Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Advertising and Corporate Communication
General Programme Information
Title of Programme :
Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Advertising and Corporate Communication
Normal Duration :
4 Years
Credits Required for Graduation :
123 Credits
Gerenal info
Programme Characteristics Equip students with problem solving abilities in communication work Break down barriers and merge elements of advertising, PR and corporate communication into teaching Emphasize mindsets of cross-boundary, cross-culture and bypassing convention. Combine solution and creativity in the curriculum.
Aims and Objectives
We aim to cultivate the PR and advertising communication professionals; the programme focuses on nurturing students to develop strategic analysis and problem-solving skills. By developing cross-disciplines training in advertising, PR and corporate communication, this programme emphasizes on the utilization of digital technology, social media, and interactive interface, in order to enlighten students to develop creativity and transcend conventional strategic communication thinking.
Aims of the Programme
Nurture a creative generation of media and communication practitioners of advertising and corporate communication with a mindset of cross-boundary.
Provide an integrated training of practical skills of advertising, public and investor relations to serve and offer communication strategies and solutions to private and public entities.
Bridge communications of all aspects across sectors and territories to foster understanding and the perception of corporate image.
Objectives of the Programme
Training up students capable of working out communication strategies or solutions that integrate advertising and PR elements.
Paving a solid ground for youngsters to enter advertising and corporate communication sectors with a creative mind and problem solving ability.
Enabling students to become a knowledgeable addition to advertising agencies, PR firms, or any firm that offers an integrated solution of advertising and corporate communication from ad-production, event management, PR communication, to concept marketing, etc.
Educating youngsters to develop attributes of cross-culture, cross-sector, and cross-territory to cope with the social context of globalisation and postmodernity.
Course Description
Area: New Age Communication Techniques
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Digital Platforms & Practice
PC
3
The course consists of theory and practice. Concepts of different platforms and their applications are taught in lecture; skills of cross-platform content production is delivered in tutorial session and workshop. Students will be trained to handle multimedia and cross-platform techniques through classwork and assignments. Students can also identify and opt for the appropriate search engine solutions and a mix of digital platform for content composing.
Interactive Communication Theory
PC
3
Alongside an introduction of the concept, model and theory of communication, the course examines how communication channels and various information disseminations nowadays are correlated in the form of “many-to-many” that defy the traditional concept, mode and theory of mass communication. By acknowledging that a shift of mode and practice from mass communication of one-to-many to many-to-many, interactive by nature, is heralded in particular as the so-called new media or mobile communication, students of various communication programmes would be able to incorporate such features of new age communication into their know-how to work out content design, mode of communication and apps communication.
Crossmedia Production Techniques I
PC
3
Since the application of digital technologies converges platforms and formats of communication and information dissemination across various media channels, the techniques of composing media content require multitasking ability to integrate text, sound, visual, still and moving images, and other forms of expression.
This course is an entry module of crossmedia production techniques that delivers the skills of media content production across media specifications for mobile communication. The components of teaching include: making use of all kinds of digital devices to produce content, acquiring the principles and techniques of shooting and editing still and moving images, developing the basic ability of integrating text, sound, still and moving images, and digital effects for online publishing and dissemination on a crossmedia platform.
Final Project (Initial Stage)
PC
3
Students are required to integrate the knowledge and the skills they learned from year 1 to 3 to work out an individual communication project of a high feasibility for implementation. This college tutor will set the interval goals to guide students to work on the right direction to complete the project. During the process, the teacher in charge will provide necessary advice and guidance to help students to overcome technical hindrances and problems. Some practitioners in relevant industries will be invited to share their experience and provide technical advice to students. The working environment and requirements for the project shall be based on a real business context to ensure students experience the working pressure and achievements they will have in the future. Depending on the project nature, students may need to pay frequent visits to a targeted or cooperating corporation / agency for consultation, contextual observation or data gathering. Before the end of the semester, students will need to submit a progress report to the college tutor for an evaluation of performance.
Final Project (Final Stage)
PC
3
To follow the first stage work, students are required to demonstrate to the college tutor how the project goals are met and how every step of their work is up to the middle quartile of professional standards. All through the second semester, the teacher in-charge will provide necessary advice and guidance to help students to overcome technical problems that they may have encountered. Students will need to regularly report to the college tutor for checking how the project schedule can be met as planned and how they manage to rectify errors or tackle inadequacies after the interim assessment.
