Advertising

Course Description

Advertising is an in-depth review of advertising, including consumer behavior, relationship marketing, advertising planning, media selection, public relations and integrating marketing communications.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAR is the Marketing prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered fall and spring, giving approximately 45 contact hours.

The integrating in "integrated marketing communications" is the point of the course. Advertising, public relations, promotion, direct response, and now social and search all reach the same person, and an audience does not experience them as separate channels — it experiences one impression of an organisation. The discipline is making them say the same thing, and the commonest professional failure is an organisation whose channels contradict each other.

Daytona State does not publish a lecture and laboratory split for its MAR courses. The prefix is entirely lecture-based and unsuffixed, and its business-family siblings run at the standard 15 contact hours per credit — GEB1011 and MAN2021 are both live at 3 credits and 45 hours. This course is priced at that convention.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe advertising's role within the marketing mix.
• Describe integrated marketing communications and its rationale.
• Analyse consumer behaviour as it bears on persuasion.
• Describe how attention, memory, and attitude change work.
• Describe relationship marketing and customer lifetime value.
• Set advertising objectives that can be measured.
• Define a target audience precisely.
• Develop a creative strategy and a positioning platform.
• Write a creative brief.
• Evaluate creative work against the brief rather than against taste.
• Describe copywriting and art direction at an introductory level.
• Describe media planning, reach, frequency, and continuity.
• Select media appropriate to the audience and objective.
• Describe media buying and cost measures.
• Build and defend an advertising budget.
• Describe public relations and its distinct role.
• Describe earned media and how it is obtained.
• Describe sales promotion and its short and long-term effects.
• Describe direct and digital response advertising.
• Measure advertising effectiveness and describe its difficulties.
• Describe pre-testing and post-testing of advertising.
• Describe the legal limits on advertising claims.
• Describe ethical issues and social criticism of advertising.
• Develop and present a complete advertising campaign.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe agency structure and the client relationship.
• Describe programmatic and addressable advertising.
• Describe out-of-home and experiential advertising.
• Describe brand equity measurement.
• Describe advertising to specific and vulnerable audiences.
• Describe international advertising considerations.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Advertising in the marketing mix
• Integrated marketing communications
• Consumer behaviour and persuasion
• Attention, memory, and attitude
• Relationship marketing and lifetime value
• Measurable objectives
• Defining the audience
• Creative strategy and positioning
• The creative brief
• Evaluating creative against the brief
• Copywriting and art direction
• Media planning and reach and frequency
• Media selection
• Media buying and cost measures
• Budgeting
• Public relations
• Earned media
• Sales promotion
• Direct and digital response
• Measuring effectiveness
• Pre- and post-testing
• Legal limits on claims
• Ethics and social criticism
• Campaign development and presentation

Optional Topics

• Agency structure and client relationships
• Programmatic advertising
• Out-of-home and experiential
• Brand equity measurement
• Advertising to vulnerable audiences
• International advertising

Resources & Tools

• Federal Trade Commission — Business Guidance (ftc.gov/business-guidance) — free, plainly written, and the authoritative source on advertising law. Its endorsement guides and FAQ are the single most useful reading in this course.
• American Marketing Association (ama.org) — professional body, student membership, and its Statement of Ethics.
• Google Analytics and Google Digital Garage — free tools and certification-bearing training used widely by employers.
• Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certifications — free to study; employers ask for these by name and they cost nothing but time.
• HubSpot Academy — free certifications in inbound, content, email, and social media marketing.
• Florida Attorney General — consumer protection (myfloridalegal.com) — free; Florida's own enforcement guidance under FDUTPA.
• Census Bureau and BLS consumer expenditure data — free primary market data that most students never think to use.
• Build and publish something real — a campaign, a social account with measured results, an analysed A/B test. A portfolio with numbers in it outperforms a transcript in this field.

