Creation of Advertising Messages (20494)
Degree/study: Bachelor's Degree in Advertising and Public Relations
Year: Third
Term: Second
Number of ECTS credits: 4 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 125 hours
Teaching language or languages: Catalan / Spanish
Teaching Staff: Fidel Del Castillo, Nacho Gil, Fernando Maciá and Nati Tomás
1. Presentation of the subject
The Creation of Advertising Messages course is directly linked to the Theories and Techniques of Ideation in Advertising course, taught during the first year. During that course, students started studying advertising creativity. Now, they will learn how to carry out actions and products aimed to the different media disseminating those messages.
Teachers propose continuity tasks so students can practice in this field. The purpose is that they can finish the course with the skills required to be able to adjust their creative output to the criteria that regulates the professional environment.
2. Competences to be attained
General skills
Working on individual creation and in-group creation.
Tasks self-planning through a working calendar.
Delegating and assuming assignments in a team.
Other's work assessment and one's work self-assessment.
Showing and presenting projects.
Specific skills
1. Perfecting the skills for creating concepts and turning them into advertising messages.
2. Incorporating assessment criteria for advertising creative products, either one's products or someone else's.
3. Distinguishing the expression of suitable messages for different supports and media.
4. Distinguishing suitable registers for every objective public.
5. Distinguishing suitable communication tones and styles for specific products and brands.
6. Operating within hybrid, fragmentised and atomized contexts, using the required multidisciplinary resources to achieve so.
7. Understanding the field's rules and the social and ethical responsibility implied by the creativity exercise in the professional environment.
8. Expanding one's imagination, shrewdness and wit, in order to argue, move and seduce different objective publics in different communication spaces.
3. Contents
The fact that this course approaches the professional exercise implies that the tasks' specific contents are unknown to the students until the moment the teacher announces them in class, the same way a creative executive wouldn't know his brief until he is told by his client or boss. Therefore, it would be counterproductive from a methodological point of view to anticipate the tasks' features.
Besides, the briefs are pretended to be as updated as possible, which implies getting and writing them while taking into account the prevailing advertising tendencies and technological, economical and social circumstances of the moment when the task must be done.
The contents are cumulative. The course will be started by proposing creation exercises for a specific media (radio, TV, press, magazines, internet, selling point, etc). As the course continues, these messages will have to be simultaneously applied to more than a media or support. Finally, close to the end of the course, a complete advertising campaign will have to be articulated and spread in different media: a final project that must adequate the concept expression or campaign core to suitable messages for every channel.
4. Assessment
The final mark is the addition of these percentages:
- Attendance + active participation: 20%
- Continuity tasks: 40%
- Final project: 40%
In order to get a pass in the course, all tasks must be handed in. According to the teacher's consideration, if one task is not correct enough it will have to be redone.
If a student doesn't follow the course or doesn't hand in all the tasks, or if his final performance shows no achievement of the required skills, teachers can ask him to do the exercises they consider necessary for the following rounds of exams.
5. Bibliography and teaching resources
5.1. Basic bibliography
Obradors, M., Creatividad y generación de ideas, Aldea Global, 2007
Ricarte, J.Mª, Creatividad y comunicación persuasiva, Barcelona, Aldea Global, 1998
Young, J.W., Una técnica para producir ideas, Madrid, Eresma, 1982
5.3. Teaching resources
www.estrategiasdepublicidad.com
6. Metodology
This is an attendance-required course, based on doing continuity tasks that, as previously explained, simulate the professional work of creative executives. There are three types of tasks:
1. In-class short-term tasks
Attendance is compulsory. The teacher assigns a task to be handed in at the end of the session. They can be done individually, in couples or in groups.
2. In-class and out of class medium-term tasks
The teacher assigns a task and students start doing it during the session. They continue the task autonomously and hand it in on a later session. In some cases, besides handing in the task, a presentation of the task to the rest of the classmates must be done. The tasks can be done individually, in couples or in groups.
3. In-class and out of class long-term tasks
The course's final project is requested (in class if possible) by a client or an active professional. It is a real briefing, commissioned by the client to an agency or developed by the professional. Students must create a complete campaign meeting the client's requests, hand it in and present it on the last day of class. Students will work on it in class, throughout several teacher- monitored sessions, and autonomously as well.
The project must be done in groups.
7. Planning of activities
|
Week
|
IN-CLASS |
CONTENTS |
OUT OF CLASS |
|
Week 1
|
Session 1: Presentation of the subject. Task 1 statement and explanation. Session 2: Handing task 1 in. |
Program, calendar, methodology and subject's assessment. Task 2 briefing and context material. |
Working on Task 1
Working on Task 2 |
|
Week 2
|
Session 1: Working on Task 2. Session 2: Handing task 2 in. |
Task 3 briefing and context material. |
Working on Task 2 Working on Task 3.
|
|
Week 3
|
Session 1: Working on Task 3. Session 2: Handing Task 3 in. |
Task 4 briefing and context material. |
Working on Task 3 Working on Task 4
|
|
Week 4
|
Session 1: Working on Task 4. Session 2: Handing Task 4 in. |
Task 5 briefing and context material. |
Working on Task 4 Working on Task 5
|
|
Week 5
|
Session 1 and 2: Working on Task 5. |
|
Working on Task 5 |
|
Week 6
|
Session 1: Handing Task 5 in. Session 2: Handing Task 6 in.
|
Task 6 briefing and context material.
Task 7 briefing and context material. |
Working on Task 6
Working on Task 7
|
|
Week 7
|
Session 1: Working on Task 7 Session 2: Handing Task 7 in.
|
|
Working on Task 7 |
|
Week 8
|
Session 1: Handing briefing in. (Assignment) for the final project. Session 2: final project. |
Final project briefing and context material.
|
Working on the final project Working on the final project |
|
Week 9
|
Session 1 and session 2: final project
|
|
Working on the final project |
|
Week 10
|
Session 1 an session 2: final project
|
|
Working on the final project |
|
Week 11 |
Session 1 |
|
Handing in the final project and presentation in class |