A brief analysis of benchmarking digital advertising and new media marketing. Major in Advertising - The development and construction of advertising majors in domestic universities have gone through many different stages in the past 40 years. The results have not been easy to come by. The current opportunities for the development of new liberal arts should be based on their attributes and the characteristics of each school to seek greater room for leapfrogging. Based on benchmarking digital advertising and new media marketing, the article expounds on the logic and concept of optimizing the layout of the new liberal arts major in advertising and proposes specific implementation methods and assessment standards based on the actual situation of the school.
The development and construction of advertising majors in my country have a history of nearly 40 years. From Xiamen University first opening the advertising major under the Department of Communication in 1983 to the Beijing Broadcasting Academy opening the advertising major in 1989, the initial professional exploration was very cautious. When the advertising major of Beijing Broadcasting Academy began to stabilize enrollment in 1992 and launched a targeted professional construction, there were only six universities in the country offering advertising majors.
Since the end of the last century, the construction of advertising majors in domestic universities has entered an explosive period. By 2013, the Ministry of Education once included advertising majors in the early warning list to remind universities to pay attention to the number and scale of the major's construction. Even so, in the 2021 “Soft Science China University Rankings” officially released by Soft Science, a professional institution for higher education evaluation, on June 22, 2021, there are only 172 universities in the top 50% of the advertising majors participating in the evaluation, which shows the popularity of advertising majors. Like all other majors, there is also a significant gap in the level of construction of advertising majors.
In the professional rankings, the traditional strong schools of professional construction, universities in developed regions, and universities with distinctive professional characteristics have contributed to the main top 50%, and their leading role in theoretical construction, talent training, industry services, innovation, and entrepreneurship competitions and other fields is outstanding. In November 2020, relevant universities and experts across the country jointly issued the “Declaration on the Construction of a New Liberal Arts”, which unified the understanding, set goals, and clarified the direction of the task for the construction of new liberal arts in the new period.
Since then, various universities have carried out learning exchanges, curriculum sharing, and professional seminars around the construction of new liberal arts. “New liberal arts” has become a concept that must be paid attention to in the current construction of liberal arts majors. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that in recent years, the upgrading of the advertising business and the adjustment of industry structure are also calling for the improvement and improvement of the construction of advertising majors. Under such a dual opportunity, the construction of the advertising major will surely usher in a new round of development.
1. The overall development history of the advertising major
The construction and development of the advertising major have mainly gone through three stages. It was originally the stage of defining the professional direction based on communication studies. This stage mainly refers to the period when a few universities tried to develop in the 1980s and 1990s. Represented by the Communication University of China, although the professional construction at that time was extremely exploratory, it also started at a fairly high level. By 1994, a complete teaching and scientific research system and a master's training mechanism had been formed.
The ratio of basic subject courses and professional courses is reasonable, and laboratories and research centers have also formed a certain scale. Students can participate in simple practical activities such as market research and promotion distribution from the beginning of the admission. After entering the second and third grades, they can choose to enter the research center, creative design center, International Advertising Research Center, etc. To carry out learning and practice. Participate in the basic part of scientific research topics. International cooperation projects include not only lectures, competitions, joint research, etc., but also some practical exercises. During the period, it maintains close industry-university-research cooperative relations with advertising companies such as Dentsu, Zhiwei Thomson, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi.
At this stage, the number of domestic advertising majors is scarce and the construction specifications are generally high. Communication University of China and Xiamen University have therefore become the highlands of advertising majors, occupying an indisputable leading position. Strategy is the core of the professional curriculum and training configuration of advertising at this stage. Communication and marketing as a unified background have not been strictly separated. How to form advertising strategies, how to implement advertising strategies, and how to evaluate advertising strategies have become the focus of teaching and scientific research at this stage.
The talent training goals of various universities still pay more attention to serving the advertising industry itself, especially the talent needs of advertising agencies. After that, it entered the comprehensive development stage led by comprehensive universities. This stage mainly refers to another decade that began around 2000. In the past ten years, comprehensive universities represented by Beijing University, Fudan University, and the Renmin University of China have quickly completed the upgrade from major to department with their deep experience in the construction of disciplines and majors, and their comprehensive strength cannot be underestimated. At the same time, many universities have begun to build distinctive advertising majors based on their advantages.
