‘Not PR Campaigns, but Communication Strategies have become in Demand’
In 2011, the School of Integrated Communications was launched within the HSE Faculty of Politics. The School’s Head, Sergey Zverev, told us about education at the School and its future plans.
— Dr. Zverev, what is the concept of the HSE School of Integrated Communications?
— Our general idea is to train high-class specialists in advertising and PR who are familiar with the theoretical and practical aspects of mass and specialist communication, understand the technologies of new media, advertising and PR, as well as the technologies of media content creation and management and the skills of media planning, project management and marketing research. In addition to this, our graduates should have some knowledge of the theory and history of arts, management, sociology, psychology and history. We are talking about training both universal experts in integrated communications management, and area-specific specialists within advertising, PR and new media.
— In 2011 the Department of Political and Business Communications merged with the Department of Theory and Practice of Advertising, and as a result, the HSE Faculty of Politics now includes the Department of Integrated Communications. How did these changes influence the contents of the Department’s curriculum, what is the students’ area of specialization?
— We prepare specialists in Advertising and PR which includes three profiles of education: advertising, public relations and new media.
Our courses combine both theoretical and practical classes. We organize masterclasses by leading specialists in communication technologies, and attract many leading professionals. As part of the Public Relations course, there were lectures, master classes and seminars from top managers of different companies and agencies-members of the Russian Communications Consultancies Association (АКОS). We also cooperate with TWIGA – the largest independent communication group in the CIS. Its representatives have developed and are reading a course entitled ‘Development and Technologies of an Advertising Product’, while BBDO advertising agency delivers a course entitled ‘Organization of the Work of PR and Advertising Departments’.
— In the context of the recent structural changes, how do you solve the problem of combining the different curricula in different courses?
— We have built quite a complex model: today there are five courses at the School, each of which has its own curriculum. Today we are trying to work out how these can be combined without reducing the quality of the education and at the same time taking into account the contemporary realities of our profession. We are, in many senses, moving by intuition, trying to choose the technologies and mechanisms suitable for the current situation. The problem is that the practical knowledge in this sphere has changed considerably over the last five or ten years and is continuing to actively transform each year. These changes in technology, means of communication, and means of product promotion and positioning of different players on the market require theoretical consideration. Three years ago mobile content was not considered an advertising tool, and yet today it is ubiquitious; a year or a year and a half ago social networks had no active influence over social and political processes, while today they are a platform for serious political discussions. Today some Twitter users can boast hundreds of thousands of followers, which is more than the circulation of some national newspapers.
— What are the today’s requirements of the labour market to the graduates in advertising and PR?
— A university graduate in advertising and PR has to be aware of modern technological devices and to understand how to work with them; to appreciate how video and photo coverage are made, how texts are written and how all these can be integrated in certain media sources. The market demands experts who can think and offer their clients not merely PR (or advertising) campaigns, but communication strategies based on developed complex communication ideas.
Ludmila Mezentseva, HSE News Service
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