PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mart Ots
AU  - Gergely Nyilasy
TI  - Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC): Why Does It Fail?
AID  - 10.2501/JAR-55-2-132-145
DP  - 2015 Jun 01
TA  - Journal of Advertising Research
PG  - 132--145
VI  - 55
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/55/2/132.short
4100  - http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/55/2/132.full
SO  - J Advert Res2015 Jun 01; 55
AB  - Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is accepted widely as a multi-stakeholder strategic business process for brand communications. Yet, much less is known about the failures of its practical implementation. The current research provides a novel explanation for such failures. A two-year ethnographic study was conducted with a large Swedish retailer and its IMC partners. The objectives were to reveal potentially divergent managerial mental models and to understand the consequences of such divergence on IMC implementation. The authors' findings uncovered four basic mental models, which, in turn, revealed four aspects of IMC implementation dysfunction: miscommunication, compartmentalization, loss of trust, and decontextualization.