• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 11, 2008

For the second year in a row, dealing effectively with the myriad challenges posed by integrated marketing communications is top of mind among senior marketers' minds, according to the latest survey from the Association of National Advertisers.

The ANA has done the top-issues poll since 2004 for purposes of planning the content of its annual fall conference. Marketers are presented with 10 key issues and asked to choose their top three. ANA then tabulates the top 10 list based on overall responses. Since 2006, the 10 issues presented have been the same. This year, 157 marketers responded to the online poll.

Here's how marketers prioritized the other nine issues in the 2008 survey:

2. Marketing accountability
3. Aligning the marketing organization with innovation
4. Brand building
5. Media proliferation
6. Advertising creative that achieves business results
7. Consumers' control over what and how they view advertising
8. Attracting and retaining top talent
9. Globalization of marketing efforts
10. Multicultural marketing

As it turns out, all of the issues ranked within the top five have remained the same since 2006--and this year, even the order of the top five issues is identical to last year's.

However, the order of the top five issues was a bit different back in '06. Accountability ranked #1, with aligning the organization with innovation at #2, brand building at #3, and integration down at #4. Media proliferation has remained in fifth place all three years.

Why has accountability--although clearly critical--been overshadowed to some degree by integration issues in the past two years?

Marketers are not asked to elaborate on the reasons behind their rankings, but ANA EVP Barbara Bacci Mirque points out that marketers have reached a "comfort level" with accountability issues that don't yet exist on the media integration front.

"Accountability is difficult, but marketers pretty much know what it takes to deliver it, at this stage," she says, noting that some companies now have specific positions dedicated to marketing effectiveness/accountability. In contrast, while media fragmentation/integration issues have existed for decades, the Internet and the raft of new digital channels emerging obviously have marketers scrambling to determine how to optimize their budgets and strategies, she says.

And with marketers also wrestling with integration-associated issues ranging from internal organizational structures and politics to determining what roles various types of agencies should play in regard to media buying and creative (not to mention getting these agencies to "play nicely" together), it's hardly surprising that integration is the topic most likely to keep them awake at night.

Helping marketers navigate through all of the above is the purpose of the "Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010" research begun last year by ANA, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Bacci Mirque notes.

As for the marketing issues that have been ranked within the bottom five of ANA's "top issues" list since 2006, nearly all have shifted up or down by anywhere between one and four positions over the past two years, with no clear pattern discernible.

However, for the record, between this year and last, the issues within the bottom five that gained prominence were effective advertising creative (up three positions) and attracting top talent (up two).

Those that declined on the priority list over the past year were globalization of marketing and multicultural marketing (each down two positions) and consumer control over viewing ads (down one).