JOUR 3201: Principles of Strategic Communication: Advertising
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Basic Information
Prerequisites
Course Description
Expected Competencies
Competency Goals
Assignments and Activities
Workload
JOUR 3201: Principles of Strategic Communication: Advertising (3 credits)
- Multi-section course.
- Lecture two or three times a week.
Prerequisites
- Major or minor status
- JOUR 3004W (or concurrent registration)
Course Description
Jour 3201 is a skill-based course designed to teach professional strategic communication students the fundamentals of advertising and IMC (integrated marketing communication). It is designed to provide a foundation to prepare students for the advanced course in such areas as creative development, media planning, and advertising campaign management.
Expected Competencies
Students who enroll in 3201 should have taken Jour 3004. All students should bring with them the following skills:
- An understanding of different media forms.
- An ability to find and evaluate appropriate sources of information that provide market information, audience characteristics, advertising spending information, industry trends, and societal issues.
- Knowing existence of major syndicated information sources and where to find them. Major syndicated information sources include SMRB, MRI, ABC Reports, Arbitron, Nielsen, SRDS, CMR Multi-Media Service, and Market Share Reporter.
- Adequate knowledge of the fundamentals of English mechanics, including sentence structure, spelling and punctuation, so that written expression is at least professionally competent.
- Basic numeracy skills as they relate to evaluation and selection of information – this includes being able to evaluate information generated by a poll or information that includes basic statistical claims
Competency goals for 3201
This course teaches students the following three basic and interrelated skills:
An understanding of advertising and advertising principles
- Understanding the definition and role of advertising in the larger context of strategic communication.
- Gaining knowledge on history of advertising.
- Understanding current trends in advertising.
- Understanding global perspectives of advertising.
- Correctly using various concepts in advertising.
- Basic understanding of advertising industry and agency structure.
Understanding and application of advertising strategy and best practices
- Gaining basic knowledge of major syndicated information sources such as SMRB, MRI, Arbitron, Nielsen, CMR Multi-Media Service, and Market Share Reporter (including where to find them and how to use the data).
- Improving numeracy skills as they relate to evaluation and selection of information – this includes being able to interpret SMRB and MRI reports.
- Understanding procedures involved in the development and evaluation of advertising campaigns.
- Identifying and analytically defending good advertising practices.
- Critically analyzing advertising campaigns.
Introduction to social and economic perspectives of advertising
- Understanding the role of advertising in the economy and society.
- Understanding advertising regulations.
- Discussing various ethical and legal issues in advertising.
Assignments and activities
Typical assignments and activities include project assignments (individual or group work) and exams. For project assignments, students are asked to analyze existing advertising campaigns, or to analyze existing campaign and develop/propose strategies. The following is an example:
Project (example 1): Advertising (IMC) strategy evaluation and development project
Describing the core customers of the product category and the leading brands.
Assembling a collection of examples of advertising for competing brands.
Describing and evaluating the advertising (a) strategies, (b) ideas, and (c) executional approaches used by the competing brands.
Proposing a range of possible advertising strategies and defending one of the strategies as most appropriate for use at this time.
Preparing a creative work plan for the chosen strategy.
Developing roughs (in comp form) of three original print ads that are based on the creative work plan that was developed.
Developing media strategy recommendations concerning targeting, reach, and frequency for the creative strategy.
Project ( example 2): Advertising strategy analysis and evaluation
Identifying advertisements for a single product, service, or cause for which the advertising of two separate campaigns is significantly different, but the product is not significantly different between the two campaigns.
Describing and evaluating major differences between two campaigns in terms of the advertising (a) strategies, (b) ideas, and (c) executional approaches.
Describing the market situation, core customers of the product, and competition.
Assembling a collection of examples of advertising for two campaigns.
Finding commentary about each campaign’s strategy.
Providing collective opinions and judgments about the two campaigns based on collected evidence and on learning about effective advertising in the course.
Exams
- Two or three exams will be used.
- The exam format is a combination of closed-ended and open-ended questions.
Workload
Students should expect to spend about 9 hours in learning efforts per week (inside and outside of class) to satisfactorily complete this course. Basic tasks include:
- 20-30 pages of reading course texts (50 percent of workload).
- Working individually or in a team on secondary data collection and analysis (using library and online resources) (30 percent of workload).
- Writing a term project report and making an oral presentation material (20 percent of workload).