Module BUSI4DA15: Cross-media Brand Strategies

Department: Management and Marketing

BUSI4DA15: Cross-media Brand Strategies

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To enable students to understand how brands are built, expressed and experienced across multiple media environments, integrating physical, digital, social, immersive and interactive touchpoints to create coherent brand ecosystems.
• To develop students’ strategic and creative thinking around cross-media brand storytelling, exploring how brand narratives travel across platforms, adapt to different audience behaviours, and build participation, community and cultural resonance.
• To provide students with the practical skills and critical frameworks needed to design and manage cross-media brand campaigns, considering audience insight, media formats, platform logics, emerging technologies, cultural trends, and global/local contexts.

Content

• From Brand Messaging to Brand Worlds – How branding has evolved from static messaging to dynamic, multi-platform brand experiences.
• Brand Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling – How stories are adapted, extended and reinforced across media; narrative coherence vs. platform-specific originality.
• Brand Ecosystems, Touchpoints and Experience Mapping – Designing connected brand journeys across paid, owned, earned and shared media.
• Audience Behaviour, Communities and Participation – The role of co-creation, fandom, UGC, influencers and cultural circulation in shaping brand meaning.
• Brand Consistency vs. Platform Adaptation – How to maintain brand coherence while tailoring creatives to the strengths, behaviours and cultures of each media channel.
• Creative Strategy for Multi-Platform Campaigns – Crafting ideas that scale, travel and evolve across formats (video, social, audio, OOH, gaming, XR, retail, etc.)
• Integrated Media Planning & Measurement – Aligning media choices
• with campaign objectives; evaluating cross-media impact, brand equity, engagement and attribution.
• Challenger brands, Influencers, AI and the Creator-Led Brand Landscape – The evolving role of creators, AI-generated content and decentralised branding in shaping narratives.
• Culture-Driven Branding and ‘Glocalisation’ – How brands adapt to cultural contexts while sustaining a unifying brand world; cultural intelligence and inclusivity; sustainability, eco-branding and the ethical brand. Emerging Frontiers in Cross-media Branding – Immersive media, gaming, XR, metaverse, voice ecosystems and future brand experience possibilities.

Learning Outcomes

• have a critical knowledge of key branding concepts, strategies and current issues in branding and cross-media branding from managerial, socio-cultural, and anthropological perspectives
• have an understanding of brands storytelling narratives and the role of the brand story in driving marketing strategy
• have an advanced knowledge and understanding of the brand equity concept from both financial and consumer perspectives
• have an advanced knowledge and understanding of different approaches to brand strategies and an ability to critically evaluate the main choices that brand managers must take into account when they manage their brands
• have an advanced understanding of the complexities of uni-media vs cross-media options and the factors brand managers must evaluate when scoping effective and high-impact brand strategies.

• Be able to apply branding concepts and strategies in a dynamic, global, diverse and fragmented media landscape and the ever-increasing significance of cross-media strategies
• Be able to explore the complex task of successful branding with regards to the act of naming a product, authenticity, reassurance, differentiation, the development of its cultural meaning and the transformation of experience
• Be able to apply knowledge of the branding concept and brand strategies in the context of the development of global brands
• Be able to critically evaluate the importance of strong brands to stakeholders.

• Effective written and oral communication skills
• Planning, organising and time management skills
• Problem solving and analytical skills
• The ability to use initiative
• Advanced skills in the interpretation of data
• Advanced computer literacy skills.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• The module is delivered via a combination of lectures and seminars. Lectures provide the primary theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the subject matter, while seminars provide an opportunity to explore issues of application and decision-making through a combination of case study analysis and critique of key research papers in the field.
• The summative assessment of the module, by individual written assignment, is designed to test students’ knowledge and understanding of the subject-matter and their ability to apply their knowledge and specialist skills in the context of specific issues in cross-media brand activation strategies.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Group work, use of a simulated challenger brand to develop and present a brand strategy, outlining all aspects of a brand's development, design, growth, and activation.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.