Larry Everling of Grady Rose Consulting looks at integrated marketing triumphs from the 2004 holiday season and helps us prepare for 2005.

I love the holidays. In fact, I actually embrace the hysteria. When else are we galvanized by the combination of such otherwise disparate concerns as mall parking karma, disastrously named bowl games and Mr. Heat Miser?

I also appreciate the pressure placed on marketers to end the year strongly when customers are so altruistically distracted. With over 15 years of client and agency side experience, I’ve lived through the December panic, the shaky "incremental" spend rationale and the post-Christmas hangover that lasts into the start of a new marketing year.

And it’s at this time of year that exploring the value of legitimate integrated marketing strategies is so critical, especially since the client/ad agency dynamic is being scrutinized like never before.

A new Forbes.com/Euro RSCG study attaches some context to the disconnect that has been simmering, I would argue, for decades (you can find the study here.) In the long, mostly unimpressive history of attempted marketing integration, surface-level elements are often the only components pursued: similar imagery, copy and font across multiple media executions. While this pursuit makes sense, stopping there is not integration, it’s just laziness. Far too many marketers and their agencies merely hope for an efficient series of hand-offs from awareness to revenue generation, comfortable in their detachment from producing genuine financial results; all the while unwilling to employ the required strategies, resources and policies needed to deliver, legitimately, integrated marketing’s value.

Yet prospects and customers don’t expect a hoped for shopping experience, they demand Connective Tissue.

Connective Tissue is the implementation of measured linkages during the entire acquisition and retention lifecycle. In other words, using and discretely tracking marketing campaigns and sales channels interchangeably as complementary -- not competitive or mutually exclusive --components, thereby enabling customers to interact with a marketer transparently in multiple directions.

Let’s take a look at a very visible category of marketers over the past several months: retailers.

The Target “Wake Up” campaign was simply brilliant. Most of Target’s advertising is outstanding. Why was this particular effort so powerful? Because it reinforced what every customer wants -- equivalent recognition at each potential touchpoint during a season when convenience is most needed. At the same time, Target built up its customer database for future promotions. Target seamlessly married TV, the Sunday newspaper's Free Standing Insert (FSI), Web, Tele-Marketing and Retail into a holistic experience that was clearly more than the sum of its parts.

But the real payoff was that Target rewarded the higher-value customers who engaged with the retailer across several channels with a guided, “You’re a special member of the club” process by branding the early morning shopping frenzy for the day after Thanksgiving. Again, very clever and perfectly executed.  

Consider the symbiotic relationship between CircuitCity.com and Circuit City -- buy online, pick it up at the store. Look at the fluid order recognition at The Gap where they have the ability to pull up Gap.com on the registers. 

Better yet, I invite you to marvel at how L.L. Bean openly encourages shoppers to move between catalog/direct mail, online, tele-sales and brick-and-mortar. My wife Maureen is a big fan of the massive L.L. Bean store in northern Virginia, and her loyalty to the retailer should be cited in a case study somewhere as the model for marketing/sales integration (please excuse me if said study already exists). If a desired piece of merchandise is not in the physical store’s inventory, the floor sales staff is trained to direct potential buyers to the many ecommerce kiosks or toll-free phone banks on site in order not to lose a customer to the Bloomingdale’s or Nordstrom around the corner. And, obviously, since no one pays for shipping on items purchased at a mall and carried out, in-store Web and phone sales customers are provided a parallel experience and are not charged for shipping either. In the face of long waits for a cashier during the crush of the holiday shopping, L.L. Bean offers an oasis of service by expanding the store’s role to that of a marketing ambassador, funneling very qualified leads to alternative sales destinations.

I contend that true integration for companies requires maximizing the dual role of sales channels as acquisition destinations and marketing vehicles. The more innovative companies have evolved to a point where if a sales channel can’t close a customer on the first pass, options are suggested to capitalize on the warm prospect lead status. In this way the customer chooses which environment is the most appealing to complete the transaction, not the individual sales channel of the marketer. This enables a higher opportunity to secure a satisfied customer vs. a one-and-done scenario. You can call it increasing the odds, or hedging a bet, but most importantly, it is cementing a positive brand experience that is far more compelling than a postcard, :30 TV spot or banner -- each in isolation.

Before the rush of angry responses flood in proclaiming, “Wait a minute, my company’s marketing and sales channels are integrated!” ask yourself this: “How overtly is this integration rewarded or even encouraged?” Is it a reluctant, “Well, sure you can buy at our Web site if you want, but I can’t guarantee it will arrive in time,” or “I’m sorry, that’s an in-store-only special promotion.” Perhaps it’s blatant competition between your own sales channels used as an outdated motivational tool. Those of you nodding “yes” -- you know who you are.

Using my wife again as an example, during our holiday shopping she devoutly scanned the mountain of catalogs she received every day since mid-October as a pruning system towards ultimately discovering ideal holiday gifts. Generally speaking, though, Maureen's purchase intent shouldn’t be discounted if she prefers to buy online, or in-store vs. over the phone. And I can assure you, that if connective tissue is not in place between all of a retailer’s marketing/sales channels, then that retailer will lose her as a customer.

The 2004 holidays are now done, but before they are forgotten as the New Year's hangover recedes, I'd like to pose an important series of questions to bear in mind for the 2005 holidays, coming in just 315 short days:

In what capacity can a typical agency lend insight to the marketing/sales channel integration issue for its retail client during the next financially crucial holiday season? Can the agency wash its collective hands of that level of measured impact? It’s true that clients constantly search for new marketing solutions, and increasingly these opportunities require expertise that challenges ad agencies’ traditional core competencies and financial viability. But should it be the agency’s role to provide a single point of guidance all along the awareness-interest-consideration-decision-purchase-retention timeline? Conversely, how many client organizational structures empower personnel to share information from their compartmentalized marketing disciplines across the breadth of vendors in the stable?

So while the finger pointing between the two entities in the Forbes.com/Euro RSCG study can be labeled merely ironic, perhaps hypocritical, I find the results emblematic of more fundamental issues that are most blatantly exposed in the harsh light of accountability. 

Driven by profound media consumption shifts and the need to maximize lifetime customer value (not just short-term sales revenue), I think we are on the verge of some radical changes in our business, which will produce hybrid divisions in client, agency and media organizations that more closely match the customer purchase and loyalty/repeat buy cycles. The notions of media pillars, linear buying paths, one-dimensional calls-to-action and sales channel independence no longer apply.

In other words, companies will be forced to deploy authentic connective tissue not just between marketing programs, but also woven into sales and customer support channels, using online in a central, multi-part role, because customers won’t spend money with companies who can’t provide a transparent, seamless, productive and (dare I say) integrated experience.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Larry Everling is recognized as an industry leader for driving progressive brand advancement and marketing ROI results in the online medium. Working with leading brands such as Nextel, Novartis, CareerBuilder, IBM, Sheraton Hotels, BMW and UPS, he possesses the rare combination background of 10 years of online expertise, plus client side and agency traditional campaign experience. In May 2003, Everling started Grady Rose Consulting, and has provided strategic online marketing guidance for: Forbes.com, The Washington Post, AOL/Netscape and jaffe, LLC.