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One of the assets the student group designed for the project.Students in the DePaul Marketing Consulting Group (DMCG) are used to doing their research. That is, they’re used to taking a real-world problem, conducting research to understand it, and then making recommendations based on that research to real-world stakeholders.
This spring, for the first time, they’re getting the chance to put their ideas into real-world practice.
The student organization began its work with Ulli Picks — a March Madness bracket app with a few unique twists — in fall 2024.
The app’s founder, Tim Brennan, reached out to DMCG co-president Sam Stedry over LinkedIn. Like many clients the DMCG partners with, Brennan was especially eager to reach college students.
The organization jumped into its research. They delved into competitor apps. They conducted focus groups to understand how students interact with sports and sports apps. Finally, they distilled their results into a few concrete recommendations for outreach on campuses and via social media.
Their presentation impressed Brennan. He extended the offer to implement the strategy on DePaul’s campus.
With encouragement from the club’s advisors, Geoffrey Durso and Ignacio Luri, Stedry and co-president Paige Rannells decided to make the leap of faith.
“We had no framework; it was uncharted territory,” said Rannells. “We’d never done something like that in the past. But our advisors encouraged us, and we thought — why not take the leap?”
Where classroom schools meet the real world
The group proposed a marketing strategy on two fronts: on campus and on social media.
On-campus, they’re working with student organizations and DePaul’s sports business program to get students engaged with the app. Online, they’re partnering with teams at University of Southern California and Duke University.
Implementation is still in its early days. But according to Rannells and Stedry they’re already learning in leaps and bounds.
“Learning how to communicate with the client is a huge skill that I’ve had to perfect in a quick amount of time,” said Stedry. “If you’re not aligning on something, how do you pivot and find a solution? It’s a skill I’ve had to learn quickly, and I’m now feeling confident in it.”
“Not everything is going to work, right?” echoed Rannells. “If it’s not working, how can we change it? And when it does work, it’s super rewarding.”
Both students said that classes at Driehaus laid the foundations for those skills.
“All of the skills Paige and I took from marketing research with Jim Mourey are exactly what we implement in DMCG,” said Stedry. “The multitude of skills that marketing research provides are both real-world and academic mixed into one.”
“It’s really neat to get hands-on experience and see everything firsthand,” said Rannells. “In class, you could do this, present, and get a grade. But experiencing this project firsthand is truly rewarding. It’s also something we and our members can leverage in internship and job interviews."
A starting point for a lifelong career journey
As Rannells and Stedry, both juniors, look ahead, they see their experiences in DMCG as laying crucial groundwork for their careers.
“I love how, in DMCG, we get so many different clients,” said Rannells. “We had a musician. We had a legal group. Ultimately, my dream job would be something in entertainment marketing. But thankfully, marketing is such a broad field. I’m excited to start my career and see where it takes me.”
As for Stedry, he is eager to launch a career in experiential public relations — a field that he sees DMCG fitting seamlessly into.
“DMCG gives you real-world experiences to leverage to then land those dream jobs,” he said. “Leveraging DMCG has helped me personally secure an internship. Our members now also have this key hands-on experience of building out a strategy — and now, implementing one too.”
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Follow along with the team’s journey on Instagram by following @depaulmcg and @ullipicks.