Advertising and PR team up
The "Communications Manager" and "PR Consultant" courses, which lead to the federal diploma via the Advanced Federal Diploma Examination, will be offered jointly by individual institutes from spring 2015 and will also be run jointly in an initial base year.
In conjunction with this, the two sponsoring associations SW Schweizer Werbung and PR Suisse are also combining the corresponding examinations in a basic section from 2016. The result: a practical, high-quality and labor-market-relevant qualification in higher vocational education with the possibility of also acquiring the core competencies of the other discipline with little additional effort.
Bringing together what belongs together
The two umbrella organizations for advertising and public relations, SW Schweizer Werbung and pr suisse, have developed a new type of training course for communications managers and PR consultants, respectively, integrated in the basic part. As before, this is strongly oriented towards practice, covers the entire spectrum of communication disciplines and meets all the requirements of a future-oriented continuing education program. "The two professions have been growing ever closer together for some time now, and already overlap in many respects," emphasizes Heinz Egli, head of examinations and continuing education officer at SW Schweizer Werbung. "The image building of companies, brands and products can no longer be clearly assigned to one of the two specializations. So why not bring together what belongs together anyway?" This initiative beautifully expresses the idea of integrated communication and thus the rejection of silo thinking, which is still frequently encountered in practice.
Common basic training - comprehensive communication perspective
SW Schweizer Werbung and pr suisse have cooperated closely with education providers SAWI, KV-Bildungsgruppe Schweiz including SPRI, and Bildungszentrum BVS St. Gallen in designing the new courses. The future courses for communications managers and PR consultants will be run jointly from spring 2015 in the basic training and will conclude with an intermediate examination at the end of January 2016. Subsequently, the specialization in one of the two fields will take place separately, but closely coordinated. This second training phase concludes with a diploma thesis and an oral examination in fall 2016. The previous federal diplomas "PR Consultant" and "Communications Manager" will continue to exist.
Future-oriented because it is in line with the labor market
"In addition to the synergies in terms of content, the great advantage for graduates is that - in keeping with the concept of integrated communication - the core competencies of the respective other specialization can be acquired after graduation with comparatively little additional effort," emphasizes Barbara Forster, Head of Examinations at pr suisse. "We are convinced that this will open up new prospects for the path to the practice-oriented Advanced Federal Diploma Examination. Incidentally, this already compares very favorably with the universities of applied sciences." Registration for the newly designed course, the content of which has been adapted to the rapidly changing requirements for advertising and PR professionals, is now open at Sawi and BVS, St. Gallen (communications manager) and at the KV-Bildungsgruppe Schweiz (PR consultant).
