Subject guides

Unit 2: Research and Plan a Marketing Campaign — criteria decoded

11 October 2026·6 min read

Unit 2 is the campaign unit: research markets, explore marketing approaches, then build a plan for a new product. It's a favourite — and also a trap for learners who produce gorgeous campaign collateral and forget the criteria are about research and reasoning. Verbatim grid: Unit 2 criteria page.

The three aims

A — how markets are researched: models and tools for understanding markets.
B — approaches to product marketing: nationally and internationally — how products are taken to market.
C — develop a campaign plan: a full marketing campaign plan for a new product in a scenario.

The grid, decoded

A.P1 / A.P2 — explore/explain research models and tools; A.M1 — analyse how they serve the market understanding; A.D1 — evaluate research approaches for the scenario.
B.P3 / B.P4 — explore marketing approaches for national and international markets; B.M2 — analyse their fit; B.D2 — evaluate approaches for the product's markets.
C.P5 / C.P6 — develop the campaign plan and its elements; C.M3 — analyse the plan's rationale (why these channels, these messages, this budget); C.D3 — justify the plan: the coherent argument that this campaign will work for this product in this market.

The trap: artefacts aren't evidence

A slick poster and a campaign jingle satisfy nothing on their own. The criteria ask for research-informed reasoning:

The plan is Pass-level without its rationale. C.P5/C.P6 are met by a coherent plan — but C.M3 and C.D3 live in the "why": why this segment, why this channel mix, why this budget split, argued from the research aims A and B built.
"Creative" that ignores the brief's data — the scenario's market figures are the research material. Campaigns invented in a vacuum read as fiction.
International treated as a footnote — B.P4 and B.D2 specifically address national and international approaches; one paragraph on "cultural differences" doesn't reach.

What strong evidence looks like

Research findings that visibly feed the plan — the chain from A into C.
A plan whose every element has a because: segment choice, positioning, channels, budget, timeline, success measures.
C.D3 as an argued case — acknowledging alternatives and showing why this plan beats them for this product.

For assessors

The unit's evidence is long and visual; reading it line-by-line is where IV weeks die. Criterion-level checking handles exactly this: checkb.tech reads the campaign document against each criterion — including whether the plan's rationale is argued or asserted — and returns verdicts with cited evidence. The evidence checklist applied by machine, class-wide.

FAQ

Does the campaign plan need real-world accuracy?

It needs brief-world accuracy: grounded in the scenario's data and its market context. That's what "develop" means here.

Is the plan assessed on creativity?

It's assessed on criteria: research-informed, justified, coherent. Creativity is welcome precisely insofar as it's argued for.