Advertising for Good

Enrollment Requirements: Undergraduate Prerequisite: COMCM 417; Graduate Prerequisite: COMCM 712 and COMCM 717 The world can be better, and you can help. This course is an opportunity to dedicate your creative and strategic ability to making the world a better place through advertising and social communication, and generate behavioral change. Students taking this class are expected to be interested in creating purposeful work through a combination of strategic and creative problem solving. Art directors, copywriters, and strategists will learn to use strategic and creative thinking to build strategic briefs and big imaginative ideas that function across all media to execute creatively influential campaigns that generate positive change for non-profit/NGO/sustainable organizations/products/services. Categories of exploration can include, but are not limited to: climate change/sustainability/ environmental issues, biodiversity/conservation, civil rights, support for marginalized groups, conflict/war/global destabilization, ethical business practices, animal/wildlife welfare, education and early childhood learning, gender inequality, the arts, community issues (i.e. public schools, green parks initiatives or support for local libraries), and human trafficking. Teams of writers/art directors and strategists will work to develop an understanding of the non-profit, charitable, corporate responsibility, and sustainability sectors of advertising while creating broad-media spectrum campaigns for chosen sectors from the ground up. Teams will play a role in their project destiny by outlining challenges that are personal to them. We (the class) will play a role in adjudicating the merits of team goals before moving forward.