Let’s Stop Calling It ‘Integrated Communication’. We are just selling a costly puzzle of services.
The market is ready for a change.
As communication professionals, we have a responsibility: to be honest. And the first honesty we owe to ourselves, and to our clients, is to admit that ‘Integrated Communication’, as we sell and buy it today, often simply does not exist.
It’s a label. A reassuring word that hides a fragmented reality.
Companies turn to us seeking a symphony, and too often we sell them an orchestra of excellent soloists, each playing their own score. We have a great PR agency, an engaging digital team, and a breathtaking creative partner. Each, in its silo, does an impeccable job. But the final result is not the sum of its parts. It is a puzzle, precisely. A costly puzzle, made up of beautiful pieces that struggle to fit together.
And it’s not an isolated intuition. Data confirms it with disarming force. Forrester tells us that today, 75% of marketers already rely on “full-funnel” agencies. Deloitte reinforces this, stating that for 85% of large companies it is essential to have a partner capable of integrating branding, performance, and customer engagement. And McKinsey closes the loop, revealing that 72% of enterprise companies invest in integrated partnerships to improve the entire customer journey.
75%
of marketers already rely on “full funnel” agencies to orchestrate their strategies.
Source: Forrester
85%
of large companies consider a partner capable of integrating branding and performance essential.
Source: Deloitte
72%
of enterprise companies invest in integrated partnerships to improve the customer journey.
Source: McKinsey
The question, therefore, becomes even more urgent. If everyone – clients and analysts alike – agrees on the need for a holistic approach, why is reality still so fragmented?
Perhaps the problem is not the skill of the soloists. Perhaps the problem lies upstream, in the very way we conceive, brief, and purchase communication. And what if true integration wasn’t about getting agencies to talk to each other, but about getting communication to talk to the only stakeholders that truly matter: business objectives?
The Three Traps (and Their Real Costs)
The model based on separate briefs is not just inefficient; it’s a machine perfectly designed to produce three types of waste. Three “hidden taxes” that every company pays without realizing it, which erode budget, consistency, and value. Let’s analyze them in detail.
Trap 1: Message Inconsistency (The cost of confusion)
The example is classic. The PR team proudly launches a campaign on the brand’s sustainability values, gaining articles in prestigious publications. At the same time, the performance team launches an aggressive social campaign, with messages focused solely on price and promotion. The result? A potential customer reads an inspirational article about your ethics and a minute later is reached on Instagram by an ad that seems to come from another company.
The economic impact is not hypothetical. One of the most authoritative studies in this field, the State of Brand Consistency report by Lucidpress (now Marq), found that companies with a consistent brand identity across all channels record an average revenue increase of up to 33%. Inconsistency is not an ‘image’ problem; it’s a revenue problem. Every customer who hesitates, confused by your communication, is a lost sales opportunity. The hidden cost is the loss of trust, which is the foundation of every business relationship. In summary: inconsistency doesn’t just confuse the market, it impoverishes it.
The way out begins with a question: What if the message was unique, defined upstream strategically, and then applied intelligently and consistently across every channel, from PR to performance?
Trap 2: Economic Inefficiency (The cost of poor Strategic Governance)
The second trap is the easiest to measure and the most painful for any CFO: direct budget waste. When strategy, creativity, and delivery are managed in silos, duplication of effort and inefficient resource allocation are not the exception; they are the norm.
But how much waste are we talking about? No hypotheses are needed. The most authoritative estimate comes from Gartner: it is calculated that, on average, 26% of a marketing budget is wasted on wrong channels or due to poor strategy and lack of coordination between parties.
Think about it. On a communication budget of €500,000, that means €130,000 lost. Not due to bad luck or a failed campaign, but because of a structural flaw in how the budget is governed. Not a miscalculation, but an architectural error.
Here’s the crucial point. This waste does not arise from poor execution. Often, individual delivery activities (posts, press releases, ADS campaigns) are done perfectly. The problem is the lack of a single mind directing them, a conductor ensuring that every instrument plays the same melody at the right time. It’s a Strategic Governance issue. The key is to clearly separate the strategic-creative design phase from the operational delivery phase.
The way out begins with a powerful question: What if the key to unlocking that 26% efficiency wasn’t better control of every single activity, but investing in a single Strategic Governance phase upstream, ensuring that every euro spent on delivery aligns perfectly with the same, unique score?
Trap 3: Lost Opportunities (The cost of isolation)
This is the most painful trap, because it is invisible. A community manager, talking to customers daily, discovers a brilliant insight into a new market need. In a silo model, this idea at best becomes a point in a monthly report that no one will ever read. That insight will never reach the product strategy team, nor the person who writes the CEO’s speeches.
This is where the cost of lack of ROI is measured. Research on the effectiveness of integrated communication speaks of “synergy“, that phenomenon where 1+1 does not equal 2, but 3. The silo model, by its nature, kills synergy. It settles for summing the value of individual pieces, instead of multiplying it to create a complete picture. Investment is made in buying the puzzle pieces, but not in the time and vision necessary to assemble it.
The way out begins with a question: Is your communication partner structured and incentivized to sell you work hours in individual silos, or to discover and activate value transversally for your business?
Trap 1: Message Inconsistency
When PR, digital, and creative teams operate in silos, the brand speaks with different voices, confusing the market and losing trust. This is not an image problem; it is a revenue problem.
Companies with a consistent brand see revenue increases of up to 33% (Lucidpress/Marq).
Trap 2: Economic Inefficiency
Duplication of analysis, strategies, and reporting. A silo model is a machine perfectly designed to burn resources in redundant activities. An architectural defect, not an execution flaw.
26% of the marketing budget is wasted due to poor Governance (Gartner).
Trap 3: Lost Opportunities
Brilliant insights discovered on one channel die in their silo, never reaching broader strategy. Synergy (1+1=3) is killed, settling for simple addition.
PR
✕
Digital
✕
Creative
In a silo model, ideas do not flow; opportunities are systematically missed.
The Solution: From Governance to Value
If the problem is an orchestra of soloists playing different scores, the solution is not to ask them to play louder. The solution is to give everyone the same, unique score.
For years, we tried to solve integration downstream, asking teams to “talk more,” “align,” or coordinate. But this approach is doomed, because it intervenes when it’s already too late.
The real revolution, the way out of the traps we’ve seen, is to stop acting on delivery and start governing the design. This means abandoning the multitude of vertical briefs (PR, digital, creative) in favor of a single, powerful upstream tool: the Business Strategic Brief.
This is not a communication brief that asks ‘what to do’. It’s a strategic brief that asks ‘why we are doing it and which business result we want to achieve’. It starts from objectives, not tactics: what is our growth target? Which market do we want to conquer? What is our competitive advantage and how can we use it to win?
Only when these answers are clear, shared, and approved, can we define the communication strategy and, finally, its execution across individual channels.
And here is where the agency role must evolve radically. Companies no longer need another service provider to add to the puzzle. They need a partner who sits at the table before the puzzle is even conceived.
They need a Strategic Advisor. An advisor whose success is measured not by billable hours or outputs produced, but by a single KPI: measurable impact on the client’s business objectives. A partner who helps write the only score that matters and ensures every instrument plays it in perfect harmony, transforming communication from one of the most uncertain cost items into the most predictable and powerful growth engine for your business.
THE OLD MODEL: THE PUZZLE
🌪️
Chaos, Waste, Inconsistency
THE NEW MODEL: THE ORCHESTRA
🎯
Value, Synergy, Results
STRATEGIC BRIEF ✨
Transform uncertainty into profit. Do you want to discover how much you could save
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