Organising IMC functions in the business-to-business environment: the case of the Tasmanian light shipbuilding cluster.

As products and distribution channels become more homogenised, and competing on the basis of price more difficult, integrated marketing communications (IMC) has been identified as the 'new frontier' for effective differentiation (Kitchen and Schultz, 2003). IMC has been advanced as a strategy for differentiation by which a firm sends consistent messages from all contact points resulting in constant message reinforcement, thus maximum impact on the target audience with minimum promotional expenditure (Kliatchko, 2005). Previous research has determined that in the face of global pressures, firms within industry clusters exhibited a natural convergence toward standardised communication practices, thus supporting the efficacy of the broader IMC perspective in the business-to-business context (see Hall and Wickham, 2004). In order to understand how multiple firms within an industry cluster managed their combined IMC functions, this paper explores the roles (and the associated function) adopted by key individuals within the cluster. In total, this research found evidence of three distinct roles (IMC Champion, Government Lobbyist, and Cluster Ambassador) that served to gather, analyse and disseminate marketing information on behalf of the clustered firms.