Kayla Buccellato-Singer ’24, MBA ’25, is in the Cookie Monster office. And yes, there are plenty of cookies to snack on. People happily zip around the brightly colored surroundings on scooters, down the hall to the Big Bird office — is it painted yellow? Absolutely.
You’re probably thinking this isn’t a serious workplace. But it’s right on brand for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit branch of “Sesame Street,” the educational program that has delighted children with iconic characters for decades, where Buccellato-Singer spent the summer of 2023 as a brand marketing intern.
This is just one of the places where Buccellato-Singer, as a Binghamton University School of Management student, developed her passion for navigating the nuances driving consumer behavior and how brand promotion plays a critical role in any business strategy. After Commencement, she’ll take the next step in her career with Live Nation Entertainment’s regional integrated marketing team.
If she’s learned anything from her experiences interning with renowned brands, it’s that marketing is a psychological science.
“People are always changing, so content is always changing. I’m fascinated with understanding why a consumer finds success in certain products over others and how to best sell a product in a way that aligns with the needs of a consumer,” said Buccellato-Singer, who completed her undergraduate business administration degree with concentrations in marketing and management information systems before earning her Master of Business Administration (MBA).
Interning with Cookie Monster
Staying relevant is easily one of the biggest challenges Buccellato-Singer has encountered in brand marketing. While at Sesame Workshop, an internship that she still believes was a welcome surprise to land, she was surrounded by all the trappings of childhood nostalgia.
She showed up to her interview with a carefully crafted resume and a willingness to be candid about her favorite “Sesame Street” character, Abby Cadabby.
As part of their team, Buccellato-Singer helped drive new marketing tactics by coordinating campaign promotions and topic-based research projects on emerging trends like influencer marketing or user-generated content.
Along the way, she discovered how much painstaking effort goes into ensuring each endeavor stays true to the “Sesame Street” brand.
“Sesame is unique in that they never break that third wall; we were doing an event with a cookie company featuring Cookie Monster, but the problem became figuring how that cookie gets into the world of Sesame Street,” she said. “We had to be aware of all these minute details being relevant, while remaining true to what people expect, a kind of world children truly believe in.”
Showing value to customers
During the summer of 2024, Buccellato-Singer’s experience turned toward “life-cycle marketing,” adopting new tactics to retain customers as they age and their priorities shift, as a channel marketing intern with SiriusXM. This time, her goal was largely data-driven and geared toward increasing subscriber revenue.
Buccellato-Singer learned that, even within one company, marketing for a specific customer at a different point in their lives can look completely different from one moment to the next. As part of her efforts to attract and engage with younger customers, she researched email messaging strategies of more than 15 companies with subscription-based revenue models to identify areas for development within SiriusXM.
Using that research, she successfully pitched a “Score with Sirius” concept to show customers the value of a subscription by entering them for free giveaways or invites to special events like meet-and-greets with celebrity performers. The potential prizes depended on their usage of the platform.
“There’s tremendous value in showing the customers that you’re aware of how much they’re using your product and being clear that you want them to feel rewarded for being so loyal,” Buccellato-Singer said. “At the same time, something I really like about marketing is that what works one week might not be successful the next. This is a business that really keeps you on your toes.”
Everything happens for a reason
It’s hard for Buccellato-Singer to imagine her career path going any other way, though it could have easily gone much differently. Her childhood ambitions drifted from becoming a teacher — she’d even make-believe she was in a classroom with imaginary students — to following in her father’s footsteps and becoming a lawyer.
However, she’s a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.
While her internships have fueled her passion for marketing, her time in SOM’s Career Services office has shaped her love of mentoring fellow SOM students. She’s provided them with feedback on resume-building, conducted mock interviews and offered guidance on job searches, including how to build transferable skills.
“It’s been the highlight of my academic career,” Buccellato-Singer said, recalling how she treasured her relationship with her own Management 111 class mentor during her first year at Binghamton.
“SOM is such a powerful community because everyone is dedicated to building each other up,” she added. “That’s why I try to help others feel reassured that even though something’s not working right now, it’s going to work in the future.”
As she launches into the next step of her professional journey, she’s anything but nervous. She’s already proven that, with the right mindset, nothing is out of reach.