BA (Hons) Advertising

Course details On this course you will usually be taught by a range of staff with relevant expertise and knowledge appropriate to the content of the unit. This will include senior academic staff, qualified professional practitioners, demonstrators, technicians and research students. You will also benefit from regular guest lectures from industry. Year 1 Core units Principles of Advertising: During this unit you will become familiar with the relationship between advertising and other aspects of marketing communications, the functions of advertising agencies, the relationships between advertising agencies and their clients, and how advertising can contribute to brand building. Advertising, Media and Society: You will learn to understand and debate advertising as a socio-cultural phenomenon and cultural intermediary rather than just an organisational function. Advertising Skillset: This unit focuses on a range of tangible skills required for the successful study, pursuit and practice of advertising as an advertising practitioner and scholar. Decoding Advertisements: Here you'll acquire an in-depth understanding of the content and meaning of advertisements, through decoding campaigns. Brand Positioning for Advertising: You will be introduced to the theoretical principles and building blocks of branding, as well as their numerous applications in an advertising context. Applied Advertising Campaigns: Here you'll develop a thorough knowledge of the promotional industries and the roles, organisations, processes, structures and outcomes of advertising and its place within marketing, marketing communications and public relations. Year 2 Core units Insight Development & Account Planning: You will acquire critical planning skills in systematically approaching the challenges and opportunities of building the connection between a brand and its target audience. Digital Communications: This unit aims to provide an understanding of emerging digital technologies and to assess, apply and evaluate the role of digital communications in marketing communications. Developing the Research Imagination: You will get hands on experience of qualitative and quantitative research methods, modes of analysis, interpretation and presentation of research findings to understand how research is done from beginning to end. Media Planning: This unit provides both knowledge and practical application of media research and media planning skills to propose campaign solutions for products and brands. Creativity for Advertising: This unit will assist you to develop the ideas and concepts central to advertising campaigns. Live Advertising Campaigns: This unit provides an opportunity to gain valuable practical experience working on a 'live' project set by an agency practitioner. You will tackle a real advertising problem, in 'real time', using research, creativity and media planning to create your own recommendations. Year 3 The inclusion of a 30-week (minimum) placement is a key feature in helping you to develop your abilities and understanding of advertising in the work environment. It also provides a platform for successful entry into the profession following graduation. Year 4 Core units Academic Dissertation or Consultancy Dissertation: The dissertation offers you the opportunity to become an expert on a topic of particular interest to you, and undertake a study that connects your learning with real-world observations. Advertising Innovation & Enterprise: You will develop an awareness of the role of innovation, enterprise and entrepreneurial management within the advertising industry gaining a real world, global perspective on marketing and advertising strategy. Option units (choose three) Advertising Culture: The unit addresses the sometimes rather marginalised subject area of the influence that advertising has on the broad area of culture. Applied Creativity: This unit will concentrate on developing nonlinear, creative thinking in addressing problems that motivate solution-finding, generating and developing ideas, and implementation (‘design thinking’). Behavioural Economics: This unit will focus on learning's from cognitive neuroscience, and how these can be appropriated for enhanced strategy and creativity. Brand Meaning: You will create your interpretation of brand meaning for a brand of your choice, producing meaning appropriate for a 21st century brand. Consumer Futurising: You will gain a critical appreciation of state of the art thinking within consumer culture studies. Corporate Social Responsibility: You will be introduced to ideas relating to the creation of corporate social responsibility strategies, tactics and initiatives. Corporate Sponsorship: This unit will enable you to analyse the growing importance of corporate sponsorship as a marketing communication tool. Creative Direction & Copywriting: This module will extend your capacity to generate appropriate ideas, concepts, proposals and solutions, to critically assess the quality of your ideas. Data Driven Marketing: This unit provides the forum to critically assess, from a theoretical and professional perspective. Digital Futures: This option allows you to critically investigate the rise, impact and future of digital culture and digital technologies. Environmental Communications: You will explore and be equipped to understand how significant environmental communication is for organisations. Health & Science Communications: You will engage critically with health and science communications concerns. International Fashion Marketing Communications: You will be introduced to the key concepts, models and central philosophies, thinking and practice within the context of international fashion marketing. Media Economics: You will develop a critical understanding of the commercial dynamics of media industries, markets and firms in a period of profound change. Media (in) Equality: You will critique historical development of the representation of race, gender and class in the media from a range of critical perspectives and conceptual frameworks. Persuasion & Influence: The unit will explore theory and practice as it relates to persuasion and influence. Promotion Power & Democracy: You will be exposed to key theoretical ideas from social and critical theory, political economy and political philosophy. Psychology of the Media: This unit introduces you to those major paradigms in individual and social psychology which have been applied to the consumption of media. Relationship Marketing: This unit provides an opportunity for conceptual analysis of the scholarship within relationship marketing and a consideration of the implications of this analysis for relationship marketing practice. Social Communications: This unit will encourage you to create new ways of using promotional communication perspectives, insights and skills for social purposes. Strategic Marketing & Planning: You will develop, assess and implement marketing strategies at the corporate and operational marketing levels in a global organisational context. Transcultural Communications Practices: You will critically evaluate the main theories, concepts and principles of intercultural communication in order to apply them to varied communication practices. Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year. Scheduled learning and teaching activities Contact hours The hours below give an indication of how you can expect to spend your time during each year of this course. You will learn through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops and practical sessions. Your independent learning could include reading books and journal articles, working on group projects, preparing presentations, conducting library research and writing your assignments. Year 1 – 17% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 205 hours Independent learning: 995 hours Year 2 – 18% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 213 hours Independent learning: 987 hours Year 3 - Placement Year 4 - 16% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 185 hours Independent learning: 1015 hours 58% of the course is assessed by coursework Year 1: 67% Year 2: 92% Year 3: 0% (placement) Year 4: 73% Throughout the course you will be assessed by coursework culminating in your final year research project, but you will also undertake group work and written exams. Programme specification Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used. View the programme specification for BA (Hons) Advertising. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance.