(All courses are 3 credits, except IMC 830)
IMC 500: IMC Principles and Practices
This is the foundational IMC course. It reviews the functional marketing communications areas such as advertising, PR, sales promotion, business communications and writing, and direct response in terms of their strengths and weaknesses in an integrated program. This course focuses on strategy and planning, with students concentrating on integrating targets, timing, and message strategies. It provides an overview of both U.S. and global marketing communication practices.
IMC 520: Marketing Communications Research
This is an introductory course in the field of marketing research designed to provide the student with an overview of the purposes, procedures, and applications of marketing research. Students will learn not only to use market research but to do market research, through a step-by-step marketing research process. Students will learn how to obtain and use secondary data and syndicated information services, and to design and conduct both qualitative and quantitative primary marketing research. Finally, basic statistics, data analysis, and reporting, as well as how to use statistical software, will be studied.
IMC 610: Financial Tools for IMC and the International Economy
This course provides expert training on the financial tools with which the IMC executive must work while processing the translation of cold numbers into skilled communication. By offering a background in economics, time value of money, capital budgeting, financial markets and quantitative analysis, this course will prepare the IMC executive to oversee and make informed financial and budgetary decisions regarding an organization's IMC plan on the national and/or international scale.
IMC 600: Strategic Marketing Management for IMC
This course is designed to develop decision-making skills by examining selected topics including marketing strategy, analysis of strategic marketing opportunities, dominant themes in strategic marketing planning, and the design, implementation, and control of strategic marketing plans. Also, this class examines segmentation procedures, competitive analyses, portfolio lectures, case analysis, and a computer-based simulation of strategic marketing management.
IMC 560: New Media: Digital Communications for IMC
The Web has become an increasingly important communications tool. Not only must IMC professionals present their information in a credible fashion, they must also present it in an easy-to-use, well-organized fashion. This course will look specifically at digital communication as it influences the IMC practitioner, ensuring students learn how to design and manage corporate websites in order to best meet an organization's goals as well as the needs of various Web audiences. Students will be encouraged to incorporate animation and video into their final website project and to fully demonstrate their ability to utilize the latest technology in website design.
IMC 620: IMC Creative Message Strategy
This class focuses on strategic thinking and critical skills in the development of a variety of marketing communications messages. Students will learn to develop strategy, to evaluate creative work, and to maintain strategic continuity across media. Students will also position products in terms of the competitive situation, the circumstances of use, and the cultural environment.
IMC 740: The Practice of Public Relations
This course places the IMC student in a PR decision-making role in which the primary requirement is to think in planning and program-execution terms. Further, this course examines researching and assessing the public relations environment, establishing goals and objectives, selecting appropriate courses of communications action, implementing those communications programs, and evaluating performance. Finally, the course examines the use of computer technology as it applies to the PR executive and the IMC practitioner.
IMC 700: Fieldwork
An on-site analysis of the marketing communications program of an organization. Students will do field research from within an organization to determine marketing communications practices and procedures, analyze the current marketing communications and organizational situation, and then make recommendations as to how the total marketing communications program can be improved.
IMC 800: IMC Cases and Campaigns
A course in IMC management that uses the case method to analyze and evaluate IMC strategy and planning. The course will use real-life examples, both domestic and international, from service marketing, industrial marketing, consumer products, and non-profit organizations to give graduate students an opportunity to analyze and critique the use of IMC strategies and practices from a global perspective.
IMC 830: IMC Campaign Project (0 credit hours)
This IMC campaign project is a fully-developed integrated marketing campaign with strategy and tactics based on primary and secondary research conducted by the student. A plans book including creative executions is formally presented to a faculty committee in fulfillment of the final requirement for graduation.
Elective Course Descriptions
IMC 570: Traditional and Online Research for IMC
This class emphasizes the fundamentals of marketing and communications research including both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research class also focuses on evaluating messages and determining their delivery. Students will analyze primary and secondary data to solve marketing communications problems and address the special problems created by large databases. Emphasis is on analytical technology and multivariate methods. The course stresses strategic use of analysis through application and project examples.
IMC 580: Internet Advertising and Social Media
Consumer adaptation of new communication applications and technologies (social websites, blogging, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, consumer-generated-content development) is changing the advertising landscape. This course will focus on applying strategic and creative thinking to creating marketing messages in the digital space, and students will learn to create marketing strategy for the digital space. The course will review current research on consumer perception of advertising in the digital space and explore case studies from companies making headway in online communication. Students will develop a fundamental understanding of how consumers use the digital space to enhance their lives, work and relationships. This course will expand upon the concepts of website creation and copywriting best practices, web user experience, website analytics, online advertising campaigns, social media and search engine optimization presented in IMC 560: New Media.
