After Debbie Story founded Branding Touchpoint in 2020, she considered hiring a virtual assistant from overseas.

Instead, she hired her niece, Jessica Story, a business major looking for a part-time job, and enrolled her in ASI’s summer internship program.

Debbie Story kept Jessica on part-time after her internship, eventually hiring her full-time in 2024. Jessica Story now serves as a sales representative at Branding Touchpoint, an affiliate of Counselor Top 40 distributor iPROMOTEu (asi/232119).

The Branding Touchpoint team meets with ASI President and CEO Tim Andrews at ASI Chicago 2025. From left, Jessica Story, Morgan O’Neal, Andrews and Debbie Story, founder of Branding Touchpoint, an affiliate of Counselor Top 40 distributor iPROMOTEu (asi/232119).

“She really excelled and picked up our industry super quick,” Debbie Story says. “It was easier to have a curriculum that was organized that I could have her attend instead of me trying to get everything from my head into hers.”

The ASI Internship Program aims to attract a new generation to promotional products and educate them on the industry. Over the past eight years, the program has helped to train almost 2,000 interns across 1,500 member companies.

This summer, ASI provided interns with free ESP access, webinars giving an industry overview, an invitation to ASI Show in Chicago, a certificate of completion and an opportunity to win a $1,000 scholarship.

Jessica Story says the program gave her foundational knowledge about the promo industry, and that videos about price quotes and how to use search platforms like ESP were especially helpful. She went through the program as she did her internship, spending about an hour each day working through the curriculum.

“It’s a good first step into [the industry],” she says. “Debbie would see what I was doing in the modules and try to relate the work that she gave me to do to what I was learning.”

This summer, Debbie Story hired another intern, Morgan O’Neal, and also enrolled her in ASI’s internship program.

O’Neal, a rising senior at DePaul University majoring in business administration, was a marketing intern at Branding Touchpoint this summer and had the opportunity to go to ASI Show in Chicago early on in her internship.

She says she appreciated how the program was organized, because she could separate out the distributor-specific curriculum, which best pertained to her role over the summer. O’Neal found the videos explaining Adobe Illustrator especially useful, she adds.

“Illustrator is such a complex app and learning how to use all of the little features, that was one thing that I really appreciated about this program,” she says. “I always wanted to get into that, but I didn’t even know where to start.”

Debbie Story says she sees the program as valuable in multiple ways. It trains interns to be knowledgeable on the promo industry, making it easier for them to engage meaningfully with their work, and also gives business owners the opportunity to reach out to their communities and provide the hands-on opportunity of a summer internship.

Interns have to understand the difference between a distributor and a vendor, pricing and the difference between a cost and sell price, Debbie Story says. It’s also important they know that the company isn’t trying to sell throwaway branded items – it’s aiming to create lasting impressions through marketing, she adds.

“Once interns have those basics, I feel like it really helps them be able to put together presentations that are tailored for our customers,” she says. “Having a background in the industry, [interns] understand that we’re not just trying to sell people junk. We’re trying to create something that’s a memorable experience for the end-user.”