Anheuser-Busch & Purina Marketing Club Panel Recap

By: Nathan Jacquemin and Emma Wolf

On February 28, 2023, the UMSL Marketing Club hosted a Marketing Panel and Speaking Event. The panel featured Nicholas Sylvia and Samuel Craig, two former UMSL students that are now marketing professionals.

Nicholas Sylvia, pictured on the left, works for Anheuser Busch as their Director of NFTs, Blockchain, and Metaverse and Samuel Craig, pictured on the right, works for Purina as a Specialist and Digital Brand Manager. During the panel session Nick and Sam shared some insights from their professional life and answered many questions from students related to their career, working in the marketing field and about some of their past campaigns.

When asked about some of the biggest challenges in creating successful marketing campaigns, Nick and Sam both agreed, and explained that besides coming up with new and creative campaigns that are keeping up with current trends, there are much more rules and legal restrictions than we would think. Nick shared a video from a viral campaign from 2019 that Anheuser Busch created around the public’s interest in invading Area 51 at the time. What many don’t know is that the campaign had to follow some strict legal regulations and could not use the name “Area 51” or any graphics related to that. They even had to change their original can design from what they posted on social media to what they actually sold on cans later. However, despite all those restrictions the campaign was still very creative and perfectly timed and ended up generating more than 1 million in revenue.

This discussion then shifted towards challenges that marketing professionals are facing due to the increasing pace of social media. Sam shared his experience about constantly needing to adapt to new trends and changing social media platforms. What was relevant last week is not necessarily relevant the following week, so marketing professionals need to stay up to date and act quickly to jump on whatever trend is currently going viral. Both speakers highlighted the importance of maintain seamless communication streams with all of their teams to ensure that they are not missing out on campaign opportunities because slow internal processes.

At the end, Nick and Sam shared some valuable tips for students interested in a job in the marketing field. Both highlighted the importance of networking and having a resume that stands out. As former UMSL students, they talked about some of their favorite classes such as Dr. Perry Drake’s Digital Media Marketing Strategies class.

For more information on future marketing meetings check out the UMSL Marketing Club. Be sure to check out the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference (MDMC) held at UMSL on April 17^th & 18^th, to keep up with current marketing trends.