• by Jack Feuer , April 29, 2009

It's been over 30 years since I got my first magazine job as associate editor of a funky little trade called Marketing Communications. You'd think that would be enough time for marketers to get their act together.

You'd think. And you'd be wrong.

Back then, there was a hot new trend sweeping the business that everybody paid lip service to, made up a cool phrase to describe their version of it, and made a big deal about it in every new business presentation.

You know that thing communicators do every couple of years like clockwork, when you stampede and chase some new shiny thing off a cliff? That's what this was. You don't think that ludicrous phenomenon just happened yesterday, do you?

Ah, of course you do.

Well, anyway, back then, the Susan Boyle of current industry thinking was the idea that the disparate mechanisms by which business talks to its victims could work in concert, producing one unified melody that would sell shit much more effectively and efficiently. The idea was called marketing communications, and it has had many names since then -- synergy, anyone? -- but integration seems to be the one that stuck.

Except it didn't. OK, the name did, but nothing else.

Why am I still interviewing top buyers at media agencies about the upfront who can't talk about digital because "I'm not the digital guy?"

Why is Andrew Robertson bragging on Ad Age TV or whatever they call it that he's bringing BBDO's worldwide digital network to the U.S.? Shouldn't it be here already? And why is it a separate network?

This is what advertising did to television when it first came out. Ghettoized it and then, when that didn't work, absorbed it. And once it got inside the shop, television ate everything else and there was nothing left. Not integration. Assimilation.

Does this sound familiar? If not, just substitute "digital" for "television."

This matters because at end-user level, we don't see much marketing communications on our favorite distribution platforms. We see extensions. We see "product integrations."

We don't see anything like we were writing about over 30 years ago in Marketing Communications.

You know, a Second Great Depression might not be a bad time to finally figure this thing out, what with that efficiency benefit and all.

Some have tried. Euro RSCG twisted itself into a pretzel trying to make integration work. I still hear and read the word "seamless" a lot in agency branding efforts. I see more seams than less, though.

And still today, in this glittering Digital Age we are marketing in, how often does someone complain about silos? Daily, right?

It boggles the mind to think that after more than three decades, agencies -- and their clients to an even greater degree -- haven't been able to do this one, simple, unambiguously positive thing.

Here's a modest proposal for the Lords of Advertising. When it comes to integration, stop talking and start walking.

I'll give every one of you that does a signed copy of the September 1976 issue of Marketing Communications. It's only missing a few pages. And the cover - you'll love this - was an interview with the marketing director of something called a magazine.