While emphasizing communication strategies, they have begun to build distinctive majors in different directions such as international advertising, advertising design, advertising production, and advertising management. A large number of local colleges and universities, especially comprehensive universities or specialized colleges located in economically developed areas such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and other places, have begun to offer advertising majors. The demand for professional teachers has surged, and the number of talents trained has also expanded sharply.
The training direction is not limited to advertising agencies, but also includes advertising media, brands, advertising management agencies, advertising education institutions, advertising research departments, etc. This decade is also a decade of rapid development in China's advertising industry. In 2013, some advertising majors in colleges and universities received a professional early warning from the Ministry of Education or the local education commission, requesting the submission of a professional early warning report to further clarify professional characteristics and training goals.
This initiative is not to directly ban or restrict professional construction, but to urge professional construction to improve its level and ensure that repetitive construction and inefficient and low-quality development are reduced. Stimulated by this initiative, the expansion of advertising majors across the country has been suppressed, and diversification and crossover, strengthening characteristics, and limiting scale have become the general development ideas at this stage. With the transformation and upgrading of the advertising format in the past ten years, the focus of professional courses, practical projects, Sino-foreign cooperation, and industry-university mutual promotion have all manifested in more diversified forms.
New trends in the industry such as integrated marketing communication, new media application, social promotion, digital design, computational advertising, and procedural purchasing are also reflected in the specific aspects of professional construction. Curriculum upgrading, training upgrading, competition upgrading, and employment upgrading have become the focus of this stage. More and more graduates are entering Internet companies, video websites, and integrated communication agencies to engage in pan-advertising business, and industry needs are also changing.
2. Expectations for higher education in the development and transformation of the advertising industry
The development of the advertising industry has undergone a complex transmutation. The development of China's advertising industry, which has recovered with the reform and opening-up, in the 1980s and 1990s, is still in the stage of mutual integration between the global agency system and the service model of domestic advertising business experience. Advertisers, advertising agencies, and advertising media have all gone through their difficult stages of exploration when facing the domestic market and consumers. Business models and processes, transaction methods and evaluation mechanisms, business ideas and cultural characteristics of creative strategies, etc. generally show complexity and uncertainty.
In the context of such industry development, the construction of advertising majors in colleges and universities is also in the process of gradually clarifying trial and error. At this stage, the Communication University of China, Xiamen University, and other universities have generally established the professional construction idea of relying on communication with advertising strategy and creativity as the core curriculum of professional teaching, which has become the basic path for subsequent comprehensive universities to offer advertising majors. At the end of the 1990s, the global advertising industry underwent a major transformation.
The main performance was not only the collectivization of advertising companies and mergers and acquisitions projects, which prompted the advertising industry to further consolidate and thus enhance its business voice, but also the strong departments in integrated advertising agencies such as media, creativity, production, etc. have separated from the parent body of the organization and become companies with independent operating capabilities under the group. In the wave of large mergers, there have been small divisions.
The changes in the industry structure have also put forward new requirements for the demand for talent. At this stage, in addition to continuing to make great strides in the development of advertising majors relying on communication, advertising majors relying on marketing, art and design, language and writing, film and television production and other subject backgrounds have also achieved eye-catching development. The major in advertising is not necessarily offered in the School of Journalism and Communication, but may also be offered in the School of Business, the School of Art and Design, the School of Film and Television, and the School of Arts.
This type of advertising major often relies on the characteristics of their respective schools to carry out targeted professional construction, through teaching and practice to create distinctive ideas for running schools, and to provide specific professionals for the advertising industry. It has shown typical characteristics of integrated construction. In the past ten years, the high popularity of Internet applications and the strong promotion of digital media have made the business logic and implementation methods of digital advertising and new media marketing more popular, and the proportion of digital services in the composition of the advertising industry has been increasing.
Whether it is engaged in digital media art design, digital advertising procedural transaction purchase, or integrated marketing communication on e-commerce and social platforms, the industry's business methods are becoming more and more diverse, and single and precise demands are being deconstructed by multiple demands, targeted delivery, media stacking, and other techniques, and a package of integrated marketing communication solutions led by the core concept are also being replaced by scattered Eight Immortals cross-sea implementation plans.
The importance of brand image construction has decreased, spokesperson strategies have proliferated, and the advertising effectiveness evaluation data system is guided by the emerging business logic of Internet companies. The advertising industry is undergoing a profound transformation. In such a complex industry environment, the demand for professionals in different business positions is changing.
