When integration goes bad

There are numerous articles, posts and even books written on the subject of integration in communications. When to do it, how to do it and where to do it. And there are many practitioners in advertising who know a lot more than me about it.

Most authors argue that effective communications should either look the same (the so called matching luggage approach) or say the same thing in manners appropriate to their channel.

I can find few commentators who argue vehemently against integration. Crispin Porter + Bogusky occasionally stray close to this point, but even their fantastic work for Burger King amongst others uses consistent devices more often than not (step forward The King).

While doing some work with an anti-smoking charity recently I came across a particularly compelling case against any form of integration. The argument goes something like this. When it comes to smoking, smokers know it's bad for them. But they still don't like being reminded of the fact. Rather than give up, they look for ways to edit themselves out of the communication. They don't look like the people in the ads. They haven't got any kids or always smoke outside. That way they can convince themselves that the communication isn't referring to them and they therefore don't need to make themselves feel bad yet again.

Against this backdrop, it would be crazy to put all your eggs in one beautifully integrated basket that you know your audience are going to try and jump straight out of. A more succesful approach would be to close down as many 'escape routes' as possible so that smokers are left with nowhere to turn other than to confront their own habit. It's this approach, whether by luck or judgement, that the NHS appears to have taken by splitting its anti-smoking funding between a number of bodies with differing approaches to the problem.

So what does this tell us about how we should approach more conventional brand problems where audiences are hopefully less predisposed to disengagement? My view is that there are many parallels - sure you may not feel as strongly about a stick of deodorant as you do about cigarettes, but in our busy lives we still look for excuses to edit messages out of our consciousness. Rather than one joined up campaign try and hit people with as many different messages, via different channels and at different time as possible.

It'll lead to slightly uncomfortable agency review meetings where the wall of past and present work might end up looking like a dog's dinner, and our chums at Millward Brown might also report declines in (prompted) ad awareness, but if you want get more people to buy your argument more of the same rarely works as well as more of something else.