Learning to Market in the Real World by Dayzier

Learning to Market in the Real World by Dayzier - October 2026 Scholarship Essay

For my digital marketing course at Full Sail, my research question was simple: how do you actually reach 18-to-24-year-olds who scroll past everything?

I built a full campaign for a fictional streaming studio and its fantasy series, aimed at college students in Georgia college towns. I ran a real SEO audit on a company's website, mapped out where our audience actually spends time — YouTube, Instagram, streaming platforms — and designed messaging around what they care about, not what a brand wishes they cared about.

The project taught me that research isn't about finding the answer you want. My first assumptions about the audience were wrong; the data corrected me. Young viewers don't hate advertising — they hate being talked down to. They respond to authenticity the way a smoke detector responds to fire: instantly, and you can't fake it.

That lesson went straight into my real life. As an independent artist, I market my own music with no budget, so every post, every cover, every caption is a small research project — what worked, what didn't, what the numbers say. My coursework didn't just teach me marketing theory. It gave me a laboratory for the career I'm already building, one experiment at a time.