Marketing and Public Relations

Marketing today is unquestionably an integral part of an organisation’s business strategy. It is no longer enough for marketing professionals to know how to put together a marketing plan using that reliable old stratagem from the half-remembered Leaving Cert years: the 4Ps - product, pricing, place, promotion. The marketing professional of today needs to be adept at many different skills in an evermore-complex environment. A brief snapshot of these widely dispersed skills would include e-marketing, brand management, communications, consumer behaviour, research and international marketing. And that is why employers in this sector are seeking graduates with the highest, i.e. postgraduate, awards.

DCU have one of the strongest traditions of marketing education in the higher education sector, and the university’s MBS in Marketing has been running for over ten years. Dr Michael Gannon, senior lecturer in marketing, describes the course as ‘a specialist program designed to produce graduates with an in-depth marketing know-how and with the technical and personal skills to operate in a dynamic and increasingly competitive market’.

Among the course’s unique features is an exchange agreement with the University of Illinois in the US, which has an Advertising Dept described by Forbes magazine as the best in the world. The agreement allows for three DCU MBS Marketing students to spend a spring semester in the US.

Another mainstay of the course is the Spring Marketing Seminar Series whereby ‘visiting academics and business practitioners impart their experience and knowledge of marketing’, explains Dr Gannon. Speakers from universities such as Harvard and companies such as Google and Microsoft attend the event, which is in its 10th year and ‘fairly well established, people in industry readily accept invitations to come and speak’.

Graduates of the course are ‘getting picked up fairly readily’ according to Dr Gannon, with large players in the marketing sector ‘always looking for people’. Graduates are employed with agencies such as Lansdowne Market Research, and in-house with companies such as Bank of Ireland and Google. A number also pursue a PhD in DCU or other institutions, e.g. the prestigious York University of Toronto.

Besides DCU, a taught MBS in Marketing is available in the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business and NUI Galway, where an alternative postgraduate approach to marketing is also facilitated: the Higher Diploma. This course involves students who specialised in marketing at undergraduate level applying their skills at a practical level in a host company. 31 weeks of the 35-week course are spent in the workplace and since the programme’s inception in 1981, 90 per cent of graduates have been retained by the host organisation.

Whereas the MBS and HDip are well suited to undergraduates seeking an opportunity for further study, numerous qualifications that are awarded by professional bodies are also on offer that would greatly benefit experienced marketing professionals. Such programmes include the MSc Masters in Marketing (Executive) in DIT, which is awarded in partnership with the Marketing Institute. A two-year part time programme; the first year involves ‘the up-skilling and deepening of functional marketing knowledge and expertise’, and students develop ‘greater strategic perspective and organisational insights’ in year two.

Besides NUI Galway, other providers of postgraduate research programmes in marketing include the following institutes of technology: Waterford, Athlone and Limerick. The Marketing MBS in LIT is an excellent example of how the ITs are expanding into a postgraduate sector that is traditionally dominated by the universities. ‘What we’ve done in LIT is make a decision that we would concentrate our research in a particular niche, and so we decided upon e-commerce’, says Head of the School of Business & Humanities Marian Duggan. Although only two or three students a year currently undergo the programme, conducting research on important Midwest issues such as the branding of local produce, they do go on to well-paid jobs and LIT is currently building up capacity to increase its research student intake.

Postgraduate options are available in areas of specialisation within marketing such as advertising and public relations. PR in particular is an excellent option for undergraduates of all disciplines. John Gallagher, DIT’s Course Coordinator of the MA in Public Relations, explains: ‘A few years ago we had a student here who had a degree in agriculture and that was obviously a bit uncommon, but because there were agricultural companies in need of communications experts who had a feel for their industry, this student was very well sought after. In fact, she was the first in her class who was employed and there was a couple of companies fighting over her.’

‘What we try to do is gather people from as broad a range as possible of academic pursuits: arts, communications, law, business, agriculture, science; because those are the people that the industry wants. The companies who’ve taken on our graduates over the years reads like a “who’s who” of corporate Ireland,’ he adds.

Gallagher is also course director of an exciting new option for people with an interest in PR and politics: the MA in Public Affairs and Political Communications, which was launched last year. A ‘unique course’, this programme is the only one in Ireland that facilitates an internship in Seanad Éireann. Students spend three days a week in DIT Aungier Street and two more working with an assigned senator in Leinster House. The inaugural 15 graduates of 2007 are ‘virtually 100 per cent employed’ according to Gallagher in areas such as public affairs consultancies, and by TDs and senators as full time assistants.