BA (Hons) Marketing Communications with Public Relations (with Foundation Year option)

During your studies on the BA (Hons) Marketing Communications with Public Relations degree, you will have the opportunity to achieve CIM professional qualifications. You can achieve the Foundation Certificate in Marketing in the first year of your degree and the CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing after graduating. 

Exemption

• You will need to achieve a 2:2 or above degree classification and successfully pass the specified (non-exempt) modules at the chosen level of study to be awarded the CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing. You will be exempt from the Marketing and Digital Strategy module and need to complete one mandatory module and one elective module, currently from a choice of two electives. 

• CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing: you will need to start non-exempt modules within three years of graduation and complete within five years for exemptions to be valid.

If you would like to undertake the CIM Certificate after successfully completing the Foundation Certificate, we can accommodate this by exception, and inform you of the additional costs and work involved.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is the chartered body for public relations and the largest membership organisation for PR professionals in Europe.

During the second year of your studies, you will have the opportunity to take a professional qualification with the CIPR. This industry specific qualification will give you an edge when entering the profession. Our accreditation and CIPR certificate, and knowledge reflected from our degree, ensures we're equipping you with the best opportunities for a successful public relations career. 

Benefits for you:

• Opportunity to graduate with two highly recognised qualifications, with professional associations the CIM and the CIPR, alongside your academic degree
• Improved placement and employability prospects, due to achievement of academic and professional qualifications whilst in higher education
• Membership of CIM and associated benefits.

Benefits for employers:

• Graduates and placement students with proven practitioner and academic skills.

BU will provide all tuition and assessment guidance at no additional cost. BU will pay the CIM assessment fees for both of the units studied on the CIM Foundation Certificate in Professional Marketing in your first year: the first unit, Marketing Principles, and the second unit, Communications in Practice. The assessment fees are £110 each, so BU’s contribution is £220 in total.
 
We will ask you to pay the CIM Affiliate Studying Membership fee of £65 directly to the CIM on registering for the CIM programme. This covers the cost of CIM membership for your first year of study on the CIM programme.
 
If you continue on the CIM programme in your second year to the next level of the CIM Certificate in Professional Marketing, BU will renew your CIM studying membership at no cost to yourself. You will need to pay the CIM assessment fee for the one unit studied in the second year at a cost of £150. Again, you will need to pay this fee directly to the CIM.
 
In the event of a failed assessment: if you who wish to submit for a later assessment session, you will need to pay the relevant CIM assessment fee and renew your annual CIM studying membership (cost £65).

Core units

• Academic & Professional Practice: You will build your confidence in both academic and professional skills. This unit will cover the academic skills which will be required at degree level study and you’ll practice them throughout the unit with support from key university services including the library and study skills team. There will also be the opportunity for you to reflect on and develop your own professional skills through interactions with employers, careers services and online resources. 
• Collaborative Communication Project: The unit focuses on the centrality of communicaiton, both as a process and as a project. Through the collaborative development of a communication solution to a specific communication problem, the unit aims to promote the principles and practices of team-based iterative project work. 
• Media & Current Debates: You will be introduced to a) the important role and responsibilities of the news media within democratic societies and b) the varied nature of reporting of key events, issues and debates within the contemporary 24/7 news cycle. You will gain an essential level of understanding of what constitues news and what the work of journalists entails. You will also develop an awareness and appreciation of differing coverage of particular stories by a range of news organisations. 
• Media Work: You will become familiar with a range of profiles and career paths in the communication and media industries and be inspired to reflect on and develop your own professional identity. Through case studies of seminal campaigns, programmes and artefacts, profiles of ground-breaking personalities, masterclasses from industry professionals, and guest talks from BU staff who have worked or currently work in marketing, PR, media production, journalism and communications, you will encounter and interact with diverse role models, career trajectories, and types of profressional practice. 

