Work Life

As you may already know, I study marketing at university and a little over a month ago I completed a 5-6 month internship with a small clothing company as a Marketing Assistant. This is my story. . .

When I first walked into the university-owned office it looked like any other, like those I'd seen in school. Computer desks lined some walls whilst a solitary pair of computer rows sat face-to-face. Needless to say the interview commenced and, after some simple questions of knowledge (4Ps/7Ps, SWOT Analysis etc.,) IT proficiency tests (Word/Excel,) I acquired the job. It really was quite relieving since I'd never really worked a real job before, aside from the national 2-week experience project run by every school in the country (I did mine in the local council office; setting up computers, filling forms, installing software, that sort of thing.) I guess I was also relieved by the result since I forgot how to do formulas on Excel at first and get text in cells to go a line below so it isn't just one long piece of text, running off to the right as if it's trying to escape the screen. Excel and I didn't get on too well in school either come to think of it.

And after our brief, unfunny anecdote we begin the real journey. I turned up for the first time the following day, (November 1st,) and began writing the marketing report. I came up with some pretty bog-standard ideas: I conducted a SWOT analysis, considered the 4Ps, then the 7Ps and even budgeted for a promotional advertisement, which I would eventually go on to film December-January though unfortunately fail to complete due to time difficulties. Finally on that day, I analysed around 6 video adverts for other clothing companies (H&M, Next et al.,) and concluded my findings. The day was over after 4 hours of enjoyment. The next coming months were sadly a little different.

Over the next few weeks I began to grow a little bored after writing the reports: Those I really enjoyed, but then it came to writing two-month's worth of email promotions to send to people all over the world, pondering whether addressing a customer from Texas with "Howdy," would provoke offence. Or how to sell some more undergarments to a female customer via the limited communication space provided by an email. I just found myself getting repetitive, yearning to be one of the whizz kids from Amazon who manage to give us so dazzling visuals. Ours by comparison just looked, in marketing nomenclature, shit.

But then eventually it came to something that didn't simply confine me to a chair for 4 hours, of course, the video! Despite the fact that the camera I used wasn't a high-tech camcorder, but was instead a digital camera, with mediocre video recording quality at best, it was still enough to excite me. I filmed multiple shots, (after writing a very in-depth planning document and script;) taking the camera all over the building, outside, everywhere: I filmed so many clips I lost count how many there were. This would have been around the start of December.

By mid-December I was editing the video on Final Cut Express as my alternative to Windows Movie Maker. I took my Macbook Pro on both my work days but sadly, (for reasons unknown,) we had to change location to downstairs in what could only be described as the basement floor. My new workstation was essentially a rickety table upon which my Mac barely sat. The room had hardly any windows, lit artificially and was filled with boxes, box files, other tables and clothes, LOTS of clothes, the whole catalogue in fact all resting on a rail running the length of the small office above boxes stacked up: God knows what they contained. This was where the rest of the placement occurred and was less preferable to my previous office. It wasn't that the job I had to do was bad or anything like that, but rather the environment in which it was conducted was pretty dismal and uninspiring compared with the first floor.

I found these kinds of thoughts pervading future tasks such as the social media marketing done on Facebook, Twitter etc., although I will admit that writing product descriptions on Pinterest was certainly an enjoyable highlight, regardless of the environment, and there was a little more report writing too. This time it was a collaboration between myself and another intern, whom I only saw 3-4 times. From here, the placement continued until 19th March 2013, when I left the job over impending exams that I'll be sitting in a couple of weeks.

That was my life as an intern for around 5 months. I hope it gives you some insight if you were looking for some and just for promotional purposes, I'll leave the link to the website of this particular clothing company: http://www.tomiclothing.co.uk

Hope you'll visit again soon.