Integrated Marketing Communications — MKTG 483
Why take Integrated Marketing Communications?
With the right process, you can grow regardless of where you start. The IMC class helps students become confident creatives by providing real life marketing experience.
What Is It?
This one-of-a-kind, nontraditional marketing class encourages students to take the reins and create content for a real-life client while simultaneously gaining confidence to be their authentic selves and share what they create.
Led by your product managers, previous students of the IMC class, teams work together to create content catered to specific target markets in the format that most benefits the client and their customers. Along the way, you learn all about the creative strategy and how to expand it into a comprehensive IMC plan for an existing or invented media product or service.
Concurrently with the group work, you will develop your own personal professional brand. By the end of this course, you will create your own website, logo, and tagline, along with real-life client examples to impress potential future employers with.
How It All Works
Structure
Two different classes (IMC and applied IMC) which work closely together
- IMC: content creators (first time class takers)
- Applied IMC: Product managers and executive team (have already taken the intro IMC class)
- Broken into 6 “sprints” which each last two weeks long and are broken into 4 stages: sprint planning, sprint execution, sprint review, and sprint retrospective
After taking IMC for the first time, you have the opportunity to take it again and become a product manager or executive team member, leading a team of first time IMC class takers and continuing your marketing journey.
Assignments
Spotify Ad Studio certification, Personal creative strategy, Personal website (WordPress)
- Logo
- Tagline
- Explainer Video
- Portfolio page
- “About you” page
- Mission statement
- Values
- 3 original blogs
- Business card
- Branded Resume
- Branded cover letter
Get Spotify Ad Certified
In IMC your group will work with a real-life client to create a Spotify audio ad campaign. This involves taking the certification course, writing scripts, and setting up the ads on Spotify Ad Studio.
Marketing Unfiltered
Marketing Unfiltered is a video series to highlight what's involved in a few of the upper division marketing electives available to marketing students. Our goal is to help you make the most of your marketing electives! In each video we'll provide details about the student experience from both a current student and an alum from that elective course. In this video we’ll be looking into MKTG 483, Dan Purdy’s Integrated Marketing Communications class with Jonathan Nguyen and Clay Ashworth.
This video series is an example of content created by a group in the IMC class!
Reboot Your Resume
These are just some of the things that you’ll be able to add to your resume after taking IMC.
IMC Strategy
- IMC Strategy
- Brand Strategy
- Creative Strategy
- Creative Brief
- Positioning
- Media Planning
IMC Execution
- Content Marketing
- Content Development
- Creative Execution
- Brand Development
- Media Production Process
- Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC)
- Social media Promotions
- Programmatic advertising
- Copywriting
- Web Design
- Wireframing
- Blog Development
- Editorial Calendar
Project Management
- Agile Project Management
- Sprint Development Lifecycle (Scrum)
- Kanban workflow management
- Lean Meetings
Marketing Software
- Trello
- MSFT Teams
- Spotify Ad Studio
- Wordpress
- Illustrator
- Canva
- HubSpot
- Hootsuite
- Anchor (video podcasting on Spotify)
- Riverside (video podcasting on Spotify)
Meet the Professor
Dan Purdy is a Senior Instructor of Marketing at Western Washington University's College of Business and Economics. He is a seasoned professional with a passion for holistic marketing, helping numerous organizations grow through his private consulting practice, Real Symple Solutions. Dan's real-world experience informs his teaching methods, and he passes on what he learns from working with clients to his students. He holds an MBA from Western Washington University, as well as a BA in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing. He graduated Magna Cum Laude and is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, Golden Key, and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Societies.
Dan’s passionate style of teaching not only engages students but encourages them to be the best versions of themselves - both personally and professionally. Although he may come off as intimidating, he has everyone’s best interest at heart and is highly motivated for students to genuinely learn in his courses. As one student put it in early 2018, “[Dan] gives the greatest motivational speeches I've ever heard in my entire life. Take Dan not for the grade, but for a better life.”
Sample Syllabus
This sample syllabus highlights what you’ll learn in the class, how everything is graded, and a general timeline. Please keep in mind that this class is dynamic so each quarter looks a little bit different.
(Subject to change)
File
Creative Strategy Template
This template provided by Real Symple will be frequently referred to in this class. Students recreate their own for both the live client and their personal brand.
(Subject to change)