Visual Culture and Design
PE
3
Based on the knowledge of visual culture, this course helps students to learn the common elements of visual design. First of all, the introduction of theories of visual culture will bring students to an understanding of the meaning and structure of visual works, such as icons, tattoos, images, graphics, paintings, and even the motion picture. Meanwhile the techniques and technologies that have been used to compose a visual art and communicate ideas will be discussed along the visual art history. After that, this course will introduce the big ideas about visual design, which include the block, the colour, the components and the layout of a visual work.
Summer Internship
PE
3
Summer internship provides an opportunity for students to gain “combat experience” through which they can evaluate how their knowledge and skills are in line with the professional standards in various settings of mobile and interactive communication.
The student interns will be mentored and monitored by the industrial supervisors and college tutors all through the internship period. Eligible students will be sent to take up a designated post in various PR, marketing, advertising, promotion, event, media and communication solutions agencies or new media corporations. Through on-the-job practice, students will be able to learn how to work solo and in team and consolidate their professional skills and solution techniques.
Area: PR and Corporate Communications
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Principle and Practice of Public Relations
PC
3
Public relations (PR) aims to disseminate information to create a climate of opinion and image favorable to the communication / marketing goals. Through establishing connections with news and media corporations, the intended message, information and promotion activity shall be delivered to the targeted customers, which means the cultivation and maintenance of the relations with media and customers are the critical task for PR, especially in the information society. This course will introduce the fundamental PR theories and elaborate the PR functions to achieve communication / marketing goals. With regard to the different marketing tools, such as advertising and sales promotion, PR solutions provide helpful circumstances under which a contemporary integrated marketing strategy is formulated.
Internal Communication
PC
3
In a scenario that the business scale and scope of a particular contemporary corporation is growing rapidly, people who are engaged in it need to develop new and proper communication skills to cooperate with each other. From the management perspective, how to make them work willingly and collaborate with each other efficiently depends on fostering an effective internal communication. This course will first introduce the structures of modern organizations and the fundamental management theories. Then, the communication methods and channels inside the hierarchy and organization will be discussed through theory elaboration and case-study.
Public Sector & Public Service Communication
PC
3
Public administrators cannot develop and implement policies alone without effective communication with the target audience before and afterward, especially in a democratic context. The ignorance of people’s voices could lead to misunderstanding and political crisis. On the one hand, to retrieve people’s opinions continually is important for the quality assurance of policy implementation.
On the other hand, the pilot or experiential policy that might cause temporary turbulence, therefore, the intended policy outcomes need a carefully planned communication with the people. It is only delivered by effective communication skills and methods so that the public sector or service is able to work smoothly for the intended outcomes. The issues include how to clarify messages, deliver them in an efficient way, evaluate the communication effects, and collect people’s ideas about them actively.
Public Relations Research & Evaluation
PC
3
A PR plan is used to achieve marketing goals or solve communication problems. After the plan is conducted with a proper budget, how can PR professionals know whether the goals are achieved or the problems are solved? It is therefore essential to find out to what degree the plan is effective, and which part is completed or not. This relies on the research and evaluation methods. As the issue is solved, the PR professionals will find out the advantages and disadvantages of the plan for a critical improvement and quality control. This course will introduce the research methods, which are market and communication solution-oriented for PR plan evaluation and assessment.
Corporate Communication
PC
3
A corporation as a whole has its own personality and mission. Internally, it needs to organize its employees to behave properly under the mission and discipline framework. Externally, it has to deal with clients, customers, governments, and some other stakeholders to achieve its short and long-term goals. The process that the corporation communicates with the internal and external stakeholders is what we call corporate communication. As the significant part of a PR strategy, this course will introduce the theories and practices of the relations among all stakeholders, including the communication problems that a corporation faces and how they can be solved. To negotiate with these stakeholders of conflicting interests is a challenging task, and which is relevant to ethical concern as well.
Introduction to Event Management
PE
3
A successful event brings new customers and helps maintain the regular customers’ loyalty. It also invites the potential customers to try the client’s products or services. Sometimes the event is expected to bring profits to the clients. To host a business event or promotion, such as a concert or a festival, to satisfy all the participants is not an easy task, which needs the PR experts to communicate with different stakeholders and make them collaborate with each other in a short period of time. This course will introduce the required components, which should be viewed as resources for an event and the methods to manage them efficiently.
