Fashion Marketing and Promotion Degree BA (Hons)

Program Overview

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This comprehensive fashion marketing program provides a solid foundation in marketing, merchandising, buying, styling, and digital communications. Students specialize in either fashion marketing or fashion promotion while developing creative and technical skills through diverse activities, including guest speakers, live client projects, and study trips. The program prepares graduates for a wide range of careers in the fashion industry, from social media management to fashion buying and visual merchandising.

Program Outline

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Degree Overview:

This fashion marketing course provides a fantastic platform from which to launch your career in the fashion industry. It encompasses branding, marketing, merchandising, buying, styling, PR, live events, promotion, and digital communications. The degree offers two distinct routes into careers within the fashion industry:

• Fashion Marketing: Focuses on the business and marketing aspects of the fashion industry.
• Fashion Promotion: Focuses on the visual and creative aspects of fashion promotion and communications.
Students will study both fashion marketing and fashion promotion in their first year and then choose the specialist area they wish to follow in their second and third year. A core study running throughout the course delivers key learning for all Fashion Marketing and Promotion professionals.

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Outline:

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Course Structure:

• Stage 1 (Year 1): Introduces students to the fundamentals of fashion marketing and promotion, covering topics such as styling, digital fashion, design communication, foundations of marketing, brand stories and consumer behavior, and photography for fashion.
• Stage 2 (Year 2): Students specialize in either Fashion Marketing or Fashion Promotion, taking modules related to their chosen pathway.
Modules include fashion event, client conceptual experience, client brand resolution, brand management, public relations management and practice, drivers of innovation in fashion, fashion buying, merchandising and VM, fashion marketing and promotion in practice, advanced fashion imagery, and commercial campaign.
• Stage 3 (Year 3): Students continue to specialize in their chosen pathway, taking advanced modules such as advanced design communication, visual promotion, professional promotional website, creative fashion futures, campaign planning, content creation for marketing, entrepreneurial skills and freelancing, marketing concept research, and concept development and realization.

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Modules:

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Stage 1:

• Styling and Digital Fashion (40 Credits): Introduces a range of creative, digital, and technical skills and techniques to convey information effectively across a variety of multi-media platforms.
Emphasis on the production of digital communications which demonstrate a variety of problem-solving techniques from concept to consumer in a multi-channel environment.
• Foundations of Marketing (20 Credits): Introduces the concept of marketing and explains how it impacts organizations, customers, and stakeholders.
Focuses on the idea of "creating value" in a rapidly changing external environment. Covers the factors affecting consumer behavior, including psychological, personal, social, and technological. Introduces the building of consumer-based brand equity and how this can be communicated through brand storytelling.
• Photography for Fashion (20 Credits): Introduces a range of digital photographic techniques and practical approaches to develop fundamental skills required within the fashion photography industry.

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Stage 2:

• Fashion Event (20 Credits): Develops knowledge, understanding, and professional competences in the planning and management of a fashion-related event.
Explores the different roles and responsibilities within a range of organizations involved in the management of concept to consumer.
• Client Conceptual Experience (20 Credits): Expands and consolidates the digital processes introduced in Stage 1, developing the aesthetic and creative concepts of contemporary brands in a consumer context.
Investigates the communication of client values via design, retailing, styling, and photography, along with themes relating to design culture and visual referencing in contemporary society into a brand resolution. Research is developed to implement a client-specific conceptual resolution with contemporary currency. Reflection forms a constructive part of this module's outcomes, enabling students to consolidate their existing knowledge and reflect upon their professional creative process.
• Client Brand Resolution (20 Credits): Expands and consolidates the digital processes introduced in Stage 1, developing the aesthetic and creative concepts of contemporary brands in a consumer context.
Investigates the communication of client values via design, retailing, styling, and photography, along with themes relating to design culture and visual referencing in contemporary society into a brand resolution. Research is developed to implement a client-specific conceptual resolution with contemporary currency. Reflection forms a constructive part of this module's outcomes, enabling students to consolidate their existing knowledge and reflect upon their professional creative process.
• Brand Management (20 Credits): Explores the concepts and practice of branding and strategic brand management, providing a framework for comprehensive analysis and reflection.
• Public Relations Management and Practice (20 Credits): Explores a range of PR management tools and techniques across the exciting and diverse PR industry.
Students learn about the function of PR as part of integrated marketing communications, as well as examining the role of PR within crisis management, event management, the not-for-profit sector, public affairs, and internal and external communications.
• Drivers of Innovation in Fashion (20 Credits): Explores why innovation is important and identifies consumer mega trends and their application within the fashion industry.
Emphasis is on observation of the application of sustainable innovation within existing sectors current and emerging fashion markets, identifying potential opportunities.
• Fashion Buying, Merchandising and VM (20 Credits): Provides students with a range of operational knowledge and skills to contribute efficiently and effectively in both the Fashion physical and digital retail environment.
Students learn about the distinct roles and interelationships between buying, merchandising, and visual merchandising and the importance of a customer-centric approach at various market levels.
• Fashion Marketing and Promotion in Practice (20 Credits): Helps prepare students for working in the Fashion industry through the development of workplace and management skills.
Through internships, work shadowing, and a study tour, students have the opportunity to observe and work within a fashion and lifestyle environment in the UK and internationally to develop their own professional practice.
• Advanced Fashion Imagery (20 Credits): Explores the different facets of imagery and messaging encompassing fashion imaging in editorial, commercial, advertising, and social media forms, including inherent legal and ethical issues.
Students respond to briefs visually to build digital assets that utilize still, moving image, graphic design, and emerging technologies.
• Commercial Campaign (20 Credits): Students respond to a brief exploring a media campaign with a commercial outcome.
Students combine media forms for a variety of commercial uses suitable for different audiences, exploiting digital design and layout, social, still, and moving image, and emerging technologies.

