At the start of September I started my internship at a well known chocolate and cookiebrand in the Netherlands called Koninklijke Verkade. Verkade was founded 139 in 1886 and started as a Dutch company, but is nowadays part of the international organisation Pladis Holding. Their most important Brands are Verkade, Sultana and McVitie’s for the Dutch market. This is the office where I worked as a brand management intern for the brands Verkade and McVitie’s. The Sultana departement had their own brand management intern with who I worked together a lot.
Me and the chocolate factory
It felt like I found the golden ticket from the movie Charly and the Chocolate Factory when I found out I was hired at Verkade. And I wasn’t entirely wrong about this. Verkade organised a tour in the factory for the onboarding programme, you can eat cookies all day and all the meeting rooms were decorated like one of the Pladis brands or products. That means that the chocolate meeting room had chocolate lights, where the biscuit meeting room had a biscuit shaped doormat in front of it. I felt very welcome and well introduced, but there was also work to do…
The job contents
Brand management can be interpreted in a broad way. At Verkade, the brand managers are responsible for the whole process of creating products that fit the wants and needs of the market and our targetgroup till communicating the final products to the consumer. That also includes tasting products, design activating packaging and creating campaigns. Jup, there is a lot of communication related tasks in there! I’ve mostly used theories and knowledge from the subjects persuasive communication and corporate communication like the use of humor and influencers in the Sint campaigns directed to the consumers, but also the internal activation for our brand and products before launching it to the market to provide internal engagement which is translated to the external image of the product and our brand.
The learning process
During my study, I’ve already got the oppurtunity to work at a communications job at an office. Therefore, I thought this internship wouldn’t be that hard for me. But the organisation I used to work for was a lot smaller than Verkade and only for two days a week. This changed to a 40 hour work week and a bigger company in which I’ve got requests from a lot more colleagues. I found it hard to reject these requests which resulted in 50 hours of work to do in a 40 hour work week. This had to be changed and that’s where I learned to say “no” and set priorities. After this, I felt a lot more in control of all the things I had to do and I felt confident in my role at Verkade. I was actually thankful to learn it during an internship instead of during a “real” job. And that’s what an internship is for.
The end
After 5 months my internship came to an end. I was really looking forward to this point in which I got more free time to spend with friends, but at the other hand it became so fun to work at Verkade since I felt the control and confidence in my job. But… All things come to an end. Just like my bachelor in communication science and just like my job (and just like eating cookies everyday). With all the knowledge taken, I will open new doors in my career.