Area: Communication Strategies and Solutions
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Contextual Advertising & Corporate Communication Solutions
PC
3
An advertisement is the common solution to realize a corporation’s marketing goals. However, it should go together with marketing and communication strategies to maximize the effects, which is termed “integrated marketing communication” (IMC). Therefore, PR and advertising professionals have to know the client’s needs and its social-economic backgrounds first and then propose a customized solution. During the marketing planning process, the negotiation and communication with clients is based on a detailed understanding of the client’s products and brand position in the market. This is so-called “Contextual Solutions” that this course will elaborate. Through case-study, students will learn step by step how advertising integrates with the whole marketing strategy using proper communication skills and tactics.
Advanced Advertising & Corporate Communication Solutions
PC
3
This is an advanced course based on the “JCA309 Corporation Communication”, “JAC103 Advertising: Theory & Practice”, and relevant courses. This course will inform students of the latest PR events and cases of successful solutions to business dilemmas. All through the course, frontline practitioners will be invited to participate in the brainstorming sessions to help students make sense of the business rules and patterns.
Crisis Communication
PC
3
In the risk society, many unexpected events may occur and bring negative impacts on business. As for the modern market, the long commodity chain that a corporation is engaged in with its increasing outsourced production tolerates few mistakes before it might cause horrible damages in the end. Moreover, the internet empowers all the stakeholders to present their opinions, or rumors sometimes, about some products that might trigger a negative spiral to the business. When this situation comes, it is called “crisis” and needs PR personnel to manage it with a proper communication strategy. This course will introduce the types of business crisis, the reasons for them, and the methods a corporation or a public entity adopts to find effective solutions.
Area: Media & PR Writing
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Creative Media Writing
PC
3
The course examines the various strategies of new media script writing and visual storytelling, narrative structure and its principle components (plot, theme, character, imagery, symbolism, point of view). The course will also enable students to apply these strategies to various forms of contemporary media expression that features border-free communication, such as composition for documentary, animation, CG, advertising, web and mobile communication of various purposes, etc.
PR Writing – Chinese & English
PC
3
With the help of media, a PR professional can distribute information efficiently to people across sectors and establish a reliable relationship with the people concerned. Somehow the media has its ethical concerns and operation rules that would not let PR information go public straightforwardly. Therefore, PR-writing is a way to prepare proper messages for media to distribute, which aims to balance business objectives and media operation rules. This course will begin with the common PR writing techniques that satisfy clients’ needs. Besides, the scripts for infomercials and product placements will be introduced. The emergent crossmedia PR texts and its application will also be covered in this course.
Speech Writing & Presentation Skills
PE
3
Giving a spectacular speech is an essential public relations practice. There are abundant great public speeches accumulated in the long history of speech presentation. How to impress your listeners with tones, volumes, words, hints, jokes, and persuade them successfully is the critical issue. This course will examine the secrets and tricks of successful speakers in history to inform students of what makes a good and convincing speech. Different from article writing for newspapers, speech writing must consider how the speaker should perform. Therefore, it is more like script writing in that the actor/actress, stage setting and audience responses must be considered as well.
Area: Advertising & Marketing
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Advertising: Context & Theory
PC
3
The course provides an understanding of the theories of communication, advertising and strategic advertising management. It also covers the discussion of creative advertising execution and media planning process.
Classic Ads: Gimmicks & Brainstorming
PC
3
In the long history of marketing, some ads bought significant success to the advertisers. Not only were they influential to people’s thinking and seeing, they also changed an advertisement epoch. That is to say, more or less, they had created new models for others to follow. This course introduces the evolution of advertisements, especially their turning points. Those classic ads that turned the path of evolution will be highlighted and explained further with respect to their reasons, impacts, and backgrounds. After that the current development of advertisement will be discussed when compared to the classic ads. The students are encouraged to brainstorm about the inadequacy and advantage of contemporary ads.
