When I was applying for my internship: Brand Creation Marketing at Philips Domestic Appliances (now Versuni), I wanted to participate in global campaign creations. I wanted to learn how content for product launches all around the globe is created. I was focused on hard skills. My tasks would include supporting campaign creation from inception of the creative idea to the execution, creation of shopper marketing material and working on product launches. When I got accepted, I was over the moon, but little did I know this would teach me skills I only thought I already possessed.
The best gift is always a surprise
With today’s date, exactly marking my fourth month at the company, I can certainly say that I have learned a lot. My professional knowledge in the field of marketing is uncomparable to what I could present at the beginning. What at the beginning seemed as a foreign language, I can now proudly say, sounds a lot less complicated now. Thus, being able to communicate in a professional marketing jargon is a skill I will use for the rest of my career. However, what
I gained are not only hard skills I expected at the beginning, but above all, the soft ones.
What has taught me the most, is the pressure I experienced when coordinating opinions, inputs and expertise from many different stakeholders, in order to complete the marketing toolkit in time for the product launch.
A clash
As the basis of all the strategies and approaches I learned, is your understanding of consumers, having the ability to see through his/her lens at every stage of their journey, as a Brand Creation Marketing Intern, it is my obligation to constantly keep this in mind. This is not an easy task, as functionality and creativity of different stakeholders often clash. Proposition Managers, defined by their function, have to focus on the technical side of the product, at times making it too ambiguous for the consumer. Creative agencies on the other hand, tend to divert from important messaging points. Therefore, in order to incorporate consumer understanding and solutions to their problems at every step of the way, I had to learn how to voice my opinions, even when they meant a clash with other’s opinions. It was not always easy and required getting out of my comfort zone, but equipped me with a skill for life- argumenting and justifying my point of view on various issues. Therefore, I would definitely recommend this internship especially to those who want to develop gain a skill of strong argumentation, an ability to understand the consumer and explain solutions in customer- friendly terms.
Don’t judge a book by its cover
Finally, I got interesting results from my internship research: there was no significant difference between online video advertising and no online video advertising in eliciting brand engagement on social media. However, my organization can still benefit from it and voice it to its researchers to pay closer attention to the phenomena of online video advertising and actually question whether it is so effective as often, probably wrongly, assumed. The company is constantly working with research agencies, and thus can consider asking them to check which elements in online video could have the potential to induce brand engagement, in case marketing strategies are not changed to more image advertising focused. For now, while their research is being conducted, the company can focus in including more photography and dedicate too much budget to videos, since they were not proven to be more effective.
