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A presentation of the skills necessary to design, implement
and manage advertising campaigns, with an emphasis on planning
and decision making procedures applied to specific advertising
problems.
The objectives of this course will be to understand all that
has to be accomplished to create a campaign for a product
or service for a client company. Students will be expected
to study and analyze existing advertising campaigns, write
the creative briefs, do the planning and research and create
their own campaign with the rationale and presentation of
that work to a review board of several executives. Understanding
and developing positioning insightful, powerful, strategy
and the development of creative thinking in Television, Newspaper
and Magazine Print, Outdoor and Radio will be the end result
of this class. In almost every class we will discuss creativity
and campaigns using materials from agencies, reels, print
ads, radio commercials and some outdoor.
· The Care and Feeding of Ideas: Bill Backer, Times
Books Random House, 1993, (Out of Print) Required.
· A Big Life in Advertising: Mary Wells Lawrence, Alfred
A. Knoph, New York 2002. (Additional reading, on reserve list
at the Library)
· Advertising Educational Foundation website: www.aef.com
· Weekly AD AGE and AD WEEK
· Daily Advertising Column in the New York Times and
the Wall Street Journal
Mid Term Exam: 10%
Second Test: 10%
Final Exam: 20 %
Attendance and Participation in Class: 20%
Homework Assignments: 4 assignments at 5% each or 20%
Presentation: Final Presentation of Campaign 20%
Extra Credit assignments will be given during the semester
to allow each student to improve their performance if they
desire.
Grades will be on a curve but will confirm to the normal standards.
At the end of the semester all efforts will result in a number
for each activity (above) and everyone in the class will be
confidentially ranked on performance from a total possible
100 points excluding extra credit. (90-100 = A; 86-89 = B+;
80-84 = B; 75-79 = C+; 70-74 = C; 65-69 = D; anything less
than 65 = F)
Test and Assignments Description
Midterm Exam: The Midterm will cover all the material covered
in class for the period before the Midterm date.
Second Test: This test will cover all the material covered
from the Midterm to this Second Test date.
Final Exam: The final will cover all the material that is
covered in the entire course.
Student Presentations: One of the most important parts
of the grade. Students will be grouped into teams and they
will be responsible for an Advertising Plan with emphasis
on the analysis to arrive at the correct and most leverageable
strategy, media selection and the most impactful creative
campaign executed in several media forms. We will attempt
to have some outside experts participate in the evaluation
the campaign presentations. Originality, teamwork, creativity,
thoroughness, and presentation skills will be the major grading
criteria. While some work on the presentation will take place
in class, you must allow for out of the class regularly scheduled
team meetings to complete this most important assignment.
Attendance and Participation: Students will be expected
to know what is going on in the advertising world. Reading
the press and being knowledgeable about the subject of advertising
and class work covered in previous sessions will drive the
class discussions.
Homework Assignments: Students will be given homework
assignments and they will be graded. They will be difficult
and involved. Students should not underestimate the homework
assignments or their importance as a portion of their final
grade.
Extra Credit Assignments: Students will be given several
extra credit assignments as they come up during the semester.
All students will be given extra credit for a paper on the
assigned book for the semester.
Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty:
College Policy: Cheating and plagiarism subvert both the purpose
of the College and the experience students derive from being
at Iona. They are offenses which harm the offender and the
students who do not cheat. The Iona community, therefore,
pledges itself to do all in its power to prevent cheating
and plagiarism, and to impose impartial sanctions upon those
who harm themselves, their fellow students, and the entire
community by academic dishonesty. When a case of academic
dishonesty surfaces, a report will be filed with the dean
of Arts and Sciences. In the case of a second instance, a
student may be suspended from the College. Students may appeal
first to the professor who discovered the instance; second,
to the department chair; and third, to the Dean of Arts and
Sciences. The decision of the dean is final. Students may
appeal to the Provost if the suspension is five class days
or less. The student handbook describes the procedures of
adjudication.
General Course Policies:
Attendance is mandatory and missing class is unacceptable.
Students are expected to arrive on time. Missing more that
two unexcused classes over the semester will result in being
dropped from the course or the loss of one grade level; i.e.
"A" to "B". If you are going to be absent
and have an excuse, it is important that you discuss it with
the Professor directly or email notification beforehand.
Due dates for assignments will be strictly enforced.
