Penn State Prime Practicum: Brand Management and Campaign Strategy

Catalog description

Penn State Prime is designed to give students hands-on, practical experience between brand ("client side") and ad agency ("agency side") while taking on a real consumer marketing challenge. Teams live out the journey from client-agency initial engagement, consumer insights to campaign development. In doing so, students apply skills developed in departmental workshops, marketing-related coursework, and other relevant experiences. Unlike traditional courses, students adopt specific roles on the client or agency side, and receive mentorship from a client or agency executive, teaching assistants, and the instructor. The goal of the practicum is to enhance and refine each student's ability to excel in the future by experiencing the real-world challenges and "messiness" of brand management and advertising in a semi-guided context. While a traditional course design would focus on specific aspects of client side and agency side topics such as brand, advertising, and promotion management, Penn State Prime's project team environment gives students the opportunity to utilize real-world exposure to pull content together.