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Stage 3:

• Advanced Design Communication (20 Credits): Underpins the final major project through a variety of theoretical, reflective, practice-led, and presentational investigations.
As future designers, students consider the changing nature of design contexts and the need to communicate personal creative identities within the professional environment.
• Visual Promotion (20 Credits): Emphasizes the need to recognize the fashion/textiles/footwear/accessories/leather and fashion promotions industries as agents of change and the resulting implications.
Helps students identify their market level and explore suitable methods of promotion in this field through a visual narrative.
• Professional Promotional Website (40 Credits): Consolidates and expands upon marketing, promotion, and communication principles through processes and contextual analysis introduced in Stage 2.
A self-initiated final website project encompasses creative, conceptual, technical, theoretical, and practice-based skills by utilizing the knowledge and experience gained throughout the degree to underpin the context. This necessitates the development of subject-specific content to present the technical and creative skills for potential clients.
• Creative Fashion Futures (20 Credits): Consolidates and expands upon marketing, promotion, and communication principles through processes and contextual analysis introduced in Stage 2.
A self-initiated final Fashion Futures project encompasses creative, conceptual, technical, theoretical, and practice-based skills by utilizing the knowledge and experience gained throughout the degree to underpin the context. This necessitates the development of subject-specific content to present technical CAD and creative skills at a level commensurate with study.
• Campaign Planning (20 Credits): Students explore a range of issues that underpin campaign development and develop skills in analyzing the context for campaigns.
Students develop strategies and plan campaigns for a range of different scenarios, using both analytical and creative skills to identify appropriate activities and media.
• Content Creation for Marketing (20 Credits): Focuses on the development and building of professionally relevant content on a variety of platforms, enabling students to develop skills in real-time, relevant marketing communications and content creation.
The creation of content is linked to relevant academic theory in communication and visual language, which underpins the student's choices.
• Entrepreneurial Skills and Freelancing (20 Credits): Equips learners with entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial knowledge and skills, examining how these are deployed in different contexts, in establishing new business ventures and growing organizations, where creativity is a driver of innovation and change.
• Marketing Concept Research (20 Credits): Through the use of current academic theory, marketing, and consumer trends, students undertake in-depth research into an identified sector within fashion or the lifestyle industries.
This results in the identification of an opportunity that is relevant to the given market level. Students apply their research and analysis to propose a concept for further development.
• Concept Development and Realisation (40 Credits): Using the concept proposal from MKT3062, students develop and refine the marketing concept to create a viable solution.
This is a visualization of the concept - the physical/digital solution supported by an in-depth report that justifies the outcome. The solution needs to demonstrate a strong awareness of current or emerging marketing conventions relevant to the given sector.

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Teaching:

• Active Blended Learning: This approach is student-centered with an emphasis on problem-based learning and enquiry.
• Varied Activities: Include conducting primary research, study trips in the UK and abroad, industry guest speakers, live client projects, working in teams, Adobe Creative Suite training, technical training on specialist equipment, CAD software training, and staging live events.
• Faculty: Experts in fashion, marketing, photography, digital communications, and specialist software from both the Faculty of Business and Law and the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology.

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Assessment:

• Assessment Methods: Vary per module and include seminar/group and individual presentations, project work, exams, written assignments, and portfolios.

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Careers:

• Career Destinations: Wide and varied, combining the transferable skills from a fashion promotion degree and a fashion marketing degree, preparing students for operating in an increasingly digital environment.
• Potential Career Paths: Social media, digital fashion, content creation, trend researcher, fashion lifestyle/product stylist, visual merchandiser, multi-media promotion, fashion catwalk producer, fashion promotion, fashion buyer, fashion blogger/vlogger.
• Product Categories: Apparel, accessories, footwear and leather, lifestyle, cosmetics, fragrance, and beauty.
• Master's Opportunities: On successful completion of the BA Fashion Marketing & Promotion degree, students have the opportunity to undertake further study, including:
• Master of Business Administration (MBA)
• International Marketing Strategy MSc
• International Business Management MSc

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Other:

• High Profile Graduate Fashion Event Involvement: Opportunities for students to present their portfolios to prospective employers and influencers.
• First Year European Study Trip: Included in tuition fees.
• Second Year International Study Tour: Included in tuition fees.
• Short Term Industry Placements and Internships: Available.
• Optional Placement Year: Available.
• Changemaker Certificate: Additional qualifications are available through this certificate, which focuses on developing innovative solutions to challenges in the fashion industry, such as resource scarcity, fast fashion, recycling, upcycling, and re-purposing.
• Laptop: UK fee payers receive a laptop when their course begins.

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UK Fees 24/25

Full Time: £9,250 Foundation: £9,250 Part Time: £1,540 (per 20 credits)

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International Fees 24/25

Full Time: £15,200 Foundation: £15,200

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Optional Work Placement Year:

£1,200