Integrated marketing communication is the culmination of all of your hard work communicating to your various target audiences in the multitude of ways you speak with them. It is the idea that consistency and brand ring through in all connections with a product or a company, whether through a print ad, on the Web site, or in articles written about the company or its product. This is sometimes talked about as positioning—the way a company defines itself against its competitors in their respective industry. Nowhere is this more important than in public relations.
Public relations is the practice of communicating company value statements to highly influential industry people or directly to consumers to insure that the company or product message is always attributed to any mention of that company. For instance, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal writes frequently on the changing digital landscape and its effect on our lives. He is a very sought-after authority figure and an article from him about your company is worth more than a full-page ad in the newspaper itself. But he won’t write about any one thing or any one person, unless a unique value proposition is easily identifiable. This is where a strong position and message are vital to a company’s overall brand health, and are typically the cornerstones to all other communications, paid and nonpaid. 

A typical positioning is no more than a sentence that details the company name, the industry it is a part of, and the unique differentiation it offers. By following this simple formula, review the Chapter 18 AdForum playlist of corporate advertising and write down the value proposition (or positioning statement) that each company is trying to communicate. Some will be easy to identify, and others less overt.