Please read the whole assessment brief before starting work on the Assessment Task.

The Assessment Task

Following on from class debates on key issues within advertising, discuss one prevailing issue to be the main theme of your assignment, articulating awareness and sensitivity (comprehension) to the matter.

You must identify three recent advertising campaigns (within the last 2 years), that have been controversial from an ethical perspective, assessing the campaigns impact on the main issue(s) in play. You should also critique how the brands are rectifying the issues and maintaining their integrity or maybe not.

The essay should be underpinned with academic literature, reports, trade case studies and utilise official regulator findings e.g., ASA judgements (if appropriate). The purpose of this assessment is to become familiar with current societal issues and how the marketing communications industry is monitored and regulated to ensure it operates in an ethical manner.

The expected format for this assignment is essay, although headings and subheadings are acceptable. You may include images, storyboards or scripts to illustrate the campaigns.

Word count 2000 (10 +/- %)

Further Guidance

It is important that you utilise the theories and frameworks from the literature as well as discussions in this module and apply them to your examples. You need to refer to at least ten textbooks and/or academic articles and/or reports. Where references are used, these should be included in a separate references section, using the Harvard Referencing system.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this assessment, you will be able to:

• LO A: Critique the role that advertising, and marketing communications play in society
• LO B: Analyse the potential influence of the ethical and legal issues within own discipline and role in advertising or digital marketing.
• LO D: Analyse own agency in relation to impact to a given scenario in advertising and demonstrate sound ethical behaviour

Your grade will depend on how well you meet these learning outcomes in the way relevant for this assessment. Please see the final page of this document for further details of the criteria against which you will be assessed.

Assessment Support

Specific support sessions for this assessment will be provided by the module team and notified through NILE. You can also access individual support and guidance for your assessments from Library and Learning Services. Visit the Skills Hub to access this support and to discover the online support also available for assessments and academic skills.

Academic Integrity and Misconduct

Unless this is a group assessment, the work you produce must be your own, with work taken from any other source properly referenced and attributed. This means that it is an infringement of academic integrity and, therefore, academic misconduct to ask someone else to carry out all or some of the work for you, whether paid or unpaid, or to use the work of another student whether current or previously submitted.

For further guidance on what constitutes plagiarism, contract cheating or collusion, or any other infringement of academic integrity, please read the University’s Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy. Other useful resources to help with understanding academic integrity are available from UNPAC – the University of Northampton’s Plagiarism Avoidance Course.

N.B. The penalties for academic misconduct are severe and include failing the assessment, failing the module and even expulsion from the university.

Assessment Submission

To submit your work, please go to the ‘Assessment and Submission’ area on the NILE site and use the relevant submission point to upload the assignment deliverable. The deadline for this is 11.59pm (UK local time) on the date of submission. Please note that essays and text-based reports should be submitted as word documents and not PDFs or Mac files.

Written work submitted to TURNITIN will be subject to anti-plagiarism detection software. Turnitin checks student work for possible textual matches against internet available resources and its own proprietary database.

When you upload your work correctly to TURNITIN you will receive a receipt which is your record and proof of submission. If your assessment is not submitted to TURNITIN, rather than a receipt, you will see a green banner at the top of the screen that denotes successful submission.

N.B Work emailed directly to your tutor will not be marked.

Late submission of work
For first sits, if an item of assessment is submitted late and an extension has not been granted, the following will apply:

• Within one week of the original deadline – work will be marked and returned with full feedback and awarded a maximum bare pass grade.
• More than one week from original deadline – grade achievable LG (L indicating late).

For resits there are no allowances for work submitted late and it will be treated as a non-submission.

Please see the Assessment and Feedback Policy for full information on the processes related to assessment, grading and feedback, including anonymous grading. You will also find Guidance on grades and resit opportunities from the main University website. Also explained there are the meanings of the various G grades at the bottom of the grading scale including LG mentioned above.

Extensions 

The University of Northampton’s general policy about extensions is to be supportive of students who have genuine difficulties in meeting an assessment deadline. It is not intended for use where pressures of work could have reasonably been anticipated.

For full details please refer to the Extensions Policy. Extensions are only available for first sits – they are not available for resits.

Mitigating Circumstances

For full guidance on Mitigating circumstances please go to Mitigating Circumstances where you will find information on the policy as well as guidance and the form for making an application. Please also see Extensions & Mitigating Circumstances guide 22_23 that compares your options.

Please note, however, that an application to defer an assessment on the grounds of mitigating circumstances should normally be made in advance of the submission deadline or examination date.

Feedback and Grades

These can be accessed through clicking on the “Gradebook” on NILE. Feedback will be provided by a rubric with summary comments.