Advertising and Branding MA

Learn how to cut through noise, create meaningful content and activate innovative campaigns with right-first-time solutions.

MA Advertising and Branding is a progressive, future-facing course that combines advertising agency methods, content production skills and digital marketing strategies for your progression in creative communications and media, across all digital channels and platforms. The programme's "practice-led, theory-applied" teaching helps you to pivot your credentials and talent to align with new and evolving industry opportunities.

What's covered in this course?

The course reflects the wider industry collective; job markets you want to identify with, and your own aspirations: from sustainable futures to creative innovation, online safety, ethical practice, content production, strategic decision-making, and greater, more representative inclusivity for all in burgeoning creative industries.

These considerations are immediate and essential in media creation and communication. How, for example, do we weigh positives in generative AI, like augmented creativity against negatives like bias? How do we address an online-driven epidemic of anxiety in young people? What separates fact from fiction in all our news and social feeds? Many agencies and authors advocate firmer regulations, in-person interactions and more meaningful, inclusive reflections of our human condition.

Throughout MA Advertising and Branding, your teaching and learning are led by highly experienced academics with award winning creative credentials and in-class contributions from professional practitioners at the cutting edge of their profession. This is further enriched through hands-on content creation in our state-of-the-art studios.

In your year on the programme, you’ll be planning creative marketing and advertising campaigns with ad agencies, meeting potential mentors and employers, and developing brand and product promotions with clients. You’ll be creating content in professional contexts and building new user journeys in contemporary and emerging technologies with our industry standard resources for your assignments, and for your own continuing professional development.

Professional Placement option\
This course offers an optional professional placement. This allows you to spend 20 weeks with an employer, following completion of your taught modules, and is a great way to enhance your employability.

The experience you gain through your placement will allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market.

If you choose the placement option, you will be responsible for finding and securing a suitable placement to complement your chosen area of study. You will be able to draw on the University’s extensive network of local, regional and national employers, and the support of our Careers teams. If you do not secure a suitable placement, you will automatically be transferred back to the standard, non-placement version of the course.

Please note: Placements will only be confirmed following a competitive, employer-led selection process. As such, the University will not be able to guarantee placements for students who have registered for the professional placement option.