The Marketing Association in the BYU Marriott School of Business hosted its annual Christmas social in December 2025. This year, for BYU’s 150th anniversary, students had a focus beyond celebrating the end of a semester: service.
“Our students are always looking for ways to make a difference and to be a light to the world. Giving them these formalized service opportunities really galvanizes the students,” says Marketing Association faculty advisor and associate professor of marketing B.J. Allen. “They come together, they're excited, and it creates a really Christlike community. As they're doing service, it gives them an opportunity to feel the love of Jesus Christ and remember who they are and what's really important.”
Hannah Johnson, a marketing senior from Gilbert, Arizona, and vice president of events in the Marketing Association, volunteered to organize the service project and reached out to several organizations in the community.
Through Johnson’s efforts, the Marketing Association partnered with Community Action Services & Food Bank (CASFB), a nonprofit organization based in Utah. “Hannah found a project that filled a need she thought our students would really resonate with, and which would also allow us to use our skills as marketers to help them,” Allen says.
The organization needed volunteers to put together snack packs for people using their warming centers overnight. “We decided that we could get the marketing students to help out with this,” Johnson says. “It was a great project where we were able to incorporate service; we ended up filling about 950 snack packs.”
Each snack pack also included a QR code to a survey about its contents that marketing students had designed. “As marketing students, we are taught to understand needs of consumers, and so we were able to tie marketing into this project,” Johnson explains. “When people scan the survey, they’ll be able to answer questions so we can see allergies and preferences.” She says she hopes that the data will be useful for improving the snack packs in the future and accommodating dietary restrictions.
“I'm really excited to see the responses so we can tell this organization how they can best serve the locals experiencing homelessness in our community,” says Tyler Evans, a native of Humble, Texas, and Marketing Association president. “So that was really awesome to see that connection of learning how to gather data and then using it for a good cause.”
During the event, students also listened to the stories of formerly homeless community members who had benefitted from CASFB’s service—an experience that Evans described as life-changing. “I saw local people in our community who are homeless for who they are: real people who are just having problems in their life and who need help,” Evans says. “It really helped me to develop a respect for everyone and a better understanding for how I can help them.”
Service and gospel-oriented events like this one are what makes BYU unique, Allen says, because they help students in trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ. He explains, “It helps them remember that even while they're coming to school and they're trying to get a career, life isn't about them: Life is about who you can help, and how you can help them.”