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MA Advertising

  • Study Mode: Blended Learning
  • Location: High Wycombe / Distance Learning
  • Duration: One Year
  • Start Date: September 2024

If you have a flare for creativity, a relevant degree or want to return to higher education to bolster your skillset, and a burning desire to change the world through the power of clever thinking and a dramatic relevant idea, then our MA Advertising could be the course for you.
Discover how to apply strategic thinking, a curious mind, your wordsmithing ways, and unique art directional style to create distinct brand identities, unforgettable campaigns, and relatable content.
   

Why study this subject?

Advertising holds the power to create change. It can’t save the world, but it can make it a better place to live in.

The future of branding, marketing, and advertising is to help businesses grow with the promotion of sustainable lifestyles, making brands appeal to diverse customers, and promote products in way that show the good they do for society and the world.

Brands need creatives like you, to help them harness creative and strategic strengths that allow them to drive behavioural change for good.  Brands can no longer ‘just sell’, they must become active in promoting ethical social awareness and work with consumers to create an established relationship.  It’s about creating creativity with a purpose.

 

Advertising caption

Why study at Buckinghamshire New University?

This MA Advertising course has been developed to mirror today’s industry. Working closely with professionals we’ve made sure the course helps you to develop the skills and knowledge the industry is looking for. Using the pillars of sustainability, inclusivity, and social responsibility, you’ll be taught an important mix of branding, planning, and advertising.

All this make graduates of this MA Advertising program very employable in any branch of advertising, branding or communication industries, in either a creative, account management, strategic or planning capacity because of the up-to-date nature and wide scope of the curriculum offered.

Here at BNU we don’t just teach you how to apply creative thinking and problem-solving skills. We teach you how to approach a creative problem with insightful planning, research, and transmedia storytelling to ensure brand advocacy and long-lasting social missions. You’ll benefit from unrivalled industry links, workshops, mentoring, advice, placements, internships, and job opportunities. There will also be selected alumni and agencies that will be part of the MA’s Hyreus Scheme, who will provide you with an industrial practitioner as a guide, in addition to their University Personal Tutor.

They may also provide internships and or placements should the student prove suitable. This presents students with an opportunity to build a one-to-one relationship with an influential figure from industry, who will act as adviser, reference point, critical sounding board, and ultimately a potential employer. This opportunity can be further bolstered by contacts made through research, whilst on an agency experience or by working on agency briefs such as the one for Portfolio Academy.

We actively encourage you to get involved with industry awards, including D&AD New Blood Awards and Young Creative Network Awards. In 2022 our students won two D&AD New Blood Pencils and 2023 saw our students bring home four.

For the last 25 years BNU Ad students have constantly created great campaigns that have won awards, who’ve then gone on to create the next generation of advertising history, both at home and aboard.

We’ll bring you 30-years’ experience as an advertising course and a teaching army of advertising gurus both past and present. Together we’ll turn raw talent into a clever thinking idea machine, a future advertising star.

It’s quite simply the best advertising course on offer. Going to BNU felt like you were part of one big family. Still to this day someone will introduce themselves as being ‘from BNU’. It gives you a great sense of family and community. And as a student I loved the close proximity to London, it meant getting in to meet people in the industry was easy.
Simon Lloyd
Simon Lloyd

What facilities can I use?

To aid your development you will learn practical skills and experience both digital and traditional processes and technologies. These range from Adobe Creative Suite to letterpress and silkscreen printing. Photography and film making are integral to most things we do.

You’ll have access to our state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, including:

  • Photography studios
  • Mac Suites
  • Letterpress machines
  • Film and TV cameras
  • Screen Printing facilities
  • Dedicated specialist technicians
  • Printing facilities
  • And our extensive library
Creative Advertising students
Creative Advertising students

What will I study?

To become part of the future of advertising, the communication you will create will help shape the more socially aware and culturally important world of creative communication, turning you into an asset for any 21st century communications company.

You will learn how to use your curious mind to create sustainable and socially aware communication. You’ll look at how to create active campaigns across a variety of channels, generating fresh content and how to improve consumer engagement, following and reach.

On this Advertising Masters degree you’ll delve headfirst into the world of advertising, looking at everything from transmedia storytelling, brand advocacy, branded entertainment, push and pull conversations, ideation, and insights, to planning, pitching, research, social mission advertising, brand creation and sustainable branding and marketing.