For example, strategists need to have more complex strategic capabilities, have a wide understanding of marketing and promotion methods, be flexible in combination, and get started quickly in hot businesses; media personnel needs to master the attributes and usage methods of digital media, and have a richer understanding of PPC, procedural purchases, digital advertising effectiveness evaluation data, etc.; Creative designers need to increase their understanding of new media design and application, digital production software, artificial intelligence advertising design systems, etc.; copywriters need to have a better understanding of social media attributes, various forms of text creation, and society. Have a clear view of hot spots and policy orientation；
Customer personnel should be able to sort out the internal relationships and interrelationships of current advertisers, advertising media, advertising agencies, Internet institutions, basic data providers, investment and financing institutions, artist brokerage companies, and other industrial components, and accurately track and predict the direction of customer resources. The demand for the training of higher education majors in these advertising industries is increasing day by day. In addition, many students will later study for a master's degree in this major and then enrich in the fields of advertising management, advertising research, etc., which also puts forward requirements for academic construction and development in professional construction.
Industry demand is the strongest development driver for the construction of applied majors, and at the same time, it coincides with the implementation and promotion of the new liberal arts development plan. Finding a point of strength to realize the new development of advertising majors has become common thinking in the professional construction of many brother colleges shortly.
3. The focus of the development of new liberal arts majors in advertising
Judging from the exchanges and results of advertising education and teaching in recent years, quite a few universities are also seeking breakthroughs in the construction of advertising majors. The original majors with a background in communication science further emphasize advertising management and the overall management of the media; the majors that already have a certain artistic foundation further emphasize the refinement of commercial advertising combined with new art forms; It is also worth noting that majors with engineering backgrounds take the initiative to develop research such as computational advertising and digital advertising evaluation.
It can be said that the research level shows the characteristics of diversification and integration, and the teaching and research results have also been implemented to a certain extent. These breakthroughs themselves are in line with the original intention of promoting the development and construction of new liberal arts. So, what should be the core of the new liberal arts? The construction of the new liberal arts refers to a series of construction matters and construction work of the new liberal arts that cross-integrate philosophy and social sciences with the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change to form interdisciplinary disciplines, cross-integrated disciplines, and cross-majors.
Combining the current development status and mainstream direction of the advertising industry, the author believes that the construction of new liberal arts majors in advertising should revolve around digital advertising and new media marketing. In this process, one side is the traditional liberal arts advertising major with communication as the background, and the other side is the transformation of the digital media industry on which the current industry hot business relies. Behind digital advertising are engineering disciplines such as computer technology, Internet technology, artificial intelligence, and multimedia development; behind new media marketing are other liberal arts and artistic disciplines such as social groups, artistic aesthetics, and photography.
The ultimate goal of the construction of new liberal arts in advertising is to form a cross-integration discipline, and at least the cross-integration construction and upgrading of existing majors should be formed in the initial construction stage. In simple terms, the basic goal of optimizing the layout of the new liberal arts of the advertising major of digital advertising and new media marketing is to combine the established task direction in the “Declaration on the Construction of the New Liberal Arts” to achieve the process of professional cross-integration and seek theoretical innovation, research paradigm innovation and industry service innovation in the process of construction.
The first is theoretical innovation. The superior discipline of the advertising major is communication, but as mentioned earlier, more and more advertising majors are based on other disciplines and have also achieved good development. At the same time, the advertising industry is in a period of intense change. Therefore, the research and establishment of advertising theory should be more inclusive and diverse. This is not only a matter of encouraging scholars to write books and speak but also a matter of open academic recognition of the entire profession. Taking computational advertising as an example, computational advertising, which relies on computer science and data research experience, cannot currently cover all forms of the advertising business.
Therefore, theories and methods related to computational advertising are often only considered to be elements that are only used when dealing with digital advertising business, which seriously underestimates its value to the entire advertising industry at the business level and the theoretical construction level. Recognition. It is rare in the curriculum, and it is difficult to declare teaching and research topics. The attributes of the original superior disciplines or the attributes of the colleges to which they belong limit this type of theoretical innovation, and it also limits the promotion and popularization of innovative theories.