Core units

• Principles of Marketing and Marketing Communications: This unit introduces you to the principles of marketing and marketing communications. You will become familiar with the marketing mix, including traditional and innovative marketing techniques and where marketing as a discipline currently stands.
• Academic and Professional Practices for Marketing Communications: Through engaging in professional-relevant, authentic experiences and assessments to support your development as an independent learner, you will acquire a range of skills required for succesful academic and professinoal practice in marketing communications
• Contemporary Debates in Marketing Communications: This unit aims to provide you with an understanding of the broader role that marketing communications play in contemporary culture.  You will be introduced to theories and concepts designed to help you develop a critical perspective when reviewing and reflecting on the wider impact that marketing communications’ campaigns can have on consumers and society at local, national and global levels.  
• Digital Essentials: The unit will enable you to understand the impact of emerging digital technologies and review, utilise and explore the role of digital communications within marketing communications. You will use research and industry specific tools used for measuring digital communications.
• Consumer and Stakeholder Principles: You will explore and analyse the importance of understanding stakeholder management and consumer behaviour for effective development and implementation of various aspects/practices involved in marketing communications. 
• Integrated Marketing Communications: You will gain a critical understanding of how to plan, create, execute and evaluate integrated marketing communication campaigns. Upon completion of the unit, you will have an appreciation of the complexities of the integrated marketing communication campaigns process.

Core units

• PR Concepts & Influencer Relations: You will be introduced to the main PR concepts and principles of influencer relations and specifically how organisations can leverage the power of influencers using a range of media, including social platforms and “traditional” news media (including broadcast and print).
• PR Events: This unit aims provides you with the knowledge and skills needed to successfully plan, create and execute PR events. By the end of the unit you will demonstrate your ability to execute an event. 
• Marketing Communication Campaigns in Practice: You will have the opportunity to experience the parameters and constraints of a client brief, where client issues, tight deadlines and the limitations of a budget call for ideas that are practical and realistic, as well as creative and original. 
• Research Principles and Practice: Initially you will learn about the value and importance of research, in relation to your chosen degree, and the place of research ethics. Emphasis will then be placed on skills or ‘doing research’, exploring both standard and more innovative ways of obtaining meaningful data and insights for both academic and commercial purposes. You will get hands on experience of qualitative and quantitative methods, modes of analysis, interpretation and presentation of research findings to understand how research is done from beginning to end.
• Content Creation: This unit will provide you with the opportunity to acquire an in-depth understanding of the content, meanings and decoding of marketing communications campaigns and equip you with the skills required to create marketing communications content (e.g. internal communications, posters, brochure, advertising, POS, direct mail) based on the theoretical perspectives learned, making use, where relevant, of software commonly used in industry. 
• Brands and Branding: You will be introduced to the building blocks of brands, the theoretical principles of branding, and will also be exposed to theoretical applications in diverse situations and contexts. This unit will also explore the role of branding as a strategic managerial tool and its implications on businesses, consumers, and markets. 

The inclusion of a 30-week placement (minimum) is a key feature in helping you to develop your abilities and understanding of advertising in the work environment. It also provides a platform for successful entry into the profession following graduation.

Core units 

• Strategic Management for PR: This unit enables you to gain a critical view of the major perspectives and theoretical approaches in strategic management. It also aims to convey the complexity of strategic management from the environmental analysis, through to strategic options development, implementation, evaluation and performance measurement of the implications for public relations strategies
• Reputation Management and Crisis Communication: By the end of this unit you will have an appreciation of the complexities of the crisis management process as well as the methods for modelling risks. The unit will cover both the specific knowledge and skills required to meet the demands of each of the phases of the crisis management and communication process.
• Dissertation: The dissertation offers you the opportunity to become an expert on a topic of particular interest, and to develop a study that connects your learning with real-world observations.

Options units (choose two)

