Noe Garcia-Bravo, a Norwood resident, and student of the Class of 2026 at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, was part of a student team that earned first place in the Fall 2025 Digital Marketing Competition, an international challenge featuring more than 250 student teams from colleges and universities across the United States and abroad, according to College officials.

They said the competition, hosted by Purdue University Northwest, required teams to develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for Paradise Spreads, an allergen-free, pea-protein–based food company. They said students conducted market research, built digital campaigns, created budgets and metrics, and presented their ideas directly to the company’s founder.

 

“This was like the capstone project for the semester,” Garcia-Bravo, a double major in economics and marketing, said. “Every week we were building toward something bigger, moving from research to strategy to execution in a very short amount of time.”

 

College officials said Garcia-Bravo completed the project as part of MGMT 355: Digital Marketing, taught by C.C. Chapman, senior professor of the practice of business and management at Wheaton. They said after an initial round of 8-minute pitches, judges selected six finalist teams, including two from Wheaton. They said finalists then refined their work and delivered 15-minute live presentations followed by a question-and-answer session with the client.

 

They went on to say that Garcia-Bravo played a leading role in the team’s strategic and quantitative analysis, helping design a data-driven approach to measuring campaign success. For his part, Chapman said the experience mirrors professional marketing work. “Students are expected to defend their ideas just as they would in a real client pitch,” the professor said. “Taking first place in a global competition is an extraordinary accomplishment.”

 

Garcia-Bravo said the win reinforced his interest in pursuing a career at the intersection of strategy, data and marketing, adding, “What separates a creative campaign from a strategic campaign is being able to show how you measure results.”