How to Create an Integrated Communication Strategy?

Integrated Communication is still something distant from Brazilian companies and there is a lot of confusion about the theme. Are we going to change this view?

Integrated Communication is the one capable of clearly transmitting to all the company’s stakeholders what it produces, who it is, and what it believes in. One of its biggest challenges is to align the institutional and marketing content messages.

What is Integrated Communication Strategy?

Corporate Communication has been used as one of the main tools for building the reputation of companies. Aligning mission, vision and values to the firm’s strategy, to build a solid image before all its stakeholders is the main task of the area’s manager and his collaborators.

With the increasingly strong presence of social networks, there is no such thing as unilateral and isolated Communication.

A complaint about slave labor in Singapore can affect the company’s value on the American stock exchange.

How to make a truly integrated communication, respecting the specificity of the publics and meeting their expectations?

The value of a company is not only its physical or economic assets. We live in the “economy of reputation“, in which the company that knows how to communicate effectively with its strategic publics will be remembered and will have a good reputation.

Maintaining coherence between speech and practice, acting in accordance with its mission and following its principles are some of the ways a company can maintain its reputation in the market. 

To communicate fully, the company needs to look at communication from a more integrated perspective, creating a Message House Framework. This document will guide brand strategy.

More than an articulation of efforts, integrated communication is a philosophy that guides daily life. The audiences, more and more complex and active, want to be part of the internal communication processes, to know all the information, investments, partnerships, and everything about the company.

And what would happen if an employee found out that his company was going through a merger process through the press? Probably, he will think that he is not part of the communicative strategies and that, therefore, he does not need to be informed.

A new perspective

By adopting this perspective of integrated communication, a company must embrace the challenge and the effort to map all its audiences and be willing to understand the specificities of the contexts in which messages are received and all the elements that make up the so-called organizational culture.

Integrated communication goes beyond and presents itself as a philosophy and a set of actions capable of enhancing organizational relations at internal, marketing, and institutional levels, helping organizations fulfill their mission and achieve their goals. When will we stop acting in a fragmented way?

Say goodbye to the old linear, fragmented Communication and open the minds of your company’s executives to Integrated Communication.

*Isabela Pimentel is a Consultant and master’s in communication, specialized in Management and Projects, University Professor and currently is developing research on the impact of rumors on organizations, and how efficient communication planning can demotivate them.