School: Yale School of Management, Class of 2022
Hometown: Lake Tahoe, CA
Favorite MGR item on the site: Janie and Jack Jumpsuit
Favorite Sustainability Habit: Shopping at the farmers market (with reusable bags)
When thinking about the summer before going to business school, I saw myself relaxing on the beach and crossing a few things off the travel bucket list. With the pandemic this obviously didn’t happen. As I saw my chances of traveling rapidly deteriorate, I started looking for other opportunities or experiences that could challenge me in new and different ways. This led me to a pre-MBA marketing internship with Merry Go Rounds.
For the first part of the project, I gathered insights on our customers, competitors, and the market as a whole to develop a Brand Plan. Melissa, the CEO, already had a lot of great information gathered on the market and the state of the business, and this part of the project was more about condensing information and developing the identifiable traits of the brand, such as color palettes and fonts. This gave us a baseline for the brand that we could then use to standardize our marketing efforts.
In the next phase of the project, I analyzed data from our core marketing streams, created a communications plan for the next 12 months, and started executing on this plan. This involved a lot of research into best practices for marketing, as well as some testing to figure out what is most effective for our business. We also discovered a key gap in our marketing strategy and are working on building up our presence in a new marketing channel, Pinterest.
As someone with no professional experience in marketing, I am so grateful to Melissa and Merry Go Rounds for taking a chance on me. I was given a lot of autonomy with this role and loved our discussions on the research and insights. My ideas were met with open and honest feedback and we were able to quickly execute on any of the proposed changes. I learned a lot about creating a brand, starting from the ideation phase all the way through to execution. With this foundation, I can see myself really excelling in the marketing classes at Yale School of Management and look forward to taking the Marketing Strategy class. Overall, this was an amazing experience that allowed me to build a new skill set and add value to a small business dedicated to making the world a better place.