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By the time Casey O’Donnell hit “send,” he already had a feeling.
It wasn’t some marketing internship or a grand pitch meeting. It was a direct message — on Instagram, of all places — sent from his dorm room to the official Pop-Tarts account. Attached were three bold, delightfully chaotic ad mockups for a new kind of Pop-Tart. The kind with protein. The kind that fueled the Gen Z lifestyle Casey and his team had cooked up in their strategic communications class.
The campaign was part of a group project for his marketing course, where they’d chosen Pop-Tarts as their brand and developed the “Protein Pop-Tart,” designed for people like themselves — active, always moving, maybe running late, and absolutely done with bland health food. The new slogan was a riff on the old one: “Fuel your crazy.” It kept the playfulness of “Crazy Good” but aimed it at something more kinetic, more restless.
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It was a campaign born of caffeine, shared Google Docs, and one hard-won Photoshop skill set.
“I didn’t know how to use Photoshop at all before that design class,” O’Donnell said in a Q&A posted on schieffercollege.tcu.edu. “But once I figured it out, everything opened up. I was making ads for fun.”
The visuals he created were deeply weird in the best possible way — Pop-Tarts surfing tidal waves, flying through wild environments, existing in a world that made no logical sense but felt exactly right. The tone was chaotic and funny, the kind of visual language you might see while doom-scrolling at 2 a.m. that suddenly made you smile.
So he thought, why not go for it and slide into Pop-Tart's DMs?
The first DM got no reply. So he tried again, sending a second ad. This time, Pop-Tarts answered with a message he’ll never forget: “These are masterpieces.”
It could’ve ended there. But Casey wasn’t satisfied.
He made a third ad, followed up again, and this time got the real deal: an artwork release form, a request for short descriptions, and confirmation that he hadn’t used any copyrighted images.
Shortly after, his surreal, sugar-fueled creations appeared on Pop-Tarts’ official Instagram stories.
“I just laughed,” he says. “These designs are so random and out-of-pocket, and the fact that Pop-Tarts actually posted them … it was just proof that the effort paid off.”
For O'Donnel, a sophomore majoring in strategic communication, the experience didn’t change his major or set some perfect new goal in stone. But it gave him something more meaningful: validation. A reminder that creativity and persistence can still cut through the noise. That good ideas can come from students with no connections, just hustle. That Instagram DMs can, on rare occasions, be a launchpad.
It also gave him something to say to other creatives chasing brand collabs, or wondering if their work is good enough to share:
“Don’t be scared of someone saying no,” he said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
In O’Donnell’s case, the worst didn’t happen. Something better did. And if you ask him, the Pop-Tarts thing? It’s just the beginning.