Penn State Prime experience turns Smeal student ideas into real brand work

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It was a big day toward the end of Danielle Beechey’s senior year as a Penn State Smeal College of Business marketing major: A presentation where she and a team of classmates pitched branding ideas to executives with one of the largest corporations in the world, followed by an interview for an internship at a prestigious New York City advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi.

The two events conflicted with each other, so Beechey had to ask the ad agency to shift the interview to later in the day. When the interview kicked off that afternoon, Beechey was asked by Saatchi & Saatchi how the earlier presentation had gone.

Her reply: “It was great. We were presenting to L’Oréal executives.”

That, Beechey said, helped her clinch the internship with Saatchi & Saatchi, which then turned into a full-time job with the agency after she graduated last year.

“I think having that background was super helpful and just made me stand out in a super competitive pool,” she said.

The background Beechey referenced was cultivated in a unique experiential learning course that’s part of a Smeal program called "Penn State Prime." The course, Marketing 495A: Brand Management & Campaign Strategy, has two groups of marketing students work with major corporations to take on a real problem from a real client.

Each student has a job title and the teams go through every step of the campaign building process, mimicking what it’s like to work in a fast-paced marketing agency. A handbook for each position spells out the duties, and a corporate mentor guides the students along the way.

“There's so much that you learn because it's a hands-on experience and you are given a very specific role in it,” said Jennifer Chang Coupland, clinical professor of marketing and faculty adviser of Penn State Prime.

Beechey’s team devised marketing and packaging for a new type of CeraVe sunscreen, a product owned by L’Oréal. They recently learned that the company is using some ideas from their campaign, including package design elements and social media content.

Penn State Prime’s next-level experiential learning

In 2015, students in the BA 496 course taught by assistant professor of management Gus Colangelo wanted to create an organization that provided opportunities to develop skills and knowledge in brand management, advertising and consumer insights that would supplement their coursework. From that, Penn State Prime was born.

Soon after, Penn State Prime’s signature fall Branding Panel event evolved from an idea hatched by Coupland and Smeal 1978 alumnus Timmy Garde, a business executive and active supporter of Smeal.

Students interested in Penn State Prime start out by joining the fall semester club portion of the program, which consists of weekly meetings focused on branding, advertising and consumer insights. Meetings feature workshops, industry and alumni guest speakers, mini-case competitions and other special events.

From there, 20 or so students are selected to join the course, offered in the spring semester and taught by Coupland and two teaching assistants.

This is where academia meets the boardroom, Chang said.

“It is like a job,” said Federica Roo, who was also in the class in spring of 2025 and recently served as one of the teaching assistants. “Every day there's something new, something new that we have to do, something new that we have to think about.”

Roo served as brand manager and Beechey was account manager, both overseeing their team of 11 students.

“The leadership and skills I've gained from this experience are invaluable,” Roo said.

“A lot of my friends and I joke that it's like ‘the internship before the internship,’ because it is a true real-world experience. You're talking to brand executives, agency executives.”

Emily Slater, another member of the 2025 CeraVe team and Roo’s partner as TA (teaching assistant) for the spring 2026 course, said the students handled everything from focus groups to research on consumers and the brand to budgets, key performance indicators and a final professional presentation of their ideas.

“We did the social media plan, we did the store shelving, how it would appear in stores, all of that,” said Slater.

The students had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Slater added, which meant they couldn’t disclose any details on the CeraVe project until the product had launched.

“I think that Prime is one of the only marketing clubs that brings in the agency side,” Slater said. “I feel like not many people know that that's a path you can take within the marketing major.”

An agency is a company that manages marketing campaigns for multiple clients and products. At Saatchi & Saatchi, for example, Beechey is an assistant account executive for Charmin-brand toilet paper.

“I was the account manager of the agency group in Prime, so I was really able to kind of build my resume and kind of understand everything that's expected of that role,” Beechey said, adding that everything lined up perfectly to kickstart her career right out of college.

While Penn State Prime is focused on agency work, the skills learned there are applicable to any career path a student might choose.

“You're going to learn all sorts of things about how to communicate with people,” Coupland said. “How to all get on the same page and stay organized. How to make sure if you're a quiet person that you are heard. How to invite other people into the conversation, how to make sure that you're staying on track.”

Seeing their design in the wild

Roo and Slater were in the classroom this spring when Roo got a text from another 2025 Penn State Prime member. Their friend had spotted parts of their product design on CeraVe sunscreen displayed in a Target store.

“And then just randomly, I'm scrolling on my Instagram page and I find a survey post, which is exactly what I presented to the executives at CeraVe last year,” Roo said.

Multiple companies have worked with Prime students over the years, including Starbucks and Johnson & Johnson. And this isn’t the first time elements of their project have been used in actual ad campaigns.

“I think that's where the real impact is for the students,” Roo said. “You would never think that just from a class, that you're there for less than five months working on a project, and then ultimately, a year later, you're just scrolling on your feed and see the actual product.”

Sitting next to Slater while talking about the course, Roo said on behalf of them both: “It’s the best experience we’ve had at Penn State.”