Advertising & Creative Strategies
PC
3
A successful advertisement can appeal to audiences and motivate them to buy something. However, the fact is that too many advertised messages compete with each other nowadays and most of them fail to impress the targeted customers. In such a severe competitive environment, creativity in advertising is a way to succeed/survive. This course introduces the methods to generate creativities for advertisements, which include the source of creativity, its practice, and the evaluation of its effects. This course also emphasizes creativity application in an all-round media context, such as radio, television, newspaper, magazine, and hybrid new media, in which audiences can perceive the information in different ways.
Viral Advertising & Interactive Marketing
PC
3
For a long time, the word-of-mouth campaign has been one of the most influential methods to change customers’ mind and behavior. However, it is expectable but hardly predictable and controllable for marketers. Thanks to the innovative information technologies that can penetrate into people’s daily lives and monitor their conversations as detailed as possible, marketers can manage the communication process and put some “seeds” in it. These “seeds” could grow automatically, silently, and quickly among the targeted/potential customers, just like the spread of a virus through personal contact. In this viral marketing process, the customers interact with marketers to generate new ideas about the products and services. Whether the ideas are good or bad, they are all useful for companies to improve the offerings and become more competitive in the market. This course will introduce the features, channels, methods and effects of viral marketing.
Concept Marketing
PE
3
Marketing bridges producers and consumers, which means the sales effort not only facilitates the buying decision but also concerns the real need of buyers who may have no idea about it. That is why “concept” marketing or “consumer education” has been the hot issue for contemporary advertising and promotion activities. How to “educate” people of different backgrounds or consumers to anticipate a concept or idea and then be convinced has been challenging. The belief, value, possibility, feasibility, identity or even the way of living that a concept or a substantive product could bear or deliver might become a consumer’s main concern today. In this course, the evolution of marketing strategies will be introduced first. And the key players, marketing functions and the relationship between the two will be accordingly scrutinized. Finally, the skills of communication with consumers or the targeted people to establish brand awareness and perception of idea or concept would be discussed via some case studies.
Area: Advertising, PR & Social Context
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
New Economy: Dynamics & Trends
PC
3
The global economy is changing from manufacturing-based to service-based and digital-based. A New economy emerges as a result of the declining turnover of the traditional sectors in proportion to the GDP. This course will provide a sketch on how the application of digital technology and cyber economy if not the virtual economy has played a role in the transition from “old’ to ‘new”, and the course will also examine the dynamics underlying these changes. In addition, the course will investigate how the new economy has penetrated into our daily lives in the context of the prevalence of ecommerce, mobile communication and web-economy. The discussion of the possible trend and direction of the new economy will serve as a sum-up of the course.
Business Ethics & Governance
PC
3
Compared to the primitive form of business environment, contemporary corporations have to cooperate with many external stakeholders to maintain reputation so as to make sure that their businesses run smoothly. The government sets policies, laws, regulations, and directions with which companies need to comply so as not damage others’ right while pursuing profits. This course will introduce the ethical concerns that a company should consider and the contemporary governance structure that regulates the business environment. The Hong Kong business laws and policies will be discussed thoroughly to help students to make sense of the limitation and opportunity of business activities.
Strategic Communication for Political Parties & Politics
PE
3
Contemporary public and political party activities are affected (in)directly by public opinion, while public opinion is impacted by the media. Understanding how the information shared among people changes politics and policy makers will help the stakeholders make decisions about their communication strategies. From the perspective of a political party, whether it is ruling or not, providing correct or intended information to people and collecting their feedback is critical to a sustainable development. This course will introduce a systematic method to investigate how information flow among people, especially through media platforms. Meanwhile the public opinion monitoring will be taught that helps political parties to evaluate their communication strategies.
Faculty Requirement
Course Title
Type
Credit
Description
Crossmedia Ethics
PC
3
In an era of mobile communication, the traditional codes of practice of media production and communication of all kinds can hardly catch up and deal with crossmedia communication that features “barrier-free”, “free-to-go” and “free-to-do”. This course examines the ethical issues and codes of practice of crossmedia communication, production and publication that bypass or break the conventional baselines. In this course, students will be asked to analyze controversial cases of crossmedia practice by means of moral reasoning. Various problem scenarios that are faced by media practitioners will be addressed to enable students to make sense of what the dilemmas and impact of crossmedia communication are on issues of democracy, press freedom, freedom of expression, privacy, public interest, human rights, patent and copyrights, etc.
