Not long ago, guys in suits were handing over their slick brochures to companies with foosball tables in the lobby, run by guys in sneakers who knew about something called HTML. Then came eCRM, blogs, SMS, RSS, smart phones, vodcasts and virtual everything. And an amorphous mass called social media.

Now the guys in sneakers are wearing suits and insisting that today’s medium of choice is dead because tomorrow’s has already rendered it obsolete.

But smart marketers are noticing that nothing has supplanted anything. Account Executives still connect with customers face-to-face and back up their conversations with documents. They follow up with phone calls, texts and e-mails, and they tweet from the trade show floor about another groundbreaking video.

There is a mind-boggling array of media available to marketers, and each is uniquely suited to convey a specific type of information to a specific audience.

The challenge is to blend these choices to the best advantage. That’s integrated media.

Integrated media can be defined as the art of smartly defining the required channel mix, matching the right information with the right medium directed to the right person.
And Access TCA has mastered the art.

Over its 26-year history, Access has produced innovative, standout exhibits that achieved client goals, but clients wanted more. They wanted Access’s creativity and strategic approach for things like meetings, stage production, pre-show messaging and overall content creation.

Last year, the company invested in top talent and technology to deliver it in-house, acquiring long-time partner M²Creative. It now offers creative and strategic visioning, integrated media development, event and exhibit production and support services.

But it’s not a creative supermarket where clients have to browse the aisles on their own. A one-of-a-kind, Access-led planning process drives to integrated media campaigns built entirely around clients’ desired outcomes.

Access has established a new strategic account team to produce the campaigns, headed by Chief Creative Officer Bruce Morrow in the Atlanta office. Creative Director Lane Andrews manages creative services, and VP Tucker Ramsey leads the account team. An in-house staff of design, technology and marketing professionals executes the creative products. The team comprises a full-service, live communications agency within Access.

Using Outcome Communications™ techniques, the team helps a client define its desired, measureable outcome before considering media choices. That’s because no business actually wants an exhibit or social media campaign for its own sake. What it really wants is to sell more cars or boost attendance at a convention or introduce itself to the public.

Effective use of integrated media requires discipline to resist the siren calls of this medium or that at the expense of others. Limiting the campaign to a trade show, for example, limits opportunities that the thoughtful addition of social media can bring to gather business intelligence, attract visitors and reinforce the experience pre, during and post-show.

The best media mix is determined solely by the desired outcome. The outcome points to the audience and the message, which leads to the creative approach and final execution. “It all comes down to a one-to-one message,” says Andrews. “When a company is able to reach its core audience through specifically requested channels, that’s when your message is received and acted upon.”

Access has perfected this remarkably successful process geared to achieving defined outcomes, and Morrow even wrote a book about it.

And as crucial as the right strategy is to a campaign, the right execution is just as important. Access designers, writers, producers, craftsmen and technology experts boast an enviable level of creativity and innovation. They work as a team to deliver events, “traditional” content, emerging media, exhibits, meetings, scripts and staging that fit together in both messaging strategy and æsthetics.

It all adds up to a truly integrated media campaign that drives to results.

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