Marketing Communications

Marketing Communications is a degree where you’ll learn to create ‘ideas that work’. The marketing industry covers a wide variety of disciplines, including advertising, social content creation, brand activations, planning and PR, and employs a wide range of skills from art direction, copywriting, design, strategy and content creation.

You will develop a range of skills based on practices established by real life creative agencies, by getting hands on experience of developing creative concepts, and what it takes to communicate them effectively.

Our industry award winning tutors have considerable marketing communications industry experience spanning advertising, brand development, creative direction, copywriting and strategy. They will support you to learn how creative communication works, through strategic and insight-based thinking, that will connect brands to consumers in an interesting and meaningful way. Tutors work with students giving constructive feedback, and nurturing creative potential.

We currently work with leading national and international agencies from Leeds to Lisbon and London to New York. You will work on live briefs and pitch to agency partners, ones we have worked with include McCann, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, BBH, Dentsu, Havas Lynx, AKQA, Social Chain, Creative Race and TBWA. In a constantly evolving creative world, such links make sure our course reflects what is going on in industry and culture right now.

You’ll have the opportunity to enter prestigious and internationally renowned awards such as D&AD New Blood, Cannes Future Lions and the DMA Breakthrough Award. Our connections can lead to creatives from top agencies offering mentoring, work crits, live briefs and the opportunity for work experience.

Creative thinking to produce ‘ideas that work’ is at the core of what we do. We encourage students to find the aspect of the industry that they feel most interested in, and pursue a path into it through first-hand experience of working with inspirational industry creatives. We focus on employability, so you will develop a broad range of transferable skills, that will help you produce the strongest possible portfolio of work to land your ideal job.

Year One: You will learn about why brands exist and how they behave. How they communicate their values, and what it takes to move the masses. From this, you will learn how, and why, marketing communications plays an important role in bringing brands to life. You will explore the fundamentals of marketing communications, through an awareness of new and traditional media channels. And learn how to think in strategic and divergent ways, to create ideas that work to answer specific business challenges.

Year Two: In your second year, you will explore the different roles within the marketing communications industry, and start to develop your own preferred practice. Across a range of creative industry, tutor, and self-set briefs, you will develop your creative identity by exploring different professional roles from art director, copywriter, strategist, content creator planner, and many more. There are a broad range of career paths within the marketing communications industry. Through fearless experimentation, this is where you’ll begin to pursue a path that means most to you.

Year Three: This is where you bring together the tools you have developed to create work that you will take to industry. You will work with a degree of professionalism that will illustrate your ability to bring together the theoretical and practical aspects of your practice. You will be supported to refine your specialism, plan your career path, network and build meaningful relationships with industry. The degree culminates with a portfolio of ideas that work, guided by a resilient professionalism that demonstrates critical thinking skills and an understanding of theoretical problem solving.