The Blur Age
Effective Communications in Today's Changing Environment
As printed in the Northwestern University 2006 Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications
by Rudolph Magnani
ABSTRACT
Marketers in today’s environment must deal with the proliferation of information constantly bombarding consumers. What will be described is a method of ordering and exploring the three areas that highlight the effectiveness of IMC—moving it out of the theoretical and conceptual and into functional, successful marketing for today’s Blur Age. By controlling and orchestrating myriad marketing disciplines to maintain consistency, aligning client operational
structure to drive marketing and business goals, and creating a business model and internal culture that realizes the behaviors and practices of an effective IMC model, marketers can increase their efficacy and thrive in a blurring communications environment.
Alvin Toffler advances in his 1984 book The Third Wave that the information technology future offers the opportunity of improved social-globe conditions. However the promise of the Information Age has been supplanted by a new reality, the “Blur Age.” In one dimension and in a vast oversimplification of Toffler’s premise, he postulates that evolving from “The First Wave” agricultural and “The Second Wave” industrial to “The Third Wave” access to technology and the societal “info-sphere” that follows will bring dramatic changes and optimistic new forms in 21st century democracy. This is no doubt conceivable, but as Toffler concedes, periods of chaos will mark that change. As clichéd as it is, we are undoubtedly in a period of insurmountable information overload chaos and the patterns of illumination and access have yet to be realized.
For marketers fighting for brand mind share, preference, trial, and (the holy grail) loyalty, the cacophony of “information” that characterizes the Blur Age has diminished the consumer’s conscious ability to respond. In this Blur Age reality, marketers must align three structural dimensions: contact management, internal company alignment, and agency alignment. They must also use integrated marketing communications (IMC) to impose communication clarity. In addition to discussing the cause and consequences of the marketer’s dilemma, described within
are methods for companies to develop more effective communications programs in today’s
blurred communication environment.
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