Misspelling of Company names such as Coca-Cola or McCann-Erickson
on assignments or presentations will be cause for the work
to be resubmitted. Students should understand early that this
is a serious error in the eyes of advertisers/clients.
Exam questions will be diverse, true/false, multiple choice,
short answer and essay.
Week One: Introduction to Advertising Campaigns. In
the first class we will get to know each other, and discuss
what is expected. For much of this class we will discuss key
advertising campaigns that are in consumer and business magazine
print. We will begin discussing the three basic types Imagery
used in advertising campaigns. The image of the user, the
company, and the product or service. Homework #1 will be assigned.
Week Two: All advertising campaigns must have a benefit.
This is the theme of the course. Students will bring in existing
campaigns that they have collected and discuss them in class.
They will orally analyze the ads from both a strategic and
executional point of view and we will discuss the benefit
directed to the audience. Since we will be working with print
in most cases we will review print as a creative medium. Homework
#2 will be assigned.
Week Three: Insightful Advertising Strategy. There will
be a lecture on Advertising Strategy. We will discuss how
to analyze the Category, the Company, and the Consumer as
a necessary ingredient to advertising strategy. Popular theory
for the development of strategy will also be discussed. Homework
# 3 will be assigned.
Week Four: The Creative Person. We will discuss the
difference between creative people and others. We will explore
the rumors and what is basically true and not true. Frank
DeVito co-founder of DeVito Fitterman Advertising and previously
Vice Chairman Creative Director worldwide at Lintas Worldwide
and Chris DeVito Creative Director DeVito Fitterman will come
to guest lecture this class. They will discuss how the creative
person looks at the world differently and some of their campaigns.
Week Five: Writing the Creative Brief. Students will
be given the components of a Creative Brief. They will understand
the importance of this instrument in creating outstanding
advertising. We will also discuss benefit statements and their
role in advertising briefs. Homework # 4 will be assigned.
We will also review the material and the midterm exam, please
be advised that all material covered in classes up to this
date is fair game on the test.
Week Six: The Midterm Exam. Since the exam will not
take up the entire class the first part of class will be a
lecture on two great advertising campaigns and how they were
developed: Miller Lite and Diet Coke. (Everybody will be expected
to read the Backer book by the midterm exam and it will be
included as part of the test.)
Week Seven: The Advertising Plan Outline. This class
will be devoted to setting up the advertising plan and the
resulting campaign. Students will be assigned to either two
or three groups depending on the size of the class and they
will have a chance to organize their team effort. Client Briefs
will be passed out for study and the content and stimulus
for the presentations to follow.
Week Eight: The Need for Integration in Today's campaigns.
Campaigns are not longer allowed to exist in isolation.
They must work with Public Relations, Direct Marketing, Interactive,
Sales Promotion, Events and the like. They also have to be
effective on a global scale. We will discuss these issues
and how they will relate to the student's team efforts to
develop their group advertising campaign.
Week Nine: Clients. We will discuss clients and how
they are structured and how they relate to advertising campaigns.
How do you get them approved, how do they input their ideas
etc. We will also attempt to have a client come to talk to
the class about his experience with great campaigns.
Week Ten: How We Test Campaigns. We will review the
common methods to test strategy and campaigns. We will attempt
to have a Research or Planner give us a guest lecture on the
latest techniques used to finalize a current campaign.
Week Eleven: A case history of Digital and Compaq
will be discussed which will incorporate all the strategy
and creative development for these enormous companies in high
technology.
Week Twelve: The Second Test. This exam will not take
up all the time we have for class so before the test we will
discuss new business in general and how a speculative campaign
will affect the outcome of a pitch. As in the case of the
midterm examination, this test will cover everything we have
discussed in class since the Midterm.
Week Thirteen: Field Trip to an Advertising Agency
to meet with the creative people The hope is that we will
go to a small creative agency, or one of the agencies that
is noted for creativity. Some discussion on a career in advertising
will be part of this class.
Week Fourteen: Final Presentations to the group of
executives We hope to gather some executives who will comment
on the plans. This should give drama and reality to the presentations,
as well as some expert input to the content.
Week Fifteen: Review of the entire semester and Discussion
of General Presentation Skills. Using the previous week's
presentations as a stimulus, we will discuss the role of presentation
skills in serving up the creative product to the audience.
Week Sixteen: Final Exam will cover the entire course
everything that was touched on in class, in assignments, and
in the readings.
Steve Norcia, aef
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