THE INTERN DIARY: productive day

I’ve been meaning to blog about a few topics but just can’t seem to find the time. I’m hoping to post them this weekend.

My day was pretty interesting and productive. My boss treated everyone to lunch today so we all sat in the boardroom, eating, talking and laughing.

As I am now on my second blogger outreach campaign, I finalized my media list and started pitching. We have a specific number of products to ship out to the bloggers so this will be a bit time consuming. I don’t want to pitch to everyone on the list and end up getting responses from all and have to turn people away so I will have to pitch a few people at a time. So far I have three people on board which is great as they all responded within an hour of receiving the pitch. I realized I actually love pitching. Creating the pitch to cater to your target, personalizing each one and then getting an email from the target, thrilled to hop on board with the campaign is kind of exciting.

I have one week left of my internship and I think I might speak to my boss so I can continue interning, except only part-time. With quite a few people leaving to go on client business trips or on vacation, I want to finish up everything I’ve started. I would really like to see the results of the campaign I’m working on. The senior account manager that I report to will also be swamped as she has to manage two other accounts while one account manager is on vacation for almost three weeks. I’ve just started applying to jobs (horribly late, I know) so I really won’t expect to hear from anyone calling for an interview for a little while so I might as well keep myself busy

Tomorrow is going to be extremely busy for me as I continue pitching and begin a holiday news release, about three other writing tasks and a few other things.

I should probably get some sleep as I am beyond exhausted and have a long day tomorrow.

Toodles!

THE INTERN DIARY: good company, good food, good conversation

Today was a pretty easy day.

We have our weekly meetings every Tuesday so when I arrived at work, I made sure I was prepared to discuss what I was working on this week. The meetings are suppose to be half an hour but they end up lasting up to an hour so it didn’t end until after 10. Afterwards, I had a meeting with the owner and two senior account managers to discuss two campaigns for one client. Since I’ve been actively doing a blogger outreach campaign, I was assigned the task of doing another one for another client. Thankfully the campaign is targeting bloggers that I’ve already reached out to so I’m going to compile a list of the top ones and start pitching by the end of the week. This is a great way to continue building the relationships with these bloggers who I’m sure will be more than happy to work with me again.

After the meeting I did a little bit of media monitoring and worked on a project I needed to complete by tomorrow. I didn’t have much time to work on it though as I had a lunch meeting with the owner of the agency I’m interning at and my uncle who works in the industry (he got me my internship as my “boss”/the owner and him often do business together). We headed into the city and met my uncle at his work. We then walked around the corner to this really cool restaurant my uncle recommended. It was such a fun “meeting.” It was nice to get out of the office to do something like this. I listened as they spoke about the industry, chiming in here and there – most of the conversation was about business as my “boss” is looking for more clients. I loved just sitting and listening to them speak. The food was great and the environment was relaxing.

When we finally parted ways and headed back to the office, I had only an hour left of my work day. Seeing as I basically did nothing all day and still had to complete a writing project, I decided to stay an extra hour to get everything done.

Today was definitely my favourite day as an intern. I wish every day consisted of relaxing lunch meetings ..

THE INTERN DIARY: Fun, food and family

What an interesting day.

I started my day off stressed as I had a competitive analysis to complete for one of our client’s and four competitors. I was supposed to have it completed yesterday but it was a large analysis and my supervisor knew it would be difficult to complete in two days. I actually enjoyed writing and researching for the competitive analysis. It required a lot of research as I went through everything each company had done since January. I feel so informed now as I know what others in the market are doing/have been doing.

I was able to relax throughout the day because my “co-workers” can be quite funny – we were all just giggling at our desks. It took my mind off of the deadline and once I relaxed I was able to enjoy doing work. Being the only intern is not easy though – especially at a small agency. Deadlines are no joke so having everyone come to me to help them out can be distracting.

My supervisor scheduled a lunch meeting for the two of us and we ended up going to this amazing burger place we both had never been to. We discussed what I’ve done so far, what I’d like to do more of and talked about the industry. I’m thankful that I have an uncle that has a very high position at the company he works for (in advertising) so when my supervisor told me about this up coming event my uncle’s work was throwing, I emailed him and was able to get an invite for myself and a friend. It will definitely be a great networking opportunity.

Now that I’ve finished the competitive analysis and another clients event, that I mentioned in a previous post, is canceled (we were able to talk them out of it), I can get to the many things on my “to-do” list tomorrow.

By Friday my list should be cleared and I’ll be ready to start some new projects/tasks on Monday!

THE INTERN DIARY: Client Meeting + Lunch

I’m onto my second week as an intern at a small public relations agency. Out of my six days as an intern, today was by far the greatest. I started a bit earlier than usual to get a few things done, I have so many things to complete by the end of the week so I wanted to get a head start. I did a bit of media monitoring and found an interesting article on one of our clients and sent it to the team – they really appreciated it and everyone thanked me for passing it along. I also tried to finalize my media list as I’ll be helping with pitching tomorrow. I was unable to finish, however, as the owner of the agency and an account manager invited me to sit in on one of their client meetings. Of course I said yes, grabbed my notebook and pen and joined them. I took a lot of notes and was even given an assignment as the clients had an idea on what the company wanted to focus on. After the meeting, one of the clients asked my boss if he wanted to go to lunch and they invited me along! It was quite interesting, they spoke a lot about people they knew so I sat there silently for most of it, chiming in when they spoke about topics I knew about such as cellphones. Afterwards I thanked the clients for letting me sit in on the meeting (and for lunch as they insisted on paying) and we headed back to work.

The afternoon involved almost no work for me. We had a brainstorm meeting to think of interesting PR campaigns for two clients. I realized I’m much better at thinking of fun, interesting campaigns targeted to the consumer rather than the media. Again I sat silently for most of it as they ran off names of journalists, producers etc that they could reach out to. I know I’m not expected to know everyone yet but I still felt kind of useless as I was unable to provide any input in that area. Definitely dedicating this evening to brainstorming/researching ideas. My program coordinator also emailed my supervisor asking us to complete something so I spent the rest of my work day with her working on it.

I definitely have a lot to finish tomorrow. I love the fact that they don’t micromanage me. I’m able to do my work freely and send them things as I finish. But for now, I’m going to work on a few pitches and brainstorm so I’m prepared bright and early tomorrow.