Marketing integration is a journey, not a destination. How far along the path are you?

Integrated marketing. It seems like such a simple concept -- a common sense notion that a brand's marketing teams, both traditional and digital, need to be united in their efforts and messages. But in practice, is it really that simple?

According to the audience members at iMedia's Brand Summit in Coronado, Calif., integrated marketing is an ideal that has yet to be fully realized. And according to Monday morning's panelists, it's a quest that has no concrete destination.

In response to an audience polling question, 44 percent of audience members reported that marketing integration is being discussed within their organizations, but efforts are not as organized as they should be. The largest obstacles to integration, according to audience members, are existing silos within different marketing units.

The audience's responses were no surprise to the panelists. As Bob Kraut, vice president of marketing communications for Pizza Hut Inc., put it, "Integration is not difficult, it's just hard work." He said that his company has experienced significant growth and prosperity as a result of its efforts to integrate its marketing functions. Much of that integration, he said, was the result of simply getting the right people to sit down together -- on a regular basis.

However, as Blaine Mathieu, CMO of Lyris, pointed out, "Meetings are an important part of mix, but they aren't a panacea." In integrating marketing efforts at Lyris, he said many of the needed changes involved shifts in mindsets rather than schedules. After all, siloed marketing departments will instinctually try to hold on to their power and budgets. True integration of efforts requires buy-in among top executives, he noted.

"If you want integration to happen, you have to be clear about your goals and objectives," Kraut said. "As a leader, you have to throw yourself into that."
 
In Pizza Hut's case, integrating marketing efforts meant taking the reins away from the company's agencies. Instead of issuing a general decree that the company's agencies needed to integrate their efforts, and then leaving it to the agencies to duke it out among themselves, Pizza Hut's marketing leadership was very direct in how it expected the agencies to operate with one another, Kraut said.

Overall, Mathieu identified three major challenges when it comes to integrating marketing efforts. The first is integrating digital with nondigital efforts-- a fairly straightforward challenge. The second challenge, and the one that he said challenges Lyris the most, is integrating digital efforts among themselves and being able to measure the value of an entire digital campaign. And the third, he said, is integrating Web 1.0 efforts with Web 2.0 efforts.

"We're still working on getting Web 1.0 to work really well," he said. Incorporating Web 2.0 strategies, such as blogging and Facebook campaigns, is an entirely different challenge, he noted.

According to the results of another audience poll, much of the challenge lies in measurement tools. Fifty-two percent of the audience disagreed with the statement: "We have the tools to help us make apple-to-apple comparisons across different marketing channels, including traditional and digital." Another 27 percent said they don't even believe those tools exist.

However, collectively, the audience members were optimistic that their integration efforts would be making great strides over the coming year.

"It's interesting how optimistic we are about the future," Mathieu said. "We face both people challenges and technical challenges. But the technical issues, we can overcome. At the end of the day, it's not a tools issue. It's an organizational issue."

Regardless, the panelists pointed out that the goal of "getting integrated" is not a finite task. Douglas Diamond, CMO of Emigrant Savings Bank, pointed out that digital marketing integration is coming about because digital media have become widely accepted. However, new applications and techniques are emerging every day. And as new opportunities emerge, marketing organizations will continue to be challenged to integrate those opportunities with their existing efforts.

"We will be fighting the battle again because it will be something new that is not accepted," Diamond said.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.