course descriptions
The IMC Master’s degree consists of 13 three-credit courses.
In your first term, you will take IMC 610. After you complete this introductory course, you can move on to the seven core courses and four electives. You can take these courses in any order. In your final term, you will take IMC 636, the capstone course.
Below is a list of courses offered by the IMC Program at West Virginia University:
IMC 610 – Introduction to IMC
This course is designed to provide you with an overview of integrated marketing communications and the ways in which IMC is used to build brand relationships. You’ll also come to understand through discussion, readings and Harvard case studies how advertising, personal selling, PR, direct marketing, sales promotion and packaging work together to achieve overall marketing objectives.
IMC 611 – Marketing Research & Analysis
This course examines the various roles of research within an integrated marketing communications campaign. In this course, you will learn to identify marketing problems, recommend the type of research that should be undertaken, understand what can and cannot be learned from marketing research, gather and analyze marketing data and make effective decisions based on those data.
IMC 612 – Audience Insight
This course is designed to provide you with an in-depth look at consumer behavior and its role in the integrated marketing communications process. During the semester, we'll examine consumer behavior in terms of three basic areas: 1) internal influences, 2) external influences; and 3) the consumer decision-making process.
IMC 613 – Brand Equity Management
When you complete IMC 613 Brand Management, you should have a fundamental understanding of how to build, measure and manage a brand. We will begin with an overview of the content and context of brand management decisions to provide the “big picture” for the course.
IMC 614 – Media Analysis
This course is designed to provide you with an overview of the role of media analysis in integrated marketing communications. Since our time together is relatively brief, please keep in mind that the course is both reading- and writing-intensive.
IMC 615 – Creative Strategy & Execution
This course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive look at creative strategy and its role in the IMC process. During the semester, we'll examine the concept of creativity in several different arenas including: print advertising, broadcast advertising, and direct marketing.
IMC 616 – Direct Marketing
This course focuses on the interactive marketing methods used to reach consumers and build mutually beneficial relationships. Topics include: direct mail, database marketing, cyber-marketing and business-to-business marketing.
IMC 617 – Consumer Sales Promotion
This course explores the role, function, planning, and implementation of sales promotion in the integrated marketing communications process. Topics covered include continuity programs, refunds, couponing, sweepstakes, contests, premiums, sampling, price discounts, trade deals, and the legal regulation of sales promotions.
IMC 618 – PR Concepts & Strategy
Students examine the various functions of public relations in IMC, its impact on key publics and its role in society. Topics include: the evolution of the field, the responsibilities of PR practitioners, ethics and trends.
IMC 619 – Emerging Media & the Market
An inside look at how modern industry uses emerging media to enhance the IMC process. Webcasts, podcasts, social marketing, RSS feeds, blogs, ethics and the targeting of youth and minorities are discussed.
IMC 620 – Measurement & Analysis
Students learn to apply qualitative and quantitative methods to different marketing problems and situations. Emphasis is placed on how these methods can be used to guide decisions in IMC. SPSS statistical software is required.
Prerequisite: IMC 611
IMC 621 – Current Topics in IMC
This team-taught seminar highlights significant issues and trends in integrated marketing communications. The semester is divided equally into three sections of three weeks per section. A different current topic is covered in each section. Early and Late Fall 2009 topics:
- Health Communication and Marketing: This course examines the three types of health communication marketing, the key health issues/illnesses as well as their causes and significance, and the factors that drive individuals' health decisions. Students will design a basic campaign utilizing health communication and marketing strategies.
- Buzz, Viral & WOM Marketing: Students will learn the theories and practices that inform buzz, viral and word-of-mouth (WOM) through readings of popular press books and academic journal articles, analysis of existing campaigns and study of key companies operating in the buzz/viral/WOM space.
- Sports Marketing: In this course, students will develop skills in the areas of merchandising, advertising, public relations/publicity, event marketing, sponsorships and ticket distribution as they relate to the sports industry.
IMC 625 – Advanced Creative Concepts
This course focuses on the creative aspects of executing an IMC strategy for a client. Topics include: visual branding, verbal branding, art direction, creative direction and media considerations.
Prerequisite: IMC 615
IMC 626 – B2B Direct Marketing
This course will cover Objectives, Strategies and Tactics for Business-to-Business (B-to-B) Direct Marketing management. Since the IMC 616 focus is almost exclusively Business-to-Consumer (B-to-C) , this course will largely discuss B-to-B strategies. During the course, we will discuss the B-to-B Direct Marketing implementation and how it integrates into B-to-B Integrated Marketing Communications planning.
Prerequisite: IMC 616
IMC 628 – Applied Public Relations
IMC Advanced Public Relations is designed to give you more practical knowledge and hands-on experience in the area of public relations. Throughout this class you will have a client, a major non-profit organization of your choice, and will develop various public relations tools for this client.
Prerequisite: IMC 618
IMC 636 – IMC Campaigns
The capstone course is rigorous and comprehensive, requiring students to apply previously-acquired knowledge and skills to develop a thoughtful, professional IMC campaign. This course must be successfully completed in a student’s final academic session.
IMC 693A – Special Topics: Cause Marketing
Cause marketing, or cause-related marketing, is a mutually beneficial partnership of a “for profit" business and a non-profit organization. The company hopes to gain goodwill and promotion while raising money for the nonprofit. This is an online course is designed to introduce you to cause marketing through an examination of case studies, you will be introduced to the history and uses of causes marketing, and the future of the marketing practice.
IMC 693C – Special Topics: Multicultural Marketing
This course is designed to educate students about cultural sensitivity and prepare them to promote products and services to a diverse marketplace within the United States. While the emphasis in the course is on racial/ethnic groups in the U.S., we will go beyond ethnicity and discuss mature and gay/lesbian markets as well.
IMC 693D – Special Topics: Social Marketing
This course examines the application of commercial marketing principles, theories and techniques for multifaceted campaigns designed to influence social change. Both non-profit and public sector organizations that utilize marketing for the public good in promotion of health, the environment and social issues will be studied.
IMC 693E – Special Topics: Direct/Interactive Creative Strategy
To become a successful direct and interactive marketer, it is vital to stoke your creative fires: to move beyond the obvious formula and format to discover fresh words and pictures that overcome inertia and incite prospects to action. In this course, you will learn how creative strategy fits into the marketing plan and what the creative team needs to know to produce superior results that are both strategically correct and tactically effective. Topics covered in IMC 693E: the creative person’s role in idea generation, creative strategy development, creative execution, integrating direct/interactive marketing into the overall marketing mix, research, database marketing and customer relationship management, media, strategic business planning, offer development, business-to-business marketing, selecting mailing lists, executing creative for magazines, newspapers, electronic media, co-ops and telemarketing, and production of various media.
