From Digital Marketing Capstone to Conversations with a CMO

For most graduate programs, the capstone project is an opportunity for students to integrate knowledge across all courses and demonstrate what they’ve learned. When their time came, Master of Digital Marketing students Alison Sweeney and Taylor Gallis knew they wanted to embark on this important part of their academic journey together.

“We’ve taken nearly every class together and gotten to know each other so well,” Taylor shared. “It was natural to want to end the program together on this project.”

The capstone involves creating a full-blown marketing campaign for a real organization and asking students to combine knowledge from every course they’ve taken throughout the program. 

For Alison and Taylor, their collaboration took place entirely online, with Taylor based in Mebane, North Carolina, and Alison in Tampa, Florida. Both balanced the program with full-time jobs. While challenging at times, they felt Wake Forest’s School of Professional Studies structured the curriculum to allow students to maintain full-time working jobs. And Alison has already experienced the professional benefits of the program: “I haven’t graduated yet, but I was able to use my experience in the program and what I’ve learned to transition from a sales role to a Marketing Specialist position,” she shared. 

The two started brainstorming different organizations to build their project around when the idea of a fashion brand came up.

“About a month before that, I had gone into an American Eagle for the first time in years,” Taylor recalled. “I always thought about it as ‘the place I used to shop in high school,’ but I was blown away by some of the stuff they have now. These were clothes I could see myself wearing now as a professional.”

She brought the idea to Alison, who agreed this was the brand for them. 

Their next step was to connect with someone at American Eagle. With her previous position in sales, Alison had experience sending out messages on LinkedIn. Using the tools at her disposal, she started reaching out to various people at the organization. 

“We just wanted to see who we could get a response from to gain some insight,” Alison said. “We messaged everyone from the VPs and directors to the marketing specialists.” 

They weren’t receiving many responses, so they decided to try one more person – Craig Broomers, Chief Marketing Officer.

“We thought ‘let’s just go for it’,” Taylor recalled. 

Craig is a seasoned global marketing executive who has served as CMO for American Eagle since 2020. Prior to that, he was the CMO at Gap and held executive leadership positions at Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klien. 

Taylor and Alison felt like it was a long shot sending him a message but decided to try anyway. 

And it paid off. 

“We sent him a message on Linkedin and really only wanted a response back,” Alison said. “We weren’t asking for time to meet, but he ended up coming back and asked to schedule time to connect.”

They worked around Craig’s busy schedule and managed to find 20 minutes for all three of them to hop on the call. Alison and Taylor went into the conversation hoping to learn more about American Eagle’s target audience, which was the focus of the first part of the capstone project.

“We wanted to talk to him about who they really zone in on, and we got a lot of really great information about who they target and how they approach that group,” Taylor reflected. “Our last question for him was what general advice he’d give to us as new digital marketers, and he gave a lot of great tips.”

Beyond the advice from Craig, Alison and Taylor took another valuable lesson away from the experience – just send the message.

“You never know what’s going to happen or who’s going to respond,” Taylor reflected. “So send the message.” 

Taylor and Alison are set to graduate in December. As they embark on the next steps in their careers, this capstone project and the opportunity to connect with someone like Craig Broomers is something they both agree they will carry with them as they embark on the next steps in their careers.

Learn more about the Wake Forest School of Professional Studies’ Master of Digital Marketing program today.