• Behavioural Economics: You will be introduced to Behavioural Economics and Choice Architecture. The unit will focus on learnings from cognitive neuroscience, and how these can enhance strategy and creativity, with significantly optimised levels of efficiency and effectiveness across all elements of the communications mix.
• Brand Meaning: You will create your interpretation of brand meaning for a brand of your choice, producing meaning appropriate for a 21st century brand.
• Consumer Insights: You will gain a critical appreciation of state of the art thinking within consumer culture studies..
• Corporate Communications: The unit will provide you with a critical understanding of the professional communicator’s role as applied to key sectors, such as entertainment, health and beauty, financial, and B2B. 
• Influencer Marketing: The unit aims to develop your knowledge and skills on marketing to influencers and becoming an influencer yourself in the marketing communications field.
• Race, Media and Inequality: You will critically examine the processes through which social inequalities are maintained and perpetuated in and through the media. The key areas of focus are race, ethnicity and culture using an intersectional approach to examine their construction and representation in media and communication practice and political discourse
• Persuasion and Influence: You will be provdied with an understanding of the psychology of audience members and become equipped to reflect on the ethics of persuasion to critique contemporary persuasive communication in the context of broader social and cultural issues.
• Promotion, Power and Democracy: The unit will introduce you to key theoretical ideas from social and critical theory, political economy and political philosophy, and encourages you to both reflect on your personal and professional experience, and to apply ideas discussed in the unit to real world problems and examples. 
• Relationship Marketing: You will gain an understanding and conceptually analyse relationship marketing which is becoming increasingly important given the challenge of attracting, developing and retaining customers within a competitive environment (both for-profit and non-profit organisations).
• Social and Intercultural Communication: The unit will provide you with an understanding of pertinent social and intercultural issues (both in the UK and internationally) and their impact upon contemporary professional communication practices. ‘Communication practices’ can include any form of interaction between individuals, groups, ‘communities’ and / or organisations that take place within an increasingly complex, diverse and interconnected world. 
• Social Media Management: You will gain the ability to critically understand how to plan, create and execute management of social media accounts and activities on a national and global scale.  

Programme specification

Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry.

If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance.

A placement should be a highly rewarding experience for you and the employing company and we do our best to ensure that everyone involved feels that they have got the most that they can from the experience.

The benefits to you as a placement student are many. You will have the chance to:

• Put the theory learnt throughout the course into professional practice
• Enhance your study and help you decide on subject options (where appropriate)
• Learn a wide range of skills such as time management, problem solving and team work (all of these are important to succeed in any career)
• Make contacts, as it is not uncommon for our students to be offered permanent positions to return to after graduating
• Gain a real insight into how the industry operates in roles that would be almost impossible to achieve for an outsider.

Many of our students, during their placement, are given responsibilities normally associated with graduate trainees.

You will begin your placement after completion of your second year of study and you must complete a minimum of 30 weeks, although most students choose to work for a full year.

The faculty running your course will offer the support of a Placement Co-ordinator. 

They’ll help you plan your placement to make sure you get the right experience for you. That includes offering help and support if you need to move to another part of the UK – and even another country – to get the most out of your time.

We’ve also built close industry links over the years – so our network of employers that are keen to work with placement students is always growing. Or if you’d prefer to arrange your placement independently, we can offer advice on how to do that too.

• The Oracle Group
• Walt Disney Studios
• Liverpool FC
• Kier
• Warner Brothers

We are looking for applicants who are passionate about the PR, marketing, advertising and communication industries and potentially have some relevant work experience in this area. You should be able to communicate why you want to come on this course, what appeals to you about working in this industry and why you feel you have the edge over your peers.

You must have basic computer literacy, including knowledge of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

We select candidates for this course by looking at your application; there are usually no interviews or selection activities needed. For that reason, make sure your application really stands out from the crowd, and leave us in no doubt as to why you should be joining BU. You can find some handy hints about filling in your UCAS form on our how to apply web pages.

We look at individual applications and make a tailored offer based on your potential to succeed on the course considering a range of factors, including your academic achievements, work and other experience, reference and personal statement, and in some cases, your performance at an interview or a portfolio review. Typically, we make an offer at the bottom of the tariff range.

AccessBU gives you the chance to tell us more about you and your life experiences if you haven’t had the same educational opportunities as other applicants. If you are eligible for AccessBU, your offer could be up to 16 UCAS Tariff Points below the published tariff.

Our offer-making will typically be based on your most recent qualifications, including any required subjects where applicable. We'll consider all qualifications when assessing your application, although these may not be part of our offer.

If you do not meet the criteria of your original offer, we may still offer you a place. We will review your whole application and consider all academic qualifications (including those not in the offer) to see if you have the academic potential to succeed on the course. If we feel the answer is yes, we will confirm your place.

AccessBU: AccessBU provides you with the opportunity to tell us about your circumstances that are not always evident in your UCAS application. This widening access initiative also considers relevant criteria such as being in care or if you live in an area with a low participation rate in Higher Education - if you are eligible, your offer could be up to 16 UCAS tariff points below the published tariff.

Apprenticeships: We recognise the transferable knowledge and skills gained through apprenticeships and welcome applications from students with a Level 3 Advanced Apprenticeship recognised by the Institute for Apprenticeships. Each application will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Deferred entry: We are happy to consider eligible applicants for deferred entry. If you have already submitted your application, please submit your deferral request through our website.