The optimized layout of the new liberal arts is the first to realize the optimized layout of the theoretical innovation environment, starting from the three levels of teaching, scientific research, and practice, and truly implementing the construction space and application space of cross-integrated content theory. The development of new media technology has also provided many new ideas for advertising creativity, advertising design, advertising production, and the use of advertising devices. Among them, many practical experiences have confirmed that some classic advertising research results or theories are outdated. Therefore, theoretical innovation lies in bravely denying the past.
The field of theory cannot only accumulate and expand, but also clean up and update. The second is research and innovation. As a major in communication science, the research paradigm in the teaching, scientific research, and industry-university cooperation of advertising majors is mainly based on the relevant experience of communication science. The academic paradigm is demonstrated through research methods and discussion methods that focus on communication science and are supplemented by sociology and psychology. Subject evaluation criteria are also specified by the attributes of the upper-level disciplines, and the characteristics, grades, types, etc. of academic journals are also clearly delineated.
This status quo itself still has certain restrictions on the realization of research paradigm innovation. For example, for the evaluation of advertising effectiveness, the research paradigm of communication science is mainly based on the classic theory of communication science represented by theory of communication science. Its inclusiveness of marketing data and aesthetic, social, and other data is poor, and the application of mathematical modeling is relatively small. On the whole, the existing research paradigm and the level of industrial development are not matched, and many research papers and monographs are not in line with the current subject evaluation standards.
The project establishment methods and research methods of many research projects are still purely liberal arts-style criticism or explanation. It is not common to realize inductive research ideas through empirical evidence, and data-intensive research methods such as database analysis and computer simulation are even rarer in use. Liberal arts projects have low funding, small research scale, and usually short research cycles. These are the status quo of liberal arts research in colleges and universities. If we want to truly form high-value interdisciplinary, cross-integrated disciplines, and cross-professional research results, then research paradigm innovation is a problem to be solved. The third is industry service innovation.
Industry service innovation is mainly manifested as innovation in talent training and transportation, as well as innovation in the theme and form of industry-university cooperation. The implementation of the former mainly includes three links: adjusting the training goals, implementing the training plan, and evaluating the training effect. To benchmark digital advertising and new media marketing, the training goals must further clarify the entry points.
Each advertising major should choose the appropriate gripper according to its advantages, and have a new understanding of talent attributes and specific positions connected to the industry; it is necessary to reflect the basic ideas of industry service innovation through the allocation of class hours, curriculum settings, and schedule plans in the training plan. In the evaluation of the training effect, the rationality and correspondence of different indicators such as teaching results, scientific research results, employment, and further studies of cross-integration construction should be considered.
As for the latter industry-university cooperation, the limited partners cannot be limited to traditional advertising companies and media, but should also include Internet companies, production companies, data providers, artist agency companies, etc. The choice of subject competitions can also be more diversified. In the process of gradually deepening the above three types of innovation, blended professional development can be gradually implemented, and finally, a new cross-integrated discipline with the innovative attributes of the new liberal arts can be formed.
4. Realistic suggestions for the optimized layout of new liberal arts majors in advertising majors in related universities.
This article is the author's undertaking of the 2020 teaching and research topic “Research on the optimized layout of new liberal arts majors in Advertising Majors for Benchmarking Digital Advertising and New Media Marketing” of the advertising major of Shanghai University of Engineering and Technology. The research value of this topic is not only reflected in the construction and improvement of the advertising major, but also in the exploration of the actual implementation path of the new liberal arts concept.
The author's practical suggestions for optimizing the layout of the new liberal arts of the school's major mainly include the following points. Implement the training direction as planned. After more than 20 years of development, the major of advertising at Shanghai University of Engineering and Technology has always been responsible for serving the local economic development of Shanghai. The training direction has been from the initial advertising strategy and production to the later brand promotion to the later integration of communication and marketing strategies and has always closely grasped the development trends and needs of the advertising industry in Shanghai.
In the past two years, this major has launched a new round of professional upgrades, with benchmarking digital advertising and new media marketing as the starting point, a certain proportion of curriculum updates have been carried out, and several curriculum construction shaves have been carried out in a planned manner. Teachers have also completed much related scientific research and teaching and research achievements and will implement a new training plan and teaching plan in the fall of 2021.
