Brand Strategy & Advertising, Hosted by Bob Batchelor -- Preview

Hey everyone, this is Dr. Bachelor. Welcome to PRSC326, brand strategy and advertising. In this quicker overview, I'll walk you through the course highlights. I want you to know exactly what to expect this semester. So let's dive in. Here's the core idea. We're studying 125 years of advertising history to understand how brands work today. You'll read historical case studies from the three-volume anthology that I edited, called We Are What We Sell, which is available free through our library. Then immediately apply those insights to analyze a contemporary brand that you choose. Think of it this way. Nike's just do it campaign from the late 80s. And today's social media influencer campaigns use the same fundamental strategies, just different media. So when you understand the patterns, you stop being surprised by what looks new, but is actually ideas from the past made new again. This course bridges history and practice. You'll develop both critical thinking about brands as cultural forces and hands-on skills for evaluating real brand strategy. Here's what makes this course different. In week one, this week, you'll select one brand to track all semester. Any brand that you choose could be target, Microsoft, Easter Seals, Chipotle, Publix, whatever interests you. This becomes your living case study. Every week, you'll observe what they're doing. Social media posts, advertising campaigns, press releases, how their CEO communicates their media coverage, what you're doing is building expertise through sustained observation. And here's the key. Brands don't always run active campaigns. When your brand is an advertising, you'll analyze their public relations, things like press releases, media relations, thought leadership, organizational storytelling. Modern brand strategy is public relations. You'll learn to see both working together. So by week 15, you'll have 14 weeks of the observations about one brand. You'll notice patterns, you'll develop an informed strategic perspective. This accumulated knowledge becomes genuine expertise you can discuss in job interviews. The course moves chronologically through advertising history. So the early part of the semester, we're gonna look at the foundations, early advertising, cartoon mascots, Coke, depression, era strategies. Later we'll go to the mid-century boom, new consumer products, radio, television, youth marketing. Later in the course, we'll start to talk about social consciousness, environmental ads, countercultural commodification. Then we'll move into more recent, eras we'll talk about David Ogle, these principles, Nike's brand evolution, Starbucks, brand culture and power, digital and viral marketing. Each week follows the same pattern. Read the historical case study, post an observation on Thursday about your brand, and occasionally we'll have a Sunday reflection that connects today to what you're learning in the past. There are four main assignments, as I discussed, weekly living case study observations, 14 of them, 150 to 200 words each, do Thursdays. These are guided by questions connecting history to your brand's current activity. This is where you build expertise. Second, the historical case study reflections. There are 10 of them. They're also around 150 to 200 words. They're due Sundays on the assigned weeks. They connect past patterns to present practice. The third is a mid semester brand analysis project. This is due in week 10. So you're gonna pick one historical case study from 1970 to 1975, analyze it deeply, then apply those insights to your living case study brand, the brand that you chose, and then you're gonna write a paper, a guided paper that's about 1,200 to 1,500 words total. The last thing is the thing I'm most excited about, what students have been most excited about when I've taught online courses in the past couple semesters. The final is a brand strategy podcast. You'll create a 12 to 15 minute podcast, analyzing your brand strategy across the semester, using historical frameworks. You'll submit your script week 12 for peer review and then revise it based on the feedback that you get from your fellow student, then you'll record. And the library has a professional podcast week with equipment and support if you need that. It is not a test of how well you know technology. You can sit down with your phone and use the voice memo and read out your script. You can make it as fancy as anything you would hear on Apple Podcasts. You can choose to do what you want. The very best podcasts will end up making part of our podcast series. Because what I'm gonna do is instead of just recording lectures and sending them to you via the course management system, I'm gonna start a podcast and each week you'll go to the podcast on whatever podcast service you'd like to listen to to get that week's lecture. So that's something to look forward to. The total for the semester is about 8,500 words. It's manageable. It's roughly the length of a term paper and a half, maybe a little bit more, but what I wanted to do was spread it out so that it's a weekly reflective practice rather than just cramming it in all at the end. You can expect probably six to seven hours of work per week on this class. It's two to three hours of reading historical case studies, roughly an hour for your weekly observation and occasional reflection and then the podcast work that you're gonna do leading up to the podcast itself. So this is a three credit course designed to build real strategic thinking skills. This