Integrated marketing communication is a part of the marketing activities that arises to cater for the needs of a product to communicate itself to the target audience or consumers. A product is created or produced with a common marketing objective which is to sell out the products in the market. To achieve this goal, there are efforts and processes that must be taken. According to Jerome Mc Carthy (1964), there are 4 elements that determine a product’s success in the market, known as the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place & Promotion).
In order to achieve the objective, one of the efforts made is to familiarize the consumers with the product. To make a product familiar, communication must be built with the target audience or consumers. This communication activity is included in one of the 4P elements in Mc Carthy’s theory which is the promotion. Advertising, Personal Selling, Sales Promotion, Public Relation (PR), Event, Word of Mouth are some ways to promote or communicate with target audience or consumers. Communication methods will keep evolving along with the changes that occur in society. People lifestyle also affects the ways used by communication or promotion.
Each of the aforementioned promotional activities is very extensive and comprises many strategies. It takes special expertise to handle different way of promotion or communication. Specific knowledge and expertise are required to administer advertising as well as Personal Selling, PR, and others. To master the skills, it also requires education, experience, time and effort to keep learning; therefore, all these communication activities cannot be handled just by one person or one group, but it needs some people or some groups even companies with different expertise, such as in the field of advertising, in personal selling, in sales promotion, and so forth.