Michigan · Business graduate · Marketing and brand strategy

Carmen
Dudley

I figure out what a brand’s core message is before designing the pieces that share it.

I studied marketing and strategy at the Ross School of Business. What I like is the part before the design starts, where you work out who you are talking to and what would actually land with them. Then I go make it.

See the work Get in touch

How I got here

I came to marketing through social psychology. What got me was how much of a decision is already made before anyone thinks they are deciding. Where the product sits on the shelf, what color it is, which word comes first in the sentence.

I wasn’t trying to solve anything. I was just interested. But learning how those signals work is what lets me build for a specific person instead of a demographic, and that turns out to be the whole job.

So I start with the audience and work backward. Figure out who is going to see this and what they care about, then make the thing. The research is not a separate step from the design. It is what tells you what the design has to do.

Campaign strategy Copywriting Consumer research Content capture Adobe Creative Cloud Sprout Social MailChimp Google Ads Canva Microsoft 365

B.B.A., Marketing and Strategy
University of Michigan, Ross School of Business, 2026

Selected work

Four projects

Team project Marketing class · Charity X Designs

Rebuilding a sustainable fashion brand

Charity X Designs turns reused textiles into handmade pieces. The whole brand lived on Instagram. No website, posting whenever, comments sitting there unanswered. We ran our own research first, then rebuilt around what it told us. New identity, new copy, and a full mock site with a shop, a map of where they are selling next, and a real path to checkout.

Role: Research, brand strategy, and site content, on a team
Tools: Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Workspace
Output: Brand system, mock website, consumer research deck

The brand and value proposition we landed on

Mock shop section of the Charity X Designs website — Shop section, built for checkout

Find us near you section showing pop-up dates and a map — Where they are selling next

What the research found

Our own survey (n = 119) and two focus groups (n = 8), plus secondary research on how people actually shop sustainable brands.

47%: said price was the single most important thing. 95% put it in their top three.
$40: what people told us they typically spend
43/43: a dead even split between shopping mostly online and mostly in store
62%: of adults say sustainability matters to them. 67% still buy on budget.

That last gap is the one that set the strategy. People mean it when they say they care, and then they buy the cheaper thing anyway. So we stopped leading with sustainability and led with how long the pieces last and how well they are made. The behind the scenes content was there to build the trust our focus groups said was missing.

My own work The Henry Ford · inHub Marketing Intern · 2025

Getting teachers to use the materials

inHub is The Henry Ford’s learning platform for educators. I was making things for teachers, parents, and administrators, who are all people with too much to read already. So the job was to make a lesson plan look like it was worth twenty minutes of their day. Carousels that give you the resource by grade band, and video that shows you what the place actually feels like before you commit a whole school day to it.

Role: Made and scheduled the social content myself
Tools: Adobe Creative Cloud, Sprout Social
Audience: K–8 educators, parents, and school administrators

Carousels, in the order a teacher swipes them

Happy International Youth Day carousel slide for inHub — Youth Day, opening slide

Grades K-2 resource slide listing Innovate for Tots and Paper Airplane Fun — Then the resources, by grade band

Did you know there are seven unique districts in Greenfield Village — Greenfield Village, opening slide

Slide describing the districts of Greenfield Village — The detail that earns the visit

Video for inHub

Four reels, shot and cut for a vertical feed. Sound on.

Field trip to the Henry Ford Museum1:00

A day in the life at camp0:43

Educators in Residence0:36

Invention Convention, who would you thank1:03

My own work U-M Office of Enrollment · Marketing & Media Assistant

Writing Ann Arbor for people who haven’t seen it

Three published posts for Michigan’s admissions audience, which is mostly students deciding whether they want to spend four years here. The assignment was recruitment. The way to do it was not to sell anything. So I wrote a real day in Ann Arbor, what fall actually feels like on campus, and application advice from someone who had just been through it.

Role: Wrote all three, start to finish
Published: February, August, and September 2025
Where: U-M Office of Enrollment blog

My Ideal Day in Ann Arbor →

Here’s How To Give Fall Your All →

Application Tips From a University of Michigan Student, published August 6 2025

Application Tips From a U-M Student →

Team projects Marketing & social media coursework

Two local brands, two different problems

Cinnaholic Ann Arbor had 5,560 followers and a feed that was not doing anything with them. We rewrote the bio, built story templates people could actually tap through, and redesigned the home grid so the product is the first thing you see. The menu poll gives away free product for a year, which is the kind of thing people answer.

aUM Yoga was a different problem. They needed student ambassadors, so we made a landing page that puts what you get on one side and what you have to do on the other, and nothing else in between.

Role: Concept and design, on a team
Tools: Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud
Output: Instagram refresh, story templates, landing page