Career Pathways

• Advertising, promotions, and marketing managers — SOC 11-2021.
• Market research analysts and marketing specialists — SOC 13-1161; strong projected demand and the most common analytical entry point.
• Public relations specialists — SOC 27-3031.
• Advertising sales agents — SOC 41-3011.
• Social media coordinator and content marketing roles — common entry positions, frequently the first rung.
• Digital marketing, SEO, and paid media specialist roles — the most measurable and among the best paid early.
• Marketing analytics — where marketing meets data work, and where pay rises fastest.
• E-commerce and brand management.
• Florida sectors that hire heavily: tourism and hospitality, healthcare, real estate, financial services, and a substantial small-business economy — and tourism marketing in particular is a distinctive Florida specialisation.
• Self-employment and agency work — a genuinely accessible route in this field, and one where a portfolio matters far more than a credential.
• Transfer to a bachelor's in marketing or business administration — management roles generally expect one.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Puffery is lawful; a factual claim you cannot substantiate is not

• The line is whether a reasonable consumer would take the statement as a factual claim. "The best cup of coffee in town" is understood as opinion; "lasts twice as long" is a factual claim and it needs evidence.
• ⚠ Substantiation must exist before the claim runs. Assembling support afterwards is not a defence, and "the client said it was true" does not protect the person who wrote the advertisement.
• Health, safety, efficacy, and earnings claims require strong support — typically competent and reliable scientific evidence for health claims, and these attract the closest scrutiny.
• The overall impression governs, not the literal words. An advertisement that is technically accurate but leaves a misleading impression is still deceptive, and fine print does not cure a misleading headline.
• Comparative advertising is lawful and must be accurate, with the comparison supportable and fairly made.
• Disclaimers must be clear and conspicuous — readable, near the claim, and present long enough to be read.
• ⚠ Some categories carry additional rules: alcohol, tobacco and vaping, pharmaceuticals, financial services, real estate, and anything directed at children.
• ⚠ Advertising for regulated professions is separately restricted in Florida — legal, medical, dental, and contracting services all have their own advertising rules under their licensing chapters. Check the relevant board's rules before writing for a licensed professional.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies — verify current requirements with the FTC, the relevant Florida board, and counsel.

⚠ Judge creative work against the brief, not against whether you like it

• The commonest failure in advertising review is people expressing personal taste as professional judgement. "I don't like the blue" is not feedback, and it is the reason a great deal of work is made worse in review.
• Write the brief properly, and make it the standard. Audience, objective, single message, support, tone, and constraints — if the brief is vague, no amount of review will rescue the work.
• ⚠ One message per advertisement. Campaigns fail far more often from trying to say everything than from saying one thing imperfectly.
• You are not the audience. This is the hardest habit to acquire and the most valuable, and it is what testing exists to correct.
• Test before spending. Pre-testing is cheap relative to a media buy, and it catches the misread that nobody internal could see.
• Give feedback against the objective — "this doesn't communicate the single message to this audience" is actionable; a preference is not.
• Measure afterwards and record what happened, including failures, because the alternative is repeating them confidently.
• Consistency across channels beats brilliance in one. That is what integration means in practice.

⚠⚠ Marketing is regulated — the rules bind the marketer, not only the company's lawyers

• The Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising and marketing practice nationally, and enforcement reaches individuals and small businesses, not only large advertisers.
• Claims must be truthful, not misleading, and substantiated before they are made. ⚠ Substantiation must exist at the time of the claim — producing evidence afterwards is not a defence.
• ⚠⚠ Material connections must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Where an endorser is paid, given free product, employed by the brand, or otherwise connected, the connection must be disclosed in a way an ordinary viewer will actually notice — not buried, not below a "more" fold, and not in a wall of hashtags.
• ⚠⚠ Fake and incentivised reviews carry federal exposure. The FTC has rules addressing fake reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, and suppressed negative reviews. Buying reviews, writing your own, or conditioning an incentive on a positive rating are all unsafe.
• Florida adds its own layer: the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, Chapter 501, Part II, Florida Statutes, which reaches unfair or deceptive practices independently of federal law and allows private actions.
• ⚠ Florida's Digital Bill of Rights adds consumer data obligations for businesses meeting its thresholds — relevant to any marketer handling personal data.
• Email marketing is governed by the CAN-SPAM Act (accurate headers, identifiable advertising, a working opt-out, honoured promptly), and ⚠ text message marketing is far more tightly regulated than email under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, where per-message statutory damages have produced very large settlements.
• Children's marketing is separately restricted, and online data collection from children is governed by COPPA.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies emphatically. This is one of the fastest-moving regulatory areas covered anywhere in this repository — FTC guidance, state privacy statutes, and platform policies all change frequently. Verify current requirements with primary sources and with counsel before relying on any of this.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

MAR2321 is 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, offered fall and spring at Daytona State.

See this repository's MAR2101 (Social Media Marketing) and MAR2720 (Digital Marketing) guides for the channel-specific courses in the same prefix.