Students Collaborate with Syracuse Orchestra on Marketing for Holiday Concerts

Students in Ph.D. candidate Xiaoying Feng’s Essentials of Marketing course recently teamed up with the Syracuse Orchestra to conduct market analysis and create marketing materials. Top-scoring projects in the course’s final project are being included in the orchestra’s marketing campaigns.

The project was personal for Feng who, as an international student earning a doctorate in marketing at the Whitman School of Management, found a place of beauty and belonging in the audience of the Syracuse Orchestra.

Feng frequently takes advantage of the orchestra’s $5 student tickets. During a concert in February 2025, she was moved to tears by a rendition of “Moon River,” the Henry Mancini tune famously performed by Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She was also impacted by seeing empty seats around her. She wanted to find a way to encourage more people to enjoy the music as she did.

“I saw an opportunity for a meaningful service-learning collaboration,” she recalled. Feng contacted the orchestra to see how her students, a diverse group of marketing and business minors with interests in everything from engineering to music, could work with the organization. So began what turned into “Go Local,” the capstone project of Feng’s Essentials of Marketing course.

Rehearsing for the Real World

The project kicked off in November 2025, when Pamela Murchinson, the orchestra’s executive director, visited the class. During a wide-ranging discussion, she told the class about the inner workings of the orchestra, a nonprofit that is one of the nation’s two musician-led cooperatives. She shared information about the orchestra’s marketing challenges as well as attendance and revenue goals for four upcoming events.

Following the visit, groups of four or five students were assigned one of the Syracuse Orchestra’s holiday events. Final presentations included analysis of each event’s target audience and competitor positioning, as well as recommendations for potential community partnerships and social media campaigns. For example, one group proposed a partnership with a local candle shop to provide discounts to ticket holders for the orchestra’s Candlelight Christmas Concert.

The orchestra included a video from one of the two highest-scoring teams in their holiday campaign. In it, students appeared at local Syracuse venues like the Clinton Square Ice Rink to promote the orchestra’s Viennese New Year concert. The orchestra also hopes to use a student-created visual from the other top-scoring team for a future campaign.

A Grand Finale

Syracuse Orchestra’s Patron Services Manager Brian Pope and Director of Marketing and Communications James Mehran judge judged the presentations. “The presentations were thoughtful, creative, and well researched,” said Mehran. In addition to using student-made marketing materials, Mehran said the orchestra has since hired one of the students in the class as an intern for the spring 2026 semester.

Brian Pope and James Mehran judging the student the presentations.

For Feng, the Go Local project was a full-circle moment, bringing together her own appreciation for the Syracuse Orchestra with a learning experience for students in her class.

“For these students, seeing their work transition from a classroom assignment to actual marketing materials represents a significant milestone,” Feng said. “Their campaigns will reach real audiences and contribute to filling those concert seats that first inspired this partnership.”