Fourth-year Cooper Rudolph had never heard of Travelpro before the project began. Neither had most of his classmates. And now he was responsible for helping fix that.
Trey Maxham
The gap between the established luggage brand and the generation it was trying to reach was the very problem they were asked to solve. In Professor Trey Maxham’s Customer Analytics and Brand Strategy course at McIntire, that meant partnering with Travelpro this spring, working with real data and real stakes.
A Partnership Rooted in Alumni Ties
The project came together through a connection Maxham had cultivated for years. After working with Tabasco on previous iterations of the course, he needed a new partner after changes at the company. He turned to a former student, Jennie Kaylie (McIntire ’06), now Head of Marketing and Product at Travelpro. “Jennie’s built a career in brand strategy,” Maxham says, “and when I reached out, she thought this would be a great opportunity.” With support from Travelpro’s leadership team, the project quickly took shape.
That kind of renewed connection is exactly what the alumni network makes possible. “It comes full circle,” Maxham says. “When alumni reengage with the University in meaningful ways, there’s a lot of value in that.”
For the project, eight student teams examined different challenges Travelpro was working to solve, analyzing consumer data from social media trends to purchasing behavior and translating those insights into brand strategy. Among them, one team’s challenge cut closest to the awareness problem Cooper had unknowingly embodied from the start.
Understanding Gen Z’s Relationship with Travel
For fourth-year students Emily Bronstein, Ella Butensky, Cooper Rudolph, and Lauren Vaillancourt, the assignment was to help Travelpro connect with younger consumers. Each brought a different lens, from advertising and consulting to analytics and psychology, and together they operated like a consulting team, dividing the work by strength and synthesizing toward a shared recommendation.
Cooper Rudolph
Cooper framed the core obstacle directly: “The biggest hurdle is connecting a brand that feels distant from our generation to Gen Z.” Ella sharpened it into something structural. “People my age don’t really think about their luggage purchases,” she says. “They do what their parents did or buy the first thing they see at Costco.” When a category generates that little active consideration, the window for building loyalty is narrow, and the cost of missing it is high.
Cooper, who focused on consumer trends, identified a shift that suggested where that window might open. “You see a lot more micro-vacations,” he says. “Instead of a two-week family vacation, people are taking quick, two-day trips they discover on social media.” For a brand like Travelpro, traditionally built around the seasoned business traveler, that behavioral shift pointed toward a new and largely untapped audience.
Ella Butensky
Rather than looking at what competitors were doing, the team focused on understanding where the unmet opportunity was. “It’s more valuable to look at where the white space is,” Ella says. “Otherwise, you miss opportunities.” Lauren, who led the quantitative analysis, worked directly with Travelpro’s internal data, including performance metrics across marketing channels. Travelpro was highly effective with older consumers and had almost no traction with younger ones. The data did not just confirm the problem. It sharpened exactly where to focus. “There was no guesswork,” Lauren says. “It felt like a real partnership.”
From Data to Campaign: Building a Strategy
The gap was defined. Now the team had to close it. They built three strategic options for Travelpro to consider, anchored by a campaign concept they called the “airport athlete.”
“It’s about all those moments, running through the airport, catching a train, navigating a new city,” Ella says. “You’re an athlete in your everyday life when you travel.” The team paired that identity with messaging around endurance and reliability, positioning Travelpro as the brand built to keep pace. The result was a campaign designed to feel dynamic, modern, and grounded in real experience.
Lauren Vaillancourt
Influencer strategy also played a role. Instead of relying on traditional travel voices, the team looked to niche communities where travel is woven into everyday life. “We looked at people who travel constantly for their work or passions,” Lauren says. “It could be ballroom dancers, touring musicians, or other niche groups with strong followings.”
Emily Bronstein
The process mirrored how consulting teams actually operate. The group developed initial ideas, presented them to Travelpro, gathered feedback, and refined their direction. “We started with a pilot presentation and then used that feedback to shape our final recommendation,” Emily explains.
That iterative approach is central to how Maxham designs the course. “They’re testing hypotheses as they go,” he says. “You don’t always find the answer right away. It’s about pulling insights from different sources and building a strategy over time.”
Success has two measures for Maxham. “From a managerial standpoint, it’s about delivering ideas the company can act on,” he says. “From an academic standpoint, it’s about learning skills and applying them in a meaningful way.”
The partnership with Kaylie reflects something larger about the arc of a McIntire education. A former student returns not just to reconnect, but to open doors for those following in her footsteps. “It says a lot about her commitment to the School,” Maxham says. For Cooper and his teammates, the project that began with a brand they had never heard of ended with a strategy designed to make sure the next generation does. That is, in the end, exactly the gap they were asked to close.