isn't busy work, it's focused progressive skill building. Now I use a modified approach to grading called ungrading. It mirrors the professional workplace expectation because in the workplace, you're expected to submit work on time, you're expected to show up, you're expected to do the best work that you can and to be in an intellectually thriving, curious environment. So I want you to submit your work on time, demonstrate college level engagement with genuine thinking and then you'll receive full points. I'm still going to give you feedback. It's everything that you're used to about rating, but I'm gonna take the number off. If you do every assignment on time, turn it in and it's college level work, you'll get all the points, but it's gonna be up to you just like life. I'm looking for evidence of thinking, not perfection. This isn't about punishing mistakes, it's about building consistency and professionalism. That's what employers actually care about. And I think this class is so interesting that you could potentially talk about this class on your resume or in your cover letter and really excite somebody about the things that you will learn over this class time. But let's talk about AI. It's important to everybody's talking about it. Here's my approach, strategic transparency. You're living case study observations and your historical reflections require zero AI because these assignments are your real time observations and thinking, AI can't fake 14 weeks of brand watching. And so if you don't put the work in to follow along with these weekly assignments, you're gonna be really far behind and really challenged. For the research and analysis projects, the mid semester essay and final podcast, AI is encouraged with full disclosure. So you can use it for research, organizing notes, checking grammar, editing audio, but your analysis and strategic thinking must be yours. And in these two assignments, I must have a AI use statement. I wanna know which tools you used, what you asked them to do, how you use the output and how much it contributed to your final work. When in doubt, cite it. Over disclosures never penalized, but undisclosed AI use is academic dishonesty. And that means an F in the course and referral to student conduct, the office of academic integrity. Okay, you might be wondering why study old advertising, why study history in a communication, media and culture. class. Well, history teaches pattern recognition. Nearly every so-called revolutionary strategy has already been done sometime in the past. The dot-com crash, the crypto collapse, they show identical hype cycles, almost similar in some ways to what we're experiencing now with AI. Product placement in 1930s radio predicted podcast sponsorships. The depression era messaging that big companies like Procter and Gamble did repeats during every recession. History gives you the long view while others panic about you know things that are going on today or this quarter you will see the bigger trajectory and knowing history makes one a stronger critical thinker it makes someone a skeptical thinker and it provides context. This perspective is what separates tacticians from strategists. Early in your career you're training to be tactically strong but in the long run you want to develop strategic thinking. In an AI saturated future where technical skills are becoming commodities it's the human you it's human judgment and cultural literacy that remains valuable. History doesn't give you answers it gives you the ability to ask better questions. So in this asynchronous online course you need to complete weekly modules and stay current with the readings. I can't emphasize that enough you've got to read. I communicate primarily via email and I will send emails if there are changes to the course. My office hours are one day and Wednesday from 1130 to 1 and clearly virtually by appointment. Of course during spring break there will be no assignments so you can go off and frolic in the waves or get down to work and get ahead on projects whatever you want to do. By the end of 15 weeks we have these course goals. You will have developed genuine expertise on one brand through sustained observation. You will have learned foundational brand strategy and PR principles through historical case studies. You will build pattern recognition skills that transfer to any career. You'll have created a professional podcast that analyzes a real brand stat strategy that you could use in your professional portfolio and most importantly you'll have developed strategic judgment. The ability to look at a brand and understand what's working, what's not and what needs to be changed and why. That's a skill I can't give you and what employers want. Are you going to be a worker who thinks fast, who has strong critical thinking skills can think on their feet? This is what employers want. This course is designed to be manageable while building real skills, rigorous and intellectually challenging. You'll learn brand strategy the way strategists actually think by studying patterns across time, observing brands in action and applying frameworks to real situations. I am super excited to work with you this semester. Any questions please drop me an email and please definitely check out the full syllabus on Moodle for all the details. Everything that you need to know is in the syllabus and I will be seeing you in the reflection assignments and online soon. So it's going to be a fun semester. You're going to learn a lot and I can't wait to get started. Thanks so much. Bye bye. [Music]