MA Advertising

Creative Strategy for Advertising:  Based on a real brief provided by a local agency or organisation, this unit will offer you an alternative way of thinking about ‘creativity’ – not as a measure of what we produce, but how we work and how we approach (and define) ‘problems’. Drawing on this new capability, you will test (and, where appropriate, challenge) the conception of ‘the problem’ in the client brief. You will also learn to recognise and avoid ‘conceptual traps’ – such as the danger of untested assumptions – and explore new ways (including behavioural economics and creative disruption) to apply the creative and strategic tools of advertising, branding, campaign planning.

The unit will lead you through the stages of development of a creative brief. You will define the communications objectives and a clear plan for the campaign – including the Major Idea (or ‘Value Proposition’), and appropriate communication strategies, ‘tone of voice’, media vehicle/s for the target audience/s, as well as a media plan and a means to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign in order to achieve these objectives. 

The unit will also prepare you for the IPA Foundation Certificate, demonstrating graduates’ preparedness for industry with an industry-recognised qualification.

Consumer Insights: Develop your understanding of consumer culture and behaviour theory to support advertising activity. Through applied work, you will gain a critical appreciation of the role of theory in generating commercially consumer viable insights and in marketing communications practice. Throughout, the importance of understanding consumer culture and behaviour for the effective development and implementation of advertising is explored and analysed. 

Digital Media Strategies: This unit explores emerging digital technologies and media strategies for advertising and promotional purposes. You will evaluate and assimilate new digital trends in a constantly moving arena. 

Research in Action: Drawing on your research knowledge and experience from undergraduate level, this unit challenges your understanding of academic and applied research in the communications industries. The unit offers you a broad grounding in social science research methods and prepares you with the understanding and skills needed to rigorously and reflexively design, conduct, report and evaluate research to prepare you for your final (dissertation or consultancy) project.

Creative Direction for Advertising: Drawing on the strategies, skills and insights developed in previous units, this unit will extend your critical awareness of, and ability to apply, a range of creative problem-solving strategies and techniques to Creative Ideation in the conception, development and production of effective and affective advertising and branding materials leading to the production of a Creative Portfolio. 

This unit is supported by a series of workshops to provide training in industry software and key digital skills.

Creative Advertising Management: This unit provides you with the opportunity to gain and to demonstrate the knowledge, skills and sensibilities necessary to successfully manage an advertising, branding or corporate communication agency or department in a contemporary global setting. You will reflect critically on the implications of practices intended to shape the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of a wide range of publics in light of the demands of contemporary consumers and citizens, including the tensions between the promotion of consumerism and its consequences for the natural environment in alignment with UN Sustainable Goals. 

You will also engage with, reflect critically on, and be expected to demonstrate competency in the challenges and opportunities involved in managing creative processes and organisations in a context of increasing expectations of corporate environmental and social responsibility. 

In an innovative co-creation learning opportunity, you will collaborate with media production specialists in the production of media materials in accordance with the creative brief developed in the unit Creative Strategy for Advertising. 

Final Project: The Final Project provides you with an opportunity to explore in depth a particular area of advertising and/or branding based on your interest. The process of undertaking original research enables you to further develop your personal and professional skills and provides an opportunity to integrate and apply your learning within the programme. 

The Final Project will offer you a choice between an Academic Dissertation (traditionally the preferred option of students intending to continue their studies with a PhD) or a Consultancy Project (traditionally preferred by those intending to return to industry) in which you will be expected to identify a ‘problem’ within an organisation, a sector, a social or cultural phenomenon, the application or implications of a technology and devise a solution for this, and a means to evaluate the efficacy of your proposed solution.