IMC 630: Media and Communications Planning and Strategy
Advertising and the mass media landscape are changing, making the decisions of how, when and where to spend media budgets ever more important. This course aims to provide students with both a theoretical and practical understanding of media measurement and testing, media allocation strategy, media buying, media negotiations, campaign tracking, buy execution and post-buy analysis. In addition to examining academic research on the topic, current industry trade research will be utilized to provide students with insight into the day-to-day challenges and changes facing media practitioners. The course will take a logical approach and guide students through essential basics such as understanding the current media landscape and its context in comparison to historical media planning assumptions. It will educate students on media measurement standards (reach, frequency, CPM, CPA), and available media options (traditional: print, radio, television, out of home, and digital/online).
IMC 650: Public Relations Seminar
This course provides a comprehensive analysis of public relations practices for the IMC practitioner in a global society. Topics include how to research, define, develop, and deliver an effective public relations campaign; use social media platforms for brands, work with for-profit and not-for-profit organizations; and manage and mitigate crisis communications situations on the local, regional, national and/or international levels. Course pedagogies include case studies, guest speakers, simulations, and live-client consulting. Finally, the course examines the use of computer technology and dialogue through social media as they apply to the public relations executive and the IMC practitioner.
IMC 660: Advertising, Internet Marketing and Publicity Management
This course introduces the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications as applied to the specific marketing elements of advertising and broadcast media, consumer and trade promotions, direct marketing, public relations and packaging/point-of-purchase tactics. Students learn to research, establish, and manage advertising campaigns, including evaluating those campaigns. In addition, students investigate how to use sales promotion to bring behavioral change in the contexts of consumer and trade promotion. Students learn how to generate and manage publicity.
IMC 670: Broadcast Management for IMC
This course explores the role of broadcasting as it applies to the Integrated Marketing Communications mix. Students will examine the organization and business operations of broadcast (radio, television, cable, network affiliate or independent) media. The course will focus on the range of issues faced by broadcast managers. These include operations; personnel recruiting, training, and evaluations; broadcast skills development; ratings; budget control; and use of new technologies and planning.
IMC 680: Advertising Copywriting and Design Direction
The purpose of the course is to prepare students for the creative process, with an emphasis on copywriting and managing the visual arts aspects of creative marketing communications. The primary focus of this course will be the executional phase of the creative process: the concepting, the trial-and-error, the intense executional discipline, the reworking, polishing and refinement, and the final presentation of ideas to either a creative director or a client.
IMC 690: Professional IMC: A Campaign Approach (Oxford/China)
Public relations and IMC practitioners must offer organizations more than highly refined skills in writing, publications, video, and events. To earn respect and leadership responsibility, practitioners must combine communications proficiency with management principles to plan, organize, coordinate and control a program of activities that supports the mission of the entire organization. Students will learn how to effectively communicate in a wide variety of contexts: crisis communications management, multi-media presentations to the public, interviewing, press conferences, mediated debates, small groups, and informal decision making on the International scale. In this course students will focus on a structured approach to organizational problem solving.
IMC 720: Advertising Design
This course examines the role of design in advertising development, building on the advertising foundation of IMC 620: Creative Message Strategy. Emphasis is placed on utilizing design theory and combining advertising copy and graphic elements to achieve the goals set forward in the creative strategy, and create an emotional connection with the consumer that will result in changing that consumer’s behavior. Course topics include: principles of advertising design composition; effective use of color, typography and other design elements; consumer behavior, perception and motivations; the design demands of each medium; the role of advertising tone and the controversial topic of taste; and creating brand recognition. Students will produce advertising executions for a variety of media.
IMC 760: Ethical Issues in Mass Communication and Business
This course examines manipulative techniques beyond appropriate persuasion related to s integrated marketing communications activities. Students will study ethical theories, apply theories to communications and marketing decision-making, and develop frameworks to support ethical decision-making. Students will study case histories, analyze the ethical problems, and make decisions based on solid, ethical principles. Students will examine the professional choices requiring the IMC practitioner to have well-established decision-making skills, moral reasoning capability, and a strong sense of economic and political awareness. Through a close analysis of contemporary case studies and current thought on business choices, attitudes, behaviors, and professional and public accountability, students will be able to establish their personal professional code of ethical conduct.
IMC 780: The Legal Environment of Business and Mass Communication
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with an introduction to the legal system, focusing on some important issues affecting business and the media. This course recognizes the impact of law on management, marketing decision-making, and mass communications fields. Major U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the areas of prior restraint, libel, privacy, free press-fair trial, and obscenity are considered.
IMC 820 – Organizational Structure and Behavior
This course explores ways to change organizations, ranging from start-up companies to established institutions, to meet the demands of ever-changing environments. Areas of in-depth discussion include the theoretical framework of organizational development and change, models of planned organizational change, barriers to implementing change and ways to overcome them, and the roles of the change agent and/or consultant. Students will gain skills in organizational entry and contracting, and will gain a better understanding of the challenge of change through analysis of the theory, research, and practice of IMC development.