Marquette Business alumna Ally Busswitz, a brand manager at Calypso Lemonade, knew exactly the right people to go to for ideas about how to ramp up her company’s influencer marketing: her alma mater’s current students.
“Today’s students are going to give us a fresh perspective because they’re a new generation and a different kind of consumer,” Busswitz says. “We wanted to get suggestions from them while giving them a learning opportunity that’s applicable, not just hypothetical.”
Students in Dr. Brian Spaid’s digital marketing class consulted for Milwaukee-based beverage company Calypso Lemonade as a final project, working in teams to come up with content strategies to boost the company’s exposure. Busswitz tasked students with creating demographic and psychographic models of the companies’ customers, then using those models to create a publicity strategy.
“I’ve found that the most impactful contribution I can make to my business students is bringing industry into the classroom and bridging the gap between coursework and real-world practice with hands-on experiences,” says Spaid, chair and associate professor of marketing. “Calypso was a fantastic partner on this project, and I’m thrilled they were able to benefit from the students’ creative and interesting ideas.”
The project culminated with the student teams presenting their final product to a panel of judges from Calypso. They selected the team of Federico Carletti, Angelique Monroy, Matthew End and Felicity Gresnick as the winners; they received a prize pack of Calypso products as their reward.
“It was a fantastic experience to work hand-in-hand with Calypso and not just see what they’re doing, but also apply what we learned in class to help them,” says Monroy, a senior marketing major.
The group’s winning campaign, titled “Pause for Paradise,” centered on a novel suggestion: host an in-person event for influencers to spread the word about Calypso’s newest products. Their spring break-themed initiative would culminate with a party in Florida where lifestyle influencers would be able to sample Calypso drinks and generate brand-aligned social media posts for their followings.
“Having Marquette just right up the road gives us the chance to work together with a forward-thinking institution and there was some great, student-led ideation connected to this project.”
Ally Busswitz, Brand Manager at Calypso Lemonade
Busswitz said her team was “definitely taking notes” during the presentations and thought the Florida social media event idea was worth considering.
“Influencers are a huge part of the marketing scene right now; a lot of brands are working with them and it’s something we’re always thinking about as a strategy worth pursuing,” Busswitz says.
“Calypso provided us with a lot of information surrounding their brand, as well as their content strategy,” says Gresnick, a junior studying marketing and information systems. “Our team thoroughly read those materials and came up with messaging about vacations, having an escape in a bottle and this product allowing you to live the island lifestyle.”
Calypso’s capstone project is an example of applied learning, one of Marquette Business’ hallmarks. The college teams with industry partners and nonprofits to give students chances to practice the business theory they learn in the classroom on real-world cases. Other instances of applied learning include entrepreneurship students consulting for Milwaukee-area proprietors and enrollees in the Master of Science in Accounting program, preparing a forensic audit to be used in a real fraud case.
Through these experiences, students will acquire several things that prepare them for the job market: connections, relevant experience for their resumes and insight into what day-to-day life is like in their chosen careers. Applied learning is one of the major factors behind Marquette Business’ strong career outcomes: more than 90 percent of graduates are either employed, in graduate school or in the military.
For the students, the connection between the assignment and their career ambitions was clear.
“I would love to work in content or brand strategy, and this ties together a lot of what I’ve learned in previous internships as well as what I’ve learned in previous marketing courses,” Gresnick says. “This project was a great test of how creative we could be.”
“Marketing is not my field, but the experience of working on this project was very important for me because I’m an exchange student and the American work culture is much different. It was a good learning experience,” says Carletti, who studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.
Companies partnering with Marquette on applied learning projects find the experiences equally valuable, both for recruiting talent and for the students’ ideas. Busswitz refers to the experience as “two-way learning” and indicates she would be open to doing more projects in the future.
“Having Marquette just right up the road gives us the chance to work together with a forward-thinking institution and there was some great, student-led ideation connected to this project,” Busswitz says.