Direct entry: We welcome applications from students who have previously studied at degree level at other institutions and wish to transfer onto a BU course. Our Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) procedure enables credit awarded from one institution to contribute to a BU award, subject to an application process. Please visit our RPL webpage for more information.

Mature applicants: We recognise that mature applicants may have a wealth of experience rather than formal qualifications, so we’ll consider your application on these merits if included in your application. You’ll need to apply to BU in the usual way through UCAS and you may be invited to an interview to discuss your suitability for the course based on the experience you tell us about in your application.

Among the roles you could take on are:

• Account Executive
• Communications Manager
• Executive
• Media and PR officer
• Publicity Co-ordinator
• Senior Publicist and Strategist.

Once you have completed an undergraduate Honours degree, you can further develop your education by studying for a postgraduate degree. Please visit our postgraduate section for further details about our range of Master’s degrees.

What’s included in your tuition fee?

Your tuition fee covers expenses associated with your course including tuition materials, access to facilities, mandatory field trips and the following:

• Materials for laboratory and field-based teaching activity
• Support for finding placements (UK or abroad) and fieldwork, and non-financial support whilst on placement
• A range of student services – advisors, help desks, counsellors, placement support and careers service
• The Library – access to a wide range of electronic resources (databases, e-journals and e-books), print and multimedia collections, subject librarians and study spaces
• Access to Brightspace, our virtual learning environment, which offers a responsive and personalised learning experience with powerful learning analytics capabilities, integrated social media and advanced video features.
• IT labs (some open 24/7), wireless network, AV equipment to borrow
• Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) scheme
• Disability and additional learning support, according to individual circumstances.
• The BU Language Centre to help you develop/improve foreign or English language skills
• 24 hours a day, 365 days a year security team.

Additional costs

We are committed to offering you value for money and ensuring there are no hidden costs while you are studying with us, therefore we have listed below any additional costs you may incur that are not covered by your tuition fee:

• Laptops, tablets and mobile devices and any software used on personal devices. Access to a personal computer is strongly recommended for your study. If you are experiencing financial difficulty, visit our website for information regarding hardship funds.
• Accommodation and living costs. Our accommodation price guide can be found on our website 
• Travel costs for optional field trips, outdoor wear and footwear for mandatory and optional field trips (if applicable)
• Textbooks, general stationery and other supplies. Our award-winning library is stocked with a large range of textbooks and online resources, free of charge. The Students’ Union shops stock a wide range of stationery supplies on both campuses
• Travel costs to and from the university campus. An annual bus pass can be purchased alongside your rent if you are living in halls of residence/Unilet accommodation or may be purchased separately
• Travel costs to and from your placement (both in the UK and overseas). Information about funding your placement year can be found on our website
• Clothing or equipment costs required for your placement if this is part of your course of study.
• SportBU membership.

While all aspects of the programme, including required field trips, are included in the fee, additional, optional or extra curricula activities may be available for which a student contribution is required.

If you need to repeat one or more units during the course of your studies (with or without attendance) the pricing will be pro-rata of the full time fee.

Once you are have enrolled as a student at BU, there is a wide range of help and support available, depending on your particular needs.

• Library & Learning support
• Additional Learning support
• Peer Assisted Learning (PAL)
• Transport and travel

Before stepping into academia, Tanya worked as a communication professional in South Africa and the UK. She worked for large and small companies, and consulted on issues from strategic communication, communication in change management, to identity creation – and all the other communication management issues in-between. She has lectured strategic communication management for 13 years in South Africa before joining BU. Tanya strongly believes in combining academic work and practical experience, locally and internationally, in order to benefit both academia and professional practice. She shares her knowledge through the journal articles and chapters she has published, as well as through presentations at conferences. Tanya serves on the global Blue Ribbon Panel that evaluates the yearly international IABC (International Association for Business Communicators) Gold Quill Awards. Her research interest is focused on strategic corporate communication management, and specifically the application thereof within the field of disaster risk reduction.

Hilary Stepien is a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations in the Communication and Journalism department in the Faculty of Media and Communication. She teaches on a variety of degrees including Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing Communications at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Hilary gained professional communication experience in public affairs, issues management and strategic communication while working in Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Transportation for the Government of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.