One Trusted Truth: Building Integrated Marketing Communications That Move People
January 20, 27, February 3, 10, 17, 24, 2027, from 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Integrated Marketing Communications is the deliberate orchestration of every audience touchpoint to reveal and reinforce one trusted truth.
Call it your value proposition, elevator speech, brand promise or simply your message. Companies often stumble around one basic truth: What do you do, who do you do it for, and why should anyone care?
Finding that truth is only the beginning. The real challenge is ensuring that every interaction with your audience works together to reveal and reinforce it.
In this six-week program, participants will learn how to build an integrated marketing communications strategy from the inside out: understanding the organization, identifying its central message, defining and understanding its audiences, selecting the right traditional and digital channels, and bringing it all together in an actionable communications plan. Along the way, we’ll explore practical tools, real-world examples, emerging technologies and AI’s role in both strategy and execution.
The goal isn’t to make every channel say the same thing. It’s to make every channel contribute to the same understanding.
To support continued learning and exam preparation, all modules will be recorded and available for on-demand review following each live session. Upon successfully completing the program and passing the final assessment, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion and a digital badge recognizing their achievement.
In addition, participants will gain access to PRSA’s Online Community, an exclusive forum where they can connect with fellow learners, exchange ideas, ask questions and engage in ongoing discussions throughout their certification journey.
By the end of this program, participants will be able to:
- Identify the strategic foundation for integrated communications by distinguishing business problems from communications problems and defining the central idea, brand promise and proof points that should guide the work.
- Develop an audience-centered messaging strategy that identifies priority audiences, understands what they currently believe, defines what they need to believe or do next, and articulates one trusted truth that can guide communications across channels.
- Design an integrated communications approach across meaningful touchpoints, selecting appropriate paid, earned, shared, owned, digital, physical and interpersonal channels while adapting execution to each medium without sacrificing strategic consistency.
- Build and evaluate an actionable integrated communications plan that connects objectives, audiences, messaging, channels, creative execution, resources and measurement to determine whether communications changed what people think, feel or do.
Target Audience
This program is designed for public relations and communications professionals who want to broaden their perspective beyond a single communications discipline. Whether your work is focused on media relations, corporate communications, content, social media, internal communications, brand or another specialty, your audience experiences all an organization’s touchpoints, not the departments responsible for creating them.Presenter
Schedule
Module 1: The Client and the Big Idea
Wednesday, January 20; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Great communications begin with understanding the business. Participants will learn to distinguish a business problem from a communications problem, examine the competitive landscape, identify what an organization is really selling and uncover the opportunity communications can address. We’ll explore brand pillars and the role of the Big Idea as the strategic and creative concept that gives an integrated program a meaningful direction. Participants also will be introduced to the program-long client project they will develop throughout the course.
Module 2: Finding the One Trusted Truth
Wednesday, January 27; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Before choosing channels or creating content, we need to know what we’re trying to make people understand. Participants will use research and discovery to explore what the organization believes, what its customers believe and where those perspectives intersect. We'll develop an Integrated Communications Strategy Statement (ICSS), brand promise, elevator speech, proof points and messaging architecture. We’ll also explore how AI can interrogate assumptions, challenge thinking and refine messaging without surrendering human judgment.
Module 3: Finding the People Who Matter
Wednesday, February 3; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Effective communication isn’t aimed at everyone. Participants will identify the people most important to an organization’s success including buyers, decision-makers and influencers, and explore their demographics, behaviors, motivations, beliefs and barriers to action. We’ll develop personas and customer journeys while asking two deceptively simple questions: What do they believe today, and what do we want them to believe tomorrow? Participants also will explore responsible uses of AI for audience research and persona development.
Module 4: Designing the Experience: Channels and Touchpoints
Wednesday, February 10; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Audiences experience organizations, not organizational charts. This module examines the full ecosystem of paid, earned, shared and owned communications, from PR, advertising, websites, social media, email and direct mail to events, sales interactions, packaging, internal communications, executive communications and physical environments. Participants will create a Touchpoint Map tracing the places their audiences encounter an organization and evaluate whether one trusted truth survives the journey across them.
Module 5: Breaking Through: Creative Execution in a Fragmented World
Wednesday, February 17; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
Integration doesn’t mean repetition. Participants will explore how a single strategic idea can come alive differently across digital advertising, social content, video, experiential marketing, activations, creators, live selling, unexpected media and emerging channels. We’ll examine how creative executions can speak the language of their individual medium while still contributing to the same audience understanding. Participants also will experiment with AI-assisted creative development and learn to use it as an idea multiplier rather than a substitute for strategy or originality.
Module 6: Bringing It All Together: The Integrated Plan
Wednesday, February 24; 3–4:30 p.m. EST
In the final module, participants will assemble the work developed throughout the program into an actionable integrated communications plan. We’ll connect objectives, audiences, messaging architecture, channel strategy, creative execution, touchpoints, calendars, roles, resources and budgets into a cohesive whole. Participants will develop meaningful measures of success by returning to the question posed earlier in the program: What did our audience believe before, what did we want them to believe or do, and did we move them? Finally, we’ll explore how to present and sell an integrated plan internally, because even a great strategy has to earn organizational support.
Accreditation Information
Participants with their Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) credential will receive 3.0 Renewal CEUs after completing this certificate program. Learn more about Accreditation.
Pricing
Register by Jan. 6 to save $100!
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Categories:
Career: Mid-Level, Certificate Program, Course/Workshop, Format: Live Online, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)