colleagues' summary⁸, Kitchen and Schultz on US agencies⁹, Schultz and Kitchen on why companies integrate¹⁰, the client study¹¹ and IMC: The Next Generation¹².
• Next: touchpoints and the customer journey.