Summer Intern Series: Checking in midway

Time always seems to speed up during the summer. Hot summer weeks and weekends fly by. Much to our surprise, the 4th of July marks the halfway point of the JWT New York Summer 2012 Internship program. Our interns are starting their fifth week at JWT and have been spotted around the office attending meetings and contributing to projects. We caught up with Kevin, Katie, and Rachael to see what they are up to in their departments. Read on to see what they are working on.

 

 

As I mentioned briefly in my last blog, one of the most important skills a planner has to have is the ability to balance interesting with useful. For the past week this has been a crucial concept for me to understand. Right now I am in the process of writing a competitive analysis, for a JWT client, on a competitor’s new advertisement campaign. For a planner, understanding the consumer and the market are very important, but another thing that is just as important is understanding what the competition is doing. This is where a competitive analysis comes in handy. The goal of the competitive analysis is to illustrate to the client the ins and outs of the competitors campaign. You want to know what they are trying to accomplish, how they plan to go about their goals, the public response to the campaign, and lastly the implications of the campaign for the JWT client.  Through research you can find in-depth information about this campaign.  The challenge is then looking at all of this information and being able to distill what is interesting and what is useful information that the client needs to know.  This has proven to be a difficult task, but also an incredible learning experience how to present the right information.

— Kevin Chenault, Planning Intern

 

I am halfway into the internship, and it’s full steam ahead! The further integrated I become within the Zyrtec Account team, the faster I learn and more competent I feel.  Last week, I crossed somewhat of a threshold in my experience as an intern on the team.  I hadn’t realized the extent to which my coworkers lean on and utilize one another at all points during the day.  There is constant communication, collaboration, clarification and connection.  Whereas I was slightly tentative to engage like this at first, I now see that the most effective members capitalize extensively on such interactions and make use of all the resources available to them.  It is my role as intern to be proactive and engage in as many projects as possible, and of course to routinely seek out guidance and feedback along the way.  It also helps to put all notions of apprehension on the back burner.  Look the part, play the part, be the part, right?

I am applying this approach to my Independent Intern Project which consists of a presentation at the end of this month on three case studies of marketing programs that have changed the way consumers use a brand’s products. My supervisor gave me no limits as to how I will go about completing this project; a perfect challenge.  Stay tuned to learn more about my project and the experience I am gaining!

— Katie D’Andrea, Account Management Intern

 

Another week has come and gone as I find myself at the beginning of week 7. Cannes Lions have been awarded and everyone has returned from the festival. Cannes tweets and e-mails have been blasted out, pictures have been uploaded, and the post-Cannes work begins.

The first post-Cannes project consisted of a Cannes award analysis of JWT’s ranking within WPP, as well as WPP’s ranking against other holding companies. As a team, we calculated the points acquired from various Lions awards for over 10 hours to end up with a tidy chart of all the agencies under WPP’s wing.

After the number crunching ended, I began spearheading a major mailing project. The project consists of a few mail merges for letters and labels, along with the assembly of over 300 boxes with books and tissue paper. Of these 300 boxes, over 100 are international, in other words, over 100 customs forms must be filled out.

The project may be tedious and it sure isn’t glamorous, but it serves as an important reminder that no one starts from the top and you need to work your butt off to get there. Even the “dirty” jobs are important and as an intern it is my job to jump into them with a smile. Also, as bizarre as it sounds these types of projects keep me motivated to work even harder and I enjoy the satisfaction that results from completing such a large, multi-step task.

— Rachael Podbielak, Corporate Communications Intern