 

Save the planet - Creative Advertising Banner

How will I be taught and assessed?

This MA is offered as a blended learning experience, with many lectures taking place online, providing flexibility for both course related work-based placements or to help students pursue their own and industry opportunities.

With the breadth of diverse projects and industry influences this is essential for personal and professional development. You’ll gain an integrated and gradual learning experience throughout which the various teaching methods, experiences and industry exposure contributing to this.

All taught subjects are translated into practical brief-led projects, which are then contextualised in industry through regular workshops. You’ll be learning and gaining feedback from a host of different sources which enables them to create contacts, links, and opportunities to enter the real world of advertising at every stage of the course.

Written assessments will be accompanied by face-to-face delivery of research presentations, creative presentations, portfolio work, final pitch presentations. Some of these will involve additional assessment from visiting tutors and alumni or agency personal if the work being assessed is an agency-based project.

Formative feedback will be given at various key stages of every project to help with your development.

Throughout the programme you’ll be encouraged to personally evaluate your work and book, ensuring you improve a self-evaluative critical approach to all aspects of work evolved through application of creative advertising processes - judged against creative intentions. Self-assessment is an important part of your growth during the course and is implicit within tutorial teaching.

You’ll also work on some non-assessed briefs to allow you to get as broad an experience as possible and experiment without detrimental results. If some of these are for working agency practitioners, via the Hyreus Scheme, this will further your potential intern opportunities and final employment chances.

Feedback is an integral part of this approach, and you will always get advice and support in how to take your work forward. Feedback from as many sources as possible is the aim of the strategy and this comes both from tutors and industry practitioners.

You’ll graduate with a well-rounded portfolio ready for potential employers.

MA Advertising Programme Specification

MA Advertising Additional Course Costs

What are the course entry requirements?

Graduates with a good first degree, usually Upper Second and above; preferably in a communications subject.

Advertising or marketing studied to BA level (as listed above).

Graduates from abroad (with grade 6.5 English or above) from a communications discipline or international advertising agency. Those with experience within the advertising industry, wishing to take a career break and re-enter the profession at a higher level.

Applicants need a minimum 2 years’ experience, and proven ability to undertake MA level qualifications (particularly theory/dissertation modules), with bridging assignment set to assess capability for Level 7 study.

Employees from the communications industries who want to retrain or undertake staff development. Practitioners who want to refresh and/or realign their career aspirations. Those wishing to progress to higher level research degree work. Graduates with a passion to enter the advertising industry.

Modules

This provides a guide of the modules that make up your course. You can find more information about how your course is structured on our Academic Advice section.

What are the tuition fees

Home
  • Home, Academic Year 2024 - 2025: £10,550 per year
International
  • Overseas/International, Academic Year 2024 - 2025: £15,500 per year

Additional course costs and financial support

Most courses will involve some additional costs that are not covered by your fees.
You could benefit from financial support through a bursary or scholarship during your time as a student. For more details visit our financial support, bursaries and scholarships section.

Questions about fees?

If you have any questions about the fees above, contact our Enquiries team by calling 0330 123 2023 or emailing advice@bnu.ac.uk.

What are my career prospects? 

After graduating from this Postgraduate degree, you will leave with the skills and knowledge to be a critically aware and logical thinking professional that understands existing and emerging forms of new strategies and ways of working to lead creative innovation across the advertising industry.

Upon completion of this degree, you will be qualified for a number of roles, including:

  • Creative
  • Art Director
  • Copywriter
  • Planner
  • Strategist
  • Account Manager
  • Brand Consultant
  • Producer
  • Designer
  • Graphic Designer
  • Content Creator
  • Social Media Manager
I could not have asked for any more from my degree course. It has set me up for exactly what I wanted to do in my career.
Marc Reed
Marc Reed Creative advertising alumni

Course leader

Headshot of a smiling Andy Imrie wearing glasses and stood face on looking directly into the camera
Andy Imrie
  • Senior Lecturer
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Joseph Davies staff profile photo
Joseph Davies
  • Technical Tutor
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Rupert Hammerton-Fraser staff profile photo
Rupert Hammerton-Fraser
  • Technical Demonstrator
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A headshot of Creative Advertising lecturer Greg Martin
Greg Martin
  • Senior Lecturer
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