In common with all courses at the University of the Arts London, this course is credit rated. Years one and two must be passed to enter into year three. Your degree is attained through full completion of the third year. Your degree classification is determined by the relative level of grades attained in the third year.

Year 1

Units summary:

• Introduction to Advertising: Industry, Culture and Practice (20 credits)
• Launch (20 credits)
• Agency Life (20 credits)
• Pitch (40 credits)
• Advertising: Theories and Contexts (20 credits)

Introduction to Advertising: Industry, Culture and Practice: This unit aims to introduce you to your course and its subject specialism as well as to effective learning and studentship at undergraduate level. It will orientate you to the practices and knowledge-base needed to understand your discipline and help you to develop your skills for independent & collaborative learning, reflection and your own self development.

Launch: Every Advertising Agency tries to define and hone its own particular view of the world. The Saatchi brothers, Dave Trott, John Hegarty and David Abbott had their own singular approach to the business of advertising. In Launch you will do exactly the same, setting up your own Advertising Agency, learning as a team how to develop a set of working practices and encouraging everyone to nurture or create their individual and team voice.

Agency Life: This unit will introduce you to the histories, cultural backgrounds and working practices of agencies operating in the global advertising universe. Through investigation and exploration, you will discover how they work, what they do and why they do it and, using practice-research, use their methods, procedures and techniques.

Pitch: Build on the skills and techniques you have learned in Launch. All your practical and theoretical research knowledge, understanding of advertising and communication skills will be brought to bear on developing a project that defines the Agency you launched in Autumn term.

Advertising: Theories and Contexts: This unit introduces you to histories, theories and debates which relate to the field of advertising. It will focus on the development of twentieth and twenty-first century ideas in advertising, media and visual communications and explore the common themes and cross-fertilisations that occur between theory and culture.

Year 2

This year introduces you to the psychological and consumer behavioural aspects that underpin advertising communications, how they relate back to practice and give you the technological tools to future proof. Year two is an important step to enabling you to formulate ideas for your dissertation in the third year. Tutors will be on hand to help you develop the ideas that will eventually form your dissertation.

• Creative Futures (20 credits)
• Advertising Futures (20 credits)
• Consumer Insight (20 credits)
• Creative Strategy (20 credits)
• New Media and Digital Cultures (20 credits)
• Collaborative Project (20 credits)

Creative Futures: This unit is designed to give you the skills you need to consistently generate and showcase your creative and strategic ideas. This is in an industry undergoing massive changes as technologies rise and fall; one in which media and cultural practices evolve and shift and clients become increasingly risk averse. As creative-strategists or strategic-creatives, you need to find ever more meaningful and creative ways to communicate. Creative Futures looks at models that can help you.

Advertising Futures: The aim of Advertising Futures is to future-proof your creative skills as a creative, for example as a content creator, advertising artist, art director or copywriter. It will give you the critical and practical tools to become self-sufficient in realising your creative concept through to the finished article, by engaging with cutting edge media and utilising them in the formulation of ideas for advertising communication.

Consumer Insight: This unit will introduce students to a wide array of research methods including qualitative, quantitative and ethnography.

Creative Strategy: In this unit, you will explore social media, multimedia and integrated plus interactive media. You will be crafting, planning, executing and evaluating a complete digital campaign.

New Media and Digital Cultures: The aim of this unit is to broaden the student’s perspective of how advertising fits into a larger mediated and digital framework by providing conceptual tools that will forge concrete connections with the other units taught in the BA (Hons.) Advertising in Year 2.

Collaborative Project: You will be given the opportunity to take part in a collaborative project with students on other courses or with real clients on live projects and in competitions when available.

Year 3

In year three you will develop your individual practice and consolidate learning outcomes in the culmination and creation of a portfolio of work and dissertation.

• Creative Entrepreneurship (20 credits)
• Dissertation (40 credits)
• The Big Idea (60 credits)

Creative Entrepreneurship: This unit is about entrepreneurship, enterprise and professional networking. Establishing a professional presence within advertising networks and associations requires focused effort and a particular skillset.

Dissertation: This unit provides you with the opportunity to utilise the knowledge and analytical skills acquired in relation to the critical and contextual study of advertising.

The Big Idea: You will work on a single major project developing a content-led creative/strategic solution for a specific client’s management issue. To do that you will engage in ‘practice-research’ – using practice to answer your (and your client’s) research question.

Teaching and learning methods

• Personal Tutorials
  Lectures
• Seminars
• Critiques
• Visits
• Workshops
• Holistic Learning

Assessment methods

• Team projects
• Team Portfolios
• Advertising Pitch
• Presentations
• Creative project / artefact
• Reflective diary
• Written assignments

Course structure

The information outlined is an indicative structure of the course. Whilst we will aim to deliver the course as described on this page, there may be situations where it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, for example, because of regulatory requirements or operational efficiencies, before or after enrolment. If this occurs, we will communicate all major changes to all applicants and students who have either applied or enrolled on the course.

Please note that due to staff research agreements or availability, not all of the optional modules listed may be available every year.

In addition, the provision of course options which depend upon the availability of specialist teaching, or on a placement at another institution, cannot be guaranteed. Please check this element of the course with the course team before making a decision to apply.

Webpage updates

We will update this webpage from time to time with new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you have any questions, use our register your interest form.