CAS 832: Strategic Message Development

Course Description (core course)

The effectiveness of corporate messages can be enhanced by careful, research-informed development. This course provides a model for designing effective marketing communication, along with detailed ideas about topics such as conducting effective stakeholder analysis, setting outcome parameters, designing messages and engaging your audience. The course takes an integrative approach in message design, which brings together critical thinking from marketing, psychology, communication and creative writing.

Learning Objectives

  • Create a demographic and psychographic profile of the target audience, along with specific features of the audience that will be important for message design.
  • Understand the complex relationships among various stakeholders.
  • Incorporate audience data and communication theory to design messages with greater effect.
  • Compose compelling messages that leverage strategies from persuasion, narrative and communication research.
  • Create messages that are appropriate for a variety of media and an understanding of how to use these different messages to enhance and complement each other.
  • Develop a taxonomy of persuasive appeal strategies and a knowledge of when to deploy each.
  • Analyze and identify trends in their market communication environment and implement their conclusions in their communication strategy.

Sample Lesson

Would you like to experience a sample lesson in CAS 832? You can. Dive into some basic pieces of content in a week of Jason's course. Ask questions, Dive deeper. And consider joining us.

CAS 832 intro Lesson

Student Impact

The first question that everyone seems to ask when I tell them that I am in the Strategic Communication Online Master's Program at MSU is: "What can you do with that degree?" The question does not come with criticism, but there seems to be an undertone that the applications of this program to the professional world are unclear. Read how Michael Williams was able to use content in CAS 832 to matter almost immediately. 

Read Michael's Story