Developments in marketing Communications:
- The emergence of marketing communications as both a practice and key commercial function and how it has developed, the function of marketing communications for both the producers and consumers of advertising, the rise of digital media and the wider issues of convergence, differentiation and specialisation.
Theories of Advertising: How advertising works?
- Theories pertaining to advertising – Does advertising work? And, if so, how and why does advertising work?
Media Planning and Media Channels:
- The function of media planning and strategy. Critically examination of the various media channels – television, digital, radio, outdoor, sponsorship, exhibitions, and public relations among others; the issues around the development of a media plan; and the increasing integration of new media as part of media planning. The issues faced by marketing communications practitioners in their efforts to design and establish promotional messages and images in the minds of consumers in the so called ‘digital age’.
Concepting: Creativity and Campaigns
- The advertising development process, the meaning and emphasis placed upon the concept of creativity and the types of campaign appeals applied and developed by advertising agencies.
The Organization of Advertising:
- The challenges faced by those fulfilling the functions of account director, account planning and creative in the context of evolving client-agency relations.
Digital and Social Media:
- The use of digital and social media has grown in functional importance for consumers, commercial enterprises and advertising agencies alike. Here we examine how these different groups use social and digital media, the meanings they attach to them and the issues for marketing functionaries generated by the rise of social media celebrities.
Effectiveness in marketing communications:
- The approaches and rationale for the analysis of marketing communications campaigns prior to and after the launch of the campaign. Efforts to address the effectiveness of both new and existing media platforms in light of client concerns, and in the context of an increasingly competitive media market; and the increasing concern with metrics.
Knowing the Consumer:
- The use of lifestyle data to create social types which are deployed in the creation of advertising and marketing campaigns. How social standards around consumption and other behaviours have changed over time and their implications for the design of marketing communication campaigns.
Advertising across Cultures
- The issues in the development of international promotional and communications strategies and campaigns.
GDPR and marketing: How GDPR affects marketing
- The key areas that GDPR will affect marketing: the personal data that is asked for by marketers; individuals having more control over their personal data and how it is used; and marketers asking individuals for permission as to how they contact them rather than working by assumption.
