Consumers are being bombarded with messages through several mediums simultaneously. They aren’t just watching TV—they're looking at second and third screens, surfing the web on a tablet or looking up the latest app on their smart phones. With this new generation of consumer behavior trends we are now witnessing an even stronger need for IMC—all communication avenues delivering one brand voice. More than $171 billion (that's $171,000,000,000!) is the projected amount to be spent in 2012 in the U.S. on marketing communications. With people being inundated by so much commercial information, how can we expect to get our customers' attention unless we’re relentlessly consistent and efficient in the placement of our message? Research shows that whether it's a TV commercial, in-store promotion, website or editorial, most often people don't consciously differentiate between the media they absorb. They just consume the messages. It's repetition that burns a brand's message into the minds of customers. That's why it's called branding. IMC reflects how the customer sees it – a flow of information about a company or product from indistinguishable sources. One brand, one voice. All information about a company combines systematically in the mind of a consumer as a "brand." The way people formulate ideas about brands is a natural process. What happens when messages are integrated? What happens when they're not? Consistency and integration promote clarity. Inconsistency promotes confusion. Natural systems are the most powerful. An animal's body is a system. A cow is a system. You can't cut a cow in half and expect it to produce milk. So it follows that you can't cut a marketing communications program apart and expect it to perform at its highest level. To minimize entropy (the disorder of a system) and maximize syntropy (the alignment of energy and form), marketing communications must be integrated into one seamless system. Fast Company recently published an article related to the power of IMC within B2B companies: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002425/creating-winning-b2b-integrated-marketing-campaign. What approaches are your campaigns taking to reach the consumer quicker and with more efficiency? Have you recently modified any of your strategies to incorporate more disciplines under the marketing umbrella?