The newly revised new liberal arts training plan for benchmarking digital advertising and new media marketing will appear in the professional introduction course for freshmen to interpret and communicate in all directions. Gradually update the core curriculum. Digital advertising is the general trend of the development of the advertising industry in recent years. Digital technology has deeply penetrated many business levels such as advertising creative production, advertising delivery, effect evaluation, advertising trading, and management, and has deeply influenced the theoretical understanding of communication and the use of art and design.
On the other hand, marketing techniques that rely on new media technologies and platforms are emerging in an endless stream. From interactive marketing to live broadcast delivery to community maintenance, the industry has a clear demand for practitioners who understand new media marketing technologies and concepts. The transformation of the advertising profession to the characteristic direction of digital advertising and new media marketing has reached a consensus among the teaching team.
The syllabus and course introduction of existing courses in this major (including "Introduction to Advertising", "Introduction to Communication", "Integrated Marketing Communication", "Advertising Planning", "Advertising Creativity", "Advertising Media", "Advertising Survey", "Advertising copywriting", "Advertising effectiveness evaluation", "Network Marketing", "Advertising Regulations", "New media Advertising Creation", etc.) will be revised and improved within two semesters to ensure that the cross-integration elements in the teaching content exceed 20%；
The teaching content and teaching methods of newly opened courses related to this topic (including "Computational advertising", "Digital Advertising Technology", "New Media communication planning", "Mobile interactive advertising Design", "Creative marketing", etc.), and related course teaching reform cases will also be gradually completed in the two academic years, to realize the renewal of the old courses and the opening of new courses. The overall idea of optimizing the layout of the new culture can be implemented as soon as possible. Accelerate the construction of teachers. The current composition of teachers in this major is still relatively typical of the characteristics of traditional liberal arts majors.
The professional background of teachers in professional courses is mainly advertising, journalism, literature, linguistics and art, and design. There are still real shortcomings in digital advertising technology, database management, capital research and financial management, and other related courses and scientific research. To effectively implement the construction of the new liberal arts, it is necessary to optimize the allocation of teachers as soon as possible. Among them, it is particularly important to have full-time teachers with computer backgrounds and database management backgrounds.
At the same time, professionals in the fields of live broadcast marketing, post-film, and television, multimedia design, etc. can enrich the faculty through lectures, practices, etc. Actively try cross-integration teaching and research projects. Actively organize students to participate in subject competitions on digital advertising topic selection, participate in Internet innovation and entrepreneurship projects, and promote the practice of new media marketing in the process of industry-university cooperation.
For example, this major is currently conducting social media product promotion, live broadcast marketing, joint product development, and other training content in the industry-university cooperation project with Pentium Electric. Pay attention not only to the strategy, but also to the implementation of the strategy, and in this process, all teachers and students participate in the exploration and practice of digital advertising and new media marketing, to realize the feedback on teaching planning and professional construction.
Promote the innovation and optimization of new liberal arts. This major has been established in the School of Art and Design for more than 20 years. Other majors are all art majors. With the help of college resources, the cross-integration of “culture + art” has a long history. Taking advantage of the opportunity of this new liberal arts construction, this major should focus on promoting the new liberal arts form of “Arts + arts + engineering” to become the overall character of the college.
This topic is an exploration of actively docking the construction of new liberal arts, trying to build on the characteristics of the major, combine specific issues in the industry, and promote the advertising major to rely on the main body of the liberal arts, and achieve a more effective integration and interspersing with theories and technologies such as art and design, digital multimedia, and big data. , While consolidating the curriculum system, promoting the training of applied liberal arts talents, and realizing the high-quality and high-level development of liberal arts education. The advertising industry is in the process of complex and profound transformation and change.
Art and technology, sensibility and rationality, classics and innovation will coexist for a long time. In 2020, the scale of China's advertising market will be about 993 billion yuan, and the number of business units and employees will grow steadily. The transformation of business logic and form has not affected the overall development of the industry. The basic trend of steady improvement over the past two decades. This is an industry full of passion and kinetic energy, and the training of professional talents cannot be stopped.
The construction of a new liberal arts major is an excellent opportunity to solve the long-standing problems in the process of cross-integration of liberal arts, art, and engineering from the source through top-level design. The construction and development of any major are by no means easy. Different universities have their role positioning and development values. I believe that all advertising majors in brother colleges and universities will tightly grasp this opportunity and seek new space for professional development.