Segregation: Was It Really So Bad?
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Despite the thousands of hours put in every year to discussing it, the idea of “integration” is not concrete. In fact, as time goes on, and as media avenues and tactics continue to expand, “integration” is something that becomes harder and harder to define.
The prevailing definition of “integration” that gets caught up in the triangulation of overlapping disciplines in my current place of employ is “matching luggage”. Thus, if offline is a duck – and looks like a duck and acts like a duck – then online too should be a duck.
This theory of integration is attractive for the simple reason that it is simple. But, nothing is ever that simple. For starters, the problem with applying this theory is that some channels – POS for instance – have a more immediate demand for sales messaging than others – TV for instance. Of course, in many cases, interactive is both a television set and a point of sale. It is for this reason that in a great many cases interactive – despite all the great promisory notes passed out to clients during pitches that Agency X is an “integration-focused shop” – is left holding the integration bag, errr, luggage.
None of this is doing clients any good. What needs to be defined for each agency is precisely what “integration” is. Next up, “virality” and what to do to